wedding memories: the coolest kid i know...

Family photo - please do not steal.

My favorite little girl in the world, my best friend's daughter, celebrates her fourth birthday this week!  FOUR.  It shouldn't come as a surprise to me, since she was born the summer before I started teaching and I just finished my fourth year, but it seems like just yesterday we were sticking socks over her little hands to keep her infant self from scratching her own face.  She's important to me partially because her birth was the if you leave Virginia, you'll miss a lot wake-up call I needed to keep me in this valley for the forseeable future.  Now she's wearing a child-size flapper dress and Audrey Hepburn glasses and eating cake and a lollipop at the same time.  If the above picture does not demonstrate the utter coolness of this kid, I don't know what does.

Significantly to this blog, she was our flower girl a little over a year ago!  Was it a great idea to have a three year old flower girl?  Probably not - three-year-olds are kind of notoriously terrible and she didn't have a concept of how she should behave because she'd never been to a wedding before.  I could tell at our rehearsal that she was going to either be a hot little mess going down the aisle or have a meltdown and not make it at all.  I could also tell that Mr. Q didn't care, and neither did I - we'd have a little girl in a pretty dress at our wedding, and she'd be our favorite little girl in the world whether she made it to the end of the aisle or not.  

The morning of the wedding, our flower girl's mother dragged her into the War Memorial still clutching her sippy cup and stuffed kitty from her nap, and it was clear that she hadn't woken up in a good mood.  She spent a lot of the morning in a corner, occasionally throwing things.  We ignored her, talked loudly about being princesses and wearing "princess perfume," and things got a little bit better.  By the time she needed to make her debut downstairs, she was in princess mode, and not only did she place petals on the aisle runner, she picked them up again and re-arranged them several times.  

The magic perfume!  Photo by Lesley Wray.

Our flower girl didn't sit or stand still during our ceremony - she wandered around a bit, but she was quiet, and her mom was afraid that if she *did* try to corral her, she'd get fussy.  It cracked Mr. Q and I up and I think her adorable behavior kept me from being too nervous.  I tried to smile extra big at her to let my guests know she wasn't bothering me.  Most of our guests thought it was cute - although one person did ask, "Where was that child's mother?"  

I suppose the moral of my story is:  if you want a dignified, serious wedding, get a flower girl who is a little bit older.  If you and your fiance don't take your wedding, or yourselves, too seriously, pick the coolest kid you know.