The Most Wild Day of My Life

April is here and while the month is not necessarily important to me, it is for many others. April 2, 2018 marks the second wedding anniversary of my oldest brother, Cody. He and his wife, Tiffany, were married my senior year of high school in our kitchen. Everyone’s perfect fairytale. Unbelievably, the day did not go entirely as planned.

In the weeks prior to the wedding, my mom and I spent hours making the bride’s bouquet, the arch the couple would stand under during the ceremony and other countless efforts. The wedding was supposed to happen in our backyard with an almost limitless amount of space for the guests. We had chairs set up, homemade bows to go on the back of each chair and a trail of pictures to line the aisleway. We did a fantastic job.

The bad news: no one got to see it. Almost as soon as the last guest arrived, it began raining. We decided to have everyone stand inside and wait it out. Not a big deal. It’s a belief that rain on a wedding day is a sign of good fortune. Almost an hour later, the rain stopped. We were ecstatic to begin the ceremony. A group of us grabbed towels and ran outside to begin wiping down the chairs. They were soaked through quickly and I was handed the towels and told to run, emphasis on run, inside to grab more towels.

Just when we thought the hectic events were over, we were introduced to a whole new world of chaos. As soon as I walked in the door with an arm full of dripping towels, I looked to my left and witnessed the most stress-inducing event that could have happened. A certain person spilled entire large black coffee from Tim Hortons right beside the wedding cake. Naturally, the mess went everywhere and covered the entire bottom of the cake. I immediately went into panic mode. How is it that in a room full of adults, I, only having recently turned eighteen, was looked to by each person and expected to handle the situation? I understand the captain of the evening, my mom, was outside and unable to take charge, but I never accepted the position of second-in-command. Instead, it was thrust upon me and I handled it the best I could.

I went to get towels to clean up the mess. Timed seemed to stand still. While there were a lot of conversations and most people were unaware of what had happened, in my mind, it felt like people were throwing themselves on the ground, shaking their fists in the air and crying to the heavens for compassion. Dramatic? Yes, but this is situation was a whole new world for me. AP English could not prepare me for this.

As I’m sopping up the rest of the coffee, my mom comes in the door, looks me in the eye and is about to get angry at me for not taking more towels outside when she sees what I’m doing. She stood looking and simply said, “What happened?” She seemed calm but also like she was about to flip the table over. I explained, and we hastily cleaned the mess up.

If that wasn’t enough, as soon as we were done, it started raining again. Almost immediately after the start of the second rainstorm, it began hailing. It was at this point that we all threw our hands up and decided to abort our beautiful plan. We had everyone standing in the kitchen and began the ceremony. Shortly afterward, it stopped raining and I laughed even though I wanted to yell. That was one of the most stressful days of my life and only half the details made it into this story. Happy April!