Mermaids JUJU

via Daily Prompt: Zip

Last August my youngest son got married. The wedding day was beautiful. HOT! But beautiful all the same. The venue was so lush it made it seem like we were in a clearing of a deep forest.

The most memorable moments of the day:

• My then 5 month old granddaughter being walked down the isle as the flower girl in the arms of her parents, who just happened to be the best man and the maid of honor.
• My husband in his suit. He hates to wear suits, but he looks so great all dressed up.
• Getting the bridesmaids all dressed and ready for the walk down the isle.

I wanted to concentrate my efforts this time on the last of these three memories.

The bridesmaids dresses were stressful from the very beginning. Briana had ordered them from a website from China, in effort to keep the cost low. The dresses were perfect for the occasion but all of them needed extensive alterations. One of the dresses needed to have panels put in in order for it to fit just right which resulted in being altered with a complete re-positioning of the zipper.

So here we are in the brides room all of the stunning bridesmaids were getting into their dresses. All of the dresses zippers were so hard to get zipped up. But this one in particular was very hard. The maid of honor, also my DIL, and I worked together and finally got it to zip. Whew!! Now to get the bride into her dress. It was an oven in that changing room! Briana was dying of heat and just barley holding on to consciousnesses. So the little portable air conditioner that was behind the dressing screen was not even coming close to helping in the place that it was being kept. One of the bridesmaids, feeling so bad for Briana, and wanting to do something to help, leaned into the corner of the room behind the screen to retrieve the air conditioner. Upon leaning down to roll it out… riiipppp goes the zipper of her bridesmaid dress. 

I immediately went into save the day mode and called on everyone from the wedding party to help locate some safety pins. It seemed to take a lifetime to find some, but thankfully someone had a whole package of them in their car. Safety pins in hand I ran back to the brides room and found This darling bridesmaid sitting on the floor with her dress all proofed up around her. She was looking down when I found her, and I expected to see a tearful face when I exclaimed, “Oh, Sweetheart, are you okay?” All I could think about while tracking down the pins, was how awful that bridesmaid would feel. It would be such a detriment to her self confidence and she must be feeling so badly right now having to be put back together with safety pins.

I feel so much love and admiration for this beautiful soul, then, now and forever. She looked up and smiled a huge movie star smile and said as she giggled, “I know can you believe how funny!! My zipper totally split when I leaned over to get the air conditioner out for Briana!” I hugged her tight and wondered if by leaning down to hug her my zipper might just do the same thing. I made an excuse to go check on the baby who was taking a pre-wedding nap, because I was so overtaken by emotion just then.

While the bridesmaids worked like the mice on Cinderella’s dress, I sat and reflected about how one person’s attitude can make or break a whole day. I know how hard it must have been for her to suck it up and smile through the pain. She made a valiant choice that day by laughing at the situation instead of crumpling into a pile of tears and wedding day fabric. The walk down the isle went on without a hitch, and her friend, the bride, was not effected by the zipper breaking. She took all of that upon herself in a selfless act, to save the day.

What a beautiful day!! Even broken zippers could not change that!