Day 29: A vivid memory

December 31 dawned bright and sunny, looking just like the Jamaican resort’s brochure photos—a perfect day for a wedding. After a quick breakfast, I headed out of our suite to the salon for my hair and make-up appointment.

The fiancé was dressed in his wedding attire of linen shirt and slacks by the time I returned, and we reviewed the morning’s timeline, provided by the wedding coordinator, for the hundredth time. Then he was off to the minister’s office to complete the official paperwork while I boldly stuffed silicone chicken cutlets into the bodice of my simple A-line dress and slipped my pedicured feet into matching flip-flops.

According to the plan, as soon as the fiancé finished signing on the dotted line, the minister would escort him to the beachfront pavilion; in the meantime, the wedding coordinator was to collect my flowers from the florist then fetch me from the suite. We’d all meet up at the pavilion.

I was ready well ahead of the wedding coordinator’s scheduled arrival time, so there was ample opportunity for nervousness to set in. Butterflies really started flapping when I was still sitting in the suite trying not to rumple myself fifteen minutes after the appointed pick-up time. After thirty minutes, my mind had scripted every possible scenario in which the fiancé changes his mind, so I finally called the wedding office to enquire if the whole thing had been called off.

I was assured the wedding coordinator was on her way, but another agonizing quarter hour crawled by before she finally knocked on the door, bouquet in hand. Not understanding my pallor or quavering voice on this, the happiest day of my life, she tucked some daisies into my hair then hustled me out of the suite toward the pavilion. I had no time to regain my composure or register any relief that my fiancé was not on a jet plane hightailing it out of Jamaica. To make matters worse, as I started down the path in the now blazing noon-day sun, I could feel those silicone bust enhancers, well and truly lubricated by perspiration, slithering south like they were on the interstate.

As a result, the professional photographer captured a glistening bride-to-be, moving toward her future with a Frankenstein-like gait, looking much like a constipated root canal patient who’d recently finished chopping a bushel of onions and was now being marched to her execution.

Thankfully, once the vows were repeated and the rings were exchanged and the fiancé was legally the hubby, I was finally able to relax (a little champagne didn’t hurt, either)…so much so that after traipsing all over the resort posing for the photographer under the Jamaican sun, I didn’t even bat an eye when a cutlet finished its southerly migration and plopped onto the sidewalk between my flip-flops. 

Ohh, the memories, brought to you by Jenni’s blog-every-day challenge at Story of My Life.