Weddings are such an awesome and BIG DEAL kind of thing that you can't just get one side of the story... so the lovely Rachel doesn't know it yet, but she's going to be guest blogging here tomorrow telling you all about how cool it was from a girl's perspective (also, the perspective of someone who actually watched the ceremony... I never really made it into the church).
What I'm going to write about today is what happens behind the scenes at a wedding, because let's face it -- that's the crazy part. I have the most fun being the great Oz -- the man behind the curtain. And on Saturday, Elijah was my all-access pass. We had to hang out in the vestibule, waiting for our cue to lead the procession (with the lovely Miss Maggie, the flower girl-- she's the one front and center in the top picture). What happens when you wait backstage with a two-year-old? Oh, a bit. For one, he kept demanding that we go downstairs and play NOW! Which his mama said was a great idea, except I would have had to walk past the entire bridal party, many of whom were beckoning him to come say hi anyway. Finally, after waiting for fifteen minutes, of which the only times LJ was quiet was when I gave him The One Ring (my wedding band, so named because it's all gold and has crazy looking engraving on the inside), I finally let him go play with the well-dressed aunties in the stairwell, which of course meant that he was immediately needed to walk down the aisle.
He knocked it out of the park. If you want to see him actually walk down the aisle, I think Rachel has it up on her Facebook account, but he really did himself proud.
To use an old joke from The Office, who has two thumbs and made a complete idiot out of himself right after that? THIS GUY!! (i'm the one on the left if you're confused still ;)
And here's how it happened: When the wedding ended and the receiving formed, my dad scooped LJ up and let him have a little fun greeting people with them for awhile. After a turn, Elijah got bored and wanted to go back to the nursery and play with Maggie, but there was such a crush of people that I couldn't really swim upstream against the people stacked 3-wide all the way up the tiny hallway. Considering that my uncle and aunt were ten feet away in the nursery, I gave Elijah and Maggi permission to go play there for a bit. When the line thinned out enough ten minutes later that I shouldered my way through and reached the nursery, I was surprised to see Maggie but no Elijah. "Maggie," I said, "Where's Elijah?"
"I don't know," she said. "I'm just looking for my coat so we can play outside."
Mm-hmm. Not exactly what I wanted to hear. I turned and started to make my way up the stairs, but as usual, my path was blocked by a couple of church matrons. One of them turned and looked at me. "Was that your child wandering out on the lawn without a coat?"
"Quite possibly," I said, perhaps a little impatiently. It didn't matter. She had turned back to her original conversation. I had to interrupt her again just to get by.
By the time I finally made it upstairs, Elijah was BACK INSIDE thanks to the quick work of our friend Daryl, who in his typical North Dakota way said, "Well, I saw some kid just tearing it up outside without a coat, and said to myself, 'well, that's a little odd.' But when I saw it was Elijah, I was pretty sure you guys hadn't let him out voluntarily."
No, no we hadn't.
But at least Judah makes a tie and pacifier combo look pretty good. (The woman that he managed to land with it isn't too shabby either.)
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