last weekend was 99% fantastic

If you ignore the part about the foot injury, I had a pretty great few days last weekend. One of my dearest friends (she doesn't have a blog, but you can go read about another time when I talked about her) got married. This is the friend with the fiesta-themed shower a couple weeks ago.

It was really fun getting to watch someone else go through the whole actually-getting-married process almost exactly a year after having done so myself. For one thing, the rehearsal on Friday was a decidedly lower-stakes event, that's for sure. The rehearsal dinner they hosted -- 20 of us around a hibachi table! there was drumming! -- was pretty much the polar opposite of what we chose to do -- drinks and mingling over hors d'oeuvres before dinner -- but it was great to see how each approach was ridiculously fun in an entirely different way.

Saturday was an absolute hoot, wherein I poured mimosas (a calming elixir, don'tcha know) and took care of random odds and ends. Walking down the aisle of a church knowing everyone was craning to see past me, not bothering very much to look at me, was pretty awesome too.

One thing was definitely more difficult, though. The toast. Good lord, the toast. I gained an entirely new level of appreciation and admiration for my friend sitting next to me in her white dress, recalling how eloquently she spoke about me last year when the shoe was on the other foot. My voice wavered and my eyes watered and I got through about half of what I intended to say about her and her husband (HUSBAND!) before I cut my losses, asked everyone to raise their glasses with me, and wished the happy couple years and years of the joy together that they so richly deserve.

The Awesome Husband and I twirled and spun on an empty dance floor when the song we'd used for our first dance was played, commenting to each other how much more enjoyable that was without the pressure of all our loved ones staring at us. Later in the evening, the song we'd used as a processional wafted out of the DJ's speakers; I sobbed uncontrollable tears of a thousand different emotions into my husband's tie (the first few bars might always do that to me), and thankfully I think nobody else in the room noticed.

Crying-in-public aside, though, the wedding of one of your favorite people in the whole wide world is pretty much the most fun day you can have without actually getting married yourself.

Oh, and bonus: if anyone wants to invite me to a swanky holiday party this year, I'm set, because the bridesmaid's dress she chose was a super fun black cocktail number. (See, I toldja she's pretty awesome.)