For anyone who didn't know, I got married a couple of weeks ago. It was pretty awesome. Pros: lifetime commitment, friends and family, fantastic dress and shoes, confetti cannon shocker at send off. Cons: passing out. And no, not in the manner of a drunk-assed bride or frat partier, but in a Victorian lady, smelling-salts kind of way.
It happened thusly: I had a super time getting ready, then did the whole walk-down-the-aisle, lifetime-pledge bit, then balanced in pointy heels on a sunny, grassy slope for awhile while the photographer tried to get all four children involved in the ceremony both standing upright and looking pleasant simultaneously (not possible). Then I shooed my family, including my
bridal-emergency-kit bearing sister away to the reception to take couple portraits. Then after a bit of that, I felt really dizzy, reportedly murmured, "I feel like I might pass out," and then kind of keeled over, dropped the water bottle the photographer had donated to the cause, and my new husband had to catch me to keep several hundred dollars' worth of dress (and my skull) off the UNM campus pavement. There was only one casualty:
I had a nice little dream about my alarm clock going off, then came to in the midst of drama, with the photographer running to get the limo, the limo driver and husband (mine, not the limo driver's) stowing me, somewhat like a mob corpse, in the backseat, and the photographer asking what I'd eaten that day (answer: clearly not enough and not recently enough for a hypoglycemic). We pealed off to the reception, and I pulled my sister's cell phone number out of the depths of pre-cell phone memory so the limo driver could call ahead for emergency snacks and hair assistance -- you know, to avoid making our entrance to the reception in a style less triumphant/joyous and more staggering/bedraggled, in much the same way a long-thought-dead foiler of plans totters into some early-20th-century murderer's party celebrating said murderer's ill-gotten inheritance. Not the tone in which one wants to kick off a lifetime together.
Where was my cell phone, you might ask, if you hadn't gotten distracted by that long digression? In my little wedding purse. Sitting next to the photographers bag 'o' expensive cameras and camera bits. Right in the middle of campus all by themselves, because in the midst of lady-catching/limo-moving/corpse-stowing, everyone forgot the bags. Which were missing by the time the photographer (the excellent
Ginger Russell, by the way) realized they were gone and rushed back to get them.
Not to worry, though: after a charming wedding night of getting a friend to loan me her asthma inhaler, calling credit card companies and sending missed calls/texts to my missing phone (sample: "Do you have my stuff? I want it back."), some hotel and spa in Santa Fe called to say they had my purse, and after some shuffling around in the luggage room, found the photographer's bag, too. Apparently another limo driver picked them up -- possibly noticing they were left sitting there after the unconscious bride drama -- and unloaded them with his wedding's luggage in Santa Fe. So we took a little road trip to the fancy spa, found the limo company had collected it to bring back to Albuquerque, and I finally got everything back from the limo office on Monday ("It's a VERY cute purse," the limo company's desk people assured me). Yay!
