Leslie’s Wedding

This MS’er goes to a party

It was the morning of a friend’s wedding and I thought I was prepared. In the old days, thinking I was prepared meant I was prepared. I had an outfit ready. Fancy, gauzy, flared, black slacks that I had worn as part of an ensemble to the last wedding I went to, before multiple sclerosis officially entered my world. For some strange and annoying reason, the top no longer fit. Luckily, my mom had a perfectly nice top I could wear.

I found shoes in my closet that would go with the outfit without being too high or obnoxious for me to walk in. I had a jacket in case it got cold, a purse that matched, and back up shoes in case I had a long walk to the church. (The church was small and parking was often tricky.)

As the occasion of the wedding brought up many memories of my friend, I wanted to write her a personal letter to put in the card. I woke up early and with my morning cup of tea beside me, turned on my computer and wrote to her. I was happy with how the letter came out and was finished except for printing.

I started to play around with font and then color. Somehow, I managed to highlight the text in black and could not figure out how to undo it. I tried everything, even copy and pasting the text to a new document and trying to keep the highlight while changing it to a lighter color. Nothing worked. Not wanting to abandon the personal sentiment of a letter meant that I needed to start all over again which meant that I had far less time to get ready.

Shower and makeup. I had stopped wearing makeup since diagnosed with my other medical condition (the gross eye issue called blepharitis– if you are wondering what that is, check out my earlier blog post, Oily Tears and All.) But I had bought make up for this special day.

Trouble was, I always have trouble with lipstick. So I bought a lip gloss that swore it held like lipstick. It did. So much so that you needed an industrial cleaning agent to remove it, which I did not have. When my hand shook and I smudged the gloss on my upper lip, the stain was coming with me to the wedding.

I was really late now, so no blow drying my hair into a nice style. I never do anyway, it’s too exhausting. I usually just put some sort of goop in my hair and hope for the best. Most of the time, my hair cooperates. Today, it did not.

On to getting dressed where to my horror, I realized that I didn’t have any black underwear to wear under the pants. The pants screamed for black. I actually did have black underwear, several pairs, but I hadn’t thought to set any aside for today and they were all now at the very bottom of the very dirty laundry pile.

I found a pair of clean dark blue that almost worked, but not totally. That meant that instead of the dress socks I hoped to get away with wearing, I had to go with the black panty hose I had bought just in case. Just in case what, I didn’t know. I guess, just in case I needed to camouflage the wrong color underpants.

It had been forever since I wore hose and I forgot how tricky they are to put on. I sat on my bed and got my right leg in. The left leg refused to cooperate. It seemed I couldn’t lift it high enough to put into the hose without falling off my bed. I struggled and struggled and never remember having this much trouble with balance and coordination before. I eventually contorted into the weirdest position imaginable and managed to figure it out.

Then, of course, I had to pee.

The outfit was no trouble to put on but there was the realization that I hadn’t tried the slacks with the shoes. I must have been wearing higher heels at the last wedding as this morning I kept stepping on the pants. As if walking wasn’t hard enough!

Jewelry was next and as I struggled with the right earring in the ear lobe that had pretty much closed up, I was reminded of when the bride’s mom had originally pierced my ears way back when with a sewing needle and some ice.

Would Sallie have her needle with her at the wedding? Even if she did, she would be too busy to pierce my ears anew so I stabbed at my earlobe several times until the earring made its way through.

Finally out the door, I found a prime parking spot on the street directly in front of the church. Trouble was, I was not able to parallel park my car without half of my car up on the curb. I embarrassingly tried several times in front of other wedding attendees before giving up, and at the direction of one of the ushers, double parked in the church lot.

I knew I would be kissing and hugging people and my meds give me horrible breath so the last thing I did before entering the church was pop an Altoid into my mouth and then dropped the tin; white chalky Altoids spilling all over my fancy black slacks.

And then it was time for the wedding. I had made it. The bride was gorgeous, her and her groom were ecstatic, I had a blast catching up with old friends and if anyone noticed my smudged lip color, my bad hair, Altoid remnants all over me, or my tripping over my long hem and hiking my pants up constantly, they didn’t say.

So what if the hem/heel issue, my fatigue and my wobbly legs kept me off the dance floor.

So what if the volume of the band increasing greatly after dinner required me to leave earlier than I would have liked, missing the cake. Who needs cake? I am on a ‘get fit’ plan, remember?

(For the record, I ate the salad and green beans that came with the wedding dinner.)

And so what if my leaving early meant that I could not try to catch the bouquet? I don’t need a bouquet. Unless George Clooney dumps Stacy Keibler and gets over his commitment phobia which is not likely any time soon.

Maybe by the time I go to the next wedding…….

Congratulations to Kenny and Leslie!

Photos by JA and JT as my disposable camera just doesn’t cut it.