Yes, there was drama. Isn’t there always? But we made it through. Whew.

My 23-year-old daughter, Curly Girl, successfully married her guy last Saturday up at Mount Baldy. Let me just tell you how things went. The minister, Donna Lee, who also happens to be my longtime friend, stopped the ceremony briefly to deliver a box of facial tissues to me. Yeah, it was like that.

There were a lot of red, teary eyes as my baby girl walked down the aisle, escorted by her brother. She looked radiant in her white gown, which I’m pleased to say did not look like the bargain it was. She had demanded that all the guests wear black and only black to the ceremony. I disapproved of this because I thought it would look like a goth convention. There were a fair amount of nose rings, to be sure, but the all-black event just ended up looking surprisingly sophisticated for people like us.

Turns out, our friends clean up real good.

The wedding was at Pond Oaks event center up at Mount Baldy, which is nine miles above Claremont. I couldn’t recommend them more highly. They put up with all our quirks and weirdo behavior. No one minded that I brought in 40 tin cans that I’d decorated myself and stuffed with flowers, to use as centerpieces on the tables.

The wedding coordinator provided by Pond Oaks, Summer, even saved me a piece of wedding cake, since I was running around so much I accidentally missed the cake cutting.

We arrived at Pond Oaks at 4 p.m. Friday, after fighting Memorial Day getaway traffic that involved three, count ’em, three accidents along the way. I’d never been part of a wedding before, so the whole rehearsal process was new to me. For possibly the first time in my life, I just did what I was told. Wearing my new tiara, which I’d bought for the wedding, but was trying out.

You know about the tiara dilemma if you follow me on Facebook, which I hope you do.

After the rehearsal, we all drove down to Claremont for the rehearsal dinner at a posh Italian restaurant where the waiters look like extras in a “Godfather” movie. The groom’s mother had made it clear, apparently, before we got there that she was only paying for cocktails for the older generation. That’s why I wasn’t too happy afterward to discover that I was stuck with a $100 bar bill for my son, Cheetah Boy, and his friend, who thought it was just fine to be shooting $17.50 shots of fine sipping tequila.

Aside from any issue of shooting tequila that’s been made to be sipped — which I’ve told him to stop doing 100 times — I ended up stuck with the bill because none of those kids had any money. Then the son got into an argument with the groom, which was not the groom’s fault at all, but was really caused by the fact that my son didn’t want his sister to get married and leave him. They have been together every minute since she was born 23 years ago, and he found it very hard to let go of the girl who would always fetch him a glass of water when he was in bed. So, yeah, there was drama that went on most of the night.

Fortunately, as the wedding day dawned, everything was fine, the sun was shining and it was cold but beautiful. Curly Girl’s birth mother had planned to fly down from upstate Washington to attend, but she became sick, possibly with COVID-19, so she didn’t come. After the wedding, my friends kept asking me, “Which one is birth mom? We’ve been guessing.” And I realized that I should have informed them that she wasn’t even there.

However, several members of her birth family did come, including her great-grandmother, which made her very happy. When you adopt a child, you always know that they have another family and you usually have to acknowledge that at some point.

The highlights for me, the Mother of the Bride were as follows:

Watching through happy tears as my two children walked together down the aisle, looking radiant. And then Cheetah Boy hugging the groom for a full minute.
Making it through dinner — a spaghetti dinner — without spilling a single strand on my borrowed sequined dress. Yes, hard to believe, but true.
Finding myself surrounded by all my best friends, all in one place. It was like a love fest. I don’t expect that to happen again until my funeral, which I plan to attend.
Dancing until I collapsed to songs that were sometimes so dirty, I can’t reproduce them here. Looking back, my only complaint would be that the DJ Robbie did not play “YMCA,” my special request, but he did a great job overall and had everyone dancing until they fell down in a heap.
Spending the rest of the weekend up at the Mount Baldy Lodge, with the newly married couple and a passel of friends, which just extended the wedding fun for two more days.
And, finally, drinking Bloody Marys with real horseradish on the day after until my eyes glazed over, looking back over what turned into one of the most beautiful days of my life.

I’ll be living on peanut butter for the next five years to pay for it, but it was all worthwhile.

Related links

Frumpy Middle-aged Mom: It’s almost time for the wedding. Gulp.
Frumpy Middle-aged Mom: Tales of wedding misadventures for my daughter
Frumpy Middle-aged Mom: More wedding disasters from my friends
Frumpy Middle-aged Mom: Fire, smoke, fights and tears: More wedding misadventures
Frumpy Middle-aged Mom: Hoping there’s no brawl at the wedding

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