Hello!
When I wrote my book I poured my heart and my soul into it. I took stories from my youth to becoming a mom and my almost 4 years of experience in the motherhood world. When I felt the tug on my heart to try to get this book into more hands and I found myself working with Hidden Hollows Publishing...well I knew some of my beloved stories would not make the cut.
But I want to share them with you anyway. So I will be posting the stories that are dear to me in blog posts in the coming weeks before the book comes out.
Today's story is the story of my cousin's wedding. I hope you enjoy!
As I mentioned before I had clearance to workout again and was hitting the gym regularly. My goal in working out was simple: I wanted my pre-baby body back. That isn’t too much to ask, right? My cousin was getting married on New Year’s Eve so I had a date in mind that my pre-baby body needed to be back by. In my mind, I was going to lose all of the weight and look incredible at that wedding and I thought and talked about it all.the.time.
Philip was asked to sing a song during the ceremony of the big fancy wedding so it was becoming even more of a bigger deal. He rented a sexy tux and I rented a gown from Rent The Runway. I scrolled through the website daily and filtered down which dress was going to be the perfect one. I sent Laura screenshots of ones I was thinking about and finally picked the perfect dress. On Rent The Runway website you can get two sizes of the dress just to make sure you have the right fit. I picked my size and one size smaller than I was currently. I was fairly confident that with Spanx I would fit famously into that dress. (super side note: Whenever I am wearing Spanx under my clothes and someone compliments my outfit I always say “SPANX!” Not everyone catches it. They usually think I am saying “Thanks!”) When the dress came it had a hole in it. I contacted the company and was upset to find out that they did not have any more of that dress. On top of that, it was way wayyy too small on me. I had to return it and get a completely different dress in a size up. I had envisioned what I would look like at this wedding a million times and trying on the dress made reality crash in hard. I got a beautiful dress but it was not as tight and figure-flattering as I had hoped it would be.
In preparation for the night of the wedding, we had also spent countless hours trying to get Ander to take a bottle. I invested in many kinds of bottles and tried all kinds of things. He would take a bottle from time to time. He was still the worst sleeper but he was small enough that he would sleep in a bouncy seat if you sat and put your foot on it and bounced him continually. As a backup plan, he also napped in the car. So I figured if all else failed they could drive him around and get him to sleep. I tried everything I could to get ready for this wedding because I wanted it to be absolutely perfect.
On the day of the wedding, my friend Emily did my hair. I had done a timeline in my head and let me tell you for all of the planning and prepping I did for this wedding I could not have been more off on this timeline. It was pouring rain that day so we decided to put my hair all the way up instead of just half. It looked beautiful. But somehow when I left her house it was 20 minutes from when I was supposed to be leaving my house. As in I was supposed to have been 15 minutes north of where I was, pulling out of my driveway with everything packed up and my makeup on. None of these things were true I was extremely late and had nothing prepared. I sped as fast as I could home in the absolute pouring rain ran into the house and threw everything together, or so I thought. We all loaded into my husband’s tiny car and were on our way. We are speeding along (and by speeding I mean going the speed limit because my husband never speeds he is annoyingly cautious. He would rather get there “safe” than “quickly”) down the highway and I was in the front seat trying to change my clothes into my GOWN. I need to grab my bra out of my bag which is in the back so I begin to climb into the back seat and hurl my body over the seat to look for my bag - without messing up my hair.
I am wildly throwing my hands into my bag and throwing things around. Then it hits me - I did not pack a strapless bra. I started to lose my mind. I was so mad at everything in that moment. I admit I was a tad irrational but suddenly it was the dumbest thing in the world that we had such a small car. I was so mad that we didn’t have a bigger car, and I was mad that I could not turn around to get my strapless bra. Philip HAD to be there for the ceremony, he was doing a song - there was no being late - there was only being early! I call my mother-in-law and ask if I can borrow one of hers. You see we were dropping the kids off at my inlaw’s house and they were watching our two kids and my nephew. I started to think my only option was to go home and get ready and meet everyone at the wedding. And to this day I think that was a better idea. But I didn’t.
I decided to hold off on putting on my dress until we get to the house. So I half sat half squatting in the back seat and hung my droopy nursing boobs into the car seat and tried to implore my son to drink. But for whatever reason, he was more interested in me yelling at everything than eating. Go figure.
We got to my in law’s house and it is absolutely pouring rain. They have 50 steps down to their front door and I didn’t have time to go down and back so I hopped into my brother’s truck with Philip and we all drive to the wedding together. In the truck, I tried to put my makeup on. This is when I realize I forgot mascara and eye shadow. So my glamourous look was quickly fading into a rainy day melted mess. When we got to the wedding venue I brought my dress inside to change. I was trudging into this beautiful building wearing rainboots and passing by many people in ball gowns and tuxedos. I felt weird. I looked weird. When I got to the bathroom I tried on the strapless bra but it was too big and did not stay up. My sister had a nude bra and I put that on. It fit so I wore it. You could 100% see the bra through the mesh on the top of my dress. My shoes were too big and I could barely walk. I had almost no makeup on. But my hair was done and we were at the wedding. I looked nothing like I had pictured I would. I did not make this big come back after just having a baby. I looked average at best. But as Philip pointed out, no one was looking at me but him and he thought I looked beautiful. Philip’s song was great and the whole wedding was gorgeous. The food was so good and I was having a blast. Ander wasn’t really sleeping or taking a bottle so my wonderful mother-in-law drove all the way to the wedding so I could nurse Ander. Back in the same bathroom I stripped down naked from the waist up and nursed my baby on one side and pumped on the other. So many women walked by me in that bathroom. Some gave me some weird looks but most smiled and gave smiles and nods of solidarity!
Molly stayed up until almost 11 that night Ander barely ate or slept and I looked like a haggard mom who had just had a baby. But the wedding was so much fun! We danced, rang in the New Year with champagne and had so much fun! The wedding I had been looking forward to ended up being incredible but for reasons, I was never anticipating!
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