wool at the wedding

Yesterday one of my cousins got married at a local vineyard in Wisconsin. I guess I shouldn't use local as an adjective in this case. I probably should write "the only" or "one of the only," because I'm guessing Wisconsin doesn't have many vineyards. 

Anyway, I don't know about your family, but it seems like the older I get, the more bizarre my family's pre-wedding experiences become. One of my siblings (and this is usually my brother) is always getting chastised for his eclectic choice of wardrobe. He prefers colorful ties and jackets, which sometimes clash with his beard. 

But yesterday, I was the one my mother harassed. Friends, I chose a tailored sky-blue blouse, tucked under a light-weight black sweater all over the top of a button-down tweed skirt. 

The tweed skirt is a favorite of mine. From a distance it may appear to be gray, but really it's a blend of black over white wool with flecks of orange, bright yellow and orchid in its fine weave. This skirt has tiny black buttons that run down each side as it cuts to about knee level. 

My mother's main complaint was that I looked too uptight and there would be other people my age there (i.e. single men). If I insisted on wearing the skirt, at least I could undo a few of the buttons that were currently hugging my knees. (And, when I wasn't paying attention to her, she made several attempts to creep up beside me and undo the buttons herself.) 

But the skirt wasn't my worst offence, it was the flats I insisted on wearing on my feet. Copenhagen blue-suede leather, but of cheap knock-off quality that I was willing to put up with as long as they carried me through the afternoon. She said those shoes made me look like an up-tight librarian. (Which I almost was at one point in my life, but that's another story.)

Moving on, while my mother was harassing me about my shoes, my brother sat down next to me on the sofa, his eyes twinkling, to show me the bread-ties he'd devised to serve him as cuff links. 

So I didn't feel so bad about my outfit. 

We made it out of the house, but halfway to town, and not even a fraction of the distance to our final destination, we all realized that no one had a copy of the invitation (in fact some of the party may have never read it) and therefore only had a general inkling of when the wedding actually started. Was it 2:00, 2:30 or 3:00? This, of course, makes a huge difference. 

And, adding to the panic of the situation, it was discovered that my mother didn't have her cellphone. Instead she'd grabbed mine, which has only the numbers of random people in its memory, and was therefore completely obsolete in helping us attain the information we needed.

So, as we're all fighting (some berating others for leaving the invite sitting on the kitchen counter, others mocking the indifferent for not reading the invite at all) we realized that the directions to the wedding were also left behind. 

Huh, in the back of the mini van I scrunched my shoulders and looked to my lovely blue shoes for moral support. 

How it was next decided that we needed to visit a drive-through car wash is beyond my level of contemplation. But there I was, stuck in a drive-through car wash with no escape in sight, surrounded by the general uproar of my loving (and also completely crazy) family. 

My only solace was the fact that I had packed an easy knitting project (a pair of toe-up socks) to center my attention upon, AND the understanding that there would be lots of wine at the reception later on . . . this is, if we ever got there.