My Best Friend's Wedding

Though I still have the VHS copy of My Best Friend's Wedding (purchased from Half.com in 2003 for $4), that's not what this post is about. This post is about my actual best friend's actual wedding. She and I met in kindergarten and have been best friends ever since. We have only had one fight, and it was completely my fault. I am definitely getting the better deal out of this relationship, but she doesn't seem to care, so you can see why I've held on to her for so long.
This weekend I was blessed to take part in her wedding--a day many years in coming, and yet, still strange for me. Could this girl who used to play hide-and-seek at my house and let me dress up in her dance costumes at her house really be getting MARRIED? Yes, as a matter of fact, she was, and we were all delighted.

As a member of the bridal party, I was invited to the rehearsal dinner. Unsurprisingly, this had been preceded by the rehearsal, where we learned how to walk up and down the aisle and stand still and not wiggle during the ceremony. (I'm pretty sure we all wiggled during the ceremony.) The church was a big, spacious building, whose air conditioner had only been turned on a short time before we began and was, therefore, completely ineffective. So you can imagine our delight when we got to the rehearsal dinner and found that we were in an un-air-conditioned room for that as well. But despite all that, we had a good time, as the happiness of the bride and groom just sort of oozed out of their sweat pores and onto the rest of us, I guess. When it came time for speeches, they passed around the microphone to anyone who wanted to say something. The groomsmen had apparently agreed to stick to a theme of, "Let's tell embarrassing, unflattering stories about the groom in order to..." Well, I'm not sure why they thought that was a good idea. But I didn't think it was a good idea, nor did I have any unflattering stories to tell about the bride, so I took a different approach.

I told the crowd that I had many memories that I could share, but I selected a rather random one for this evening. In elementary school, my class had some sort of day in the park, complete with sack lunches and sodas to drink. Our drink options were Coke or Dr. Pepper, and our teachers sternly informed us that we were not to complain about which drink we got--we were to just accept what they gave us and deal with it. (Clearly their jobs as elementary school teachers would've been much more agreeable to them if they hadn't had to deal with all of us kids.) Anyway, this offer wasn't a big deal to most, but in my family, we don't drink Coke. I was instantly panicked about what to do, because it was hot, and I couldn've have just gone without something to drink.

Here's the great thing about my friend--in all the time I've known her, any concern I had, big or small, became her concern. So when I started to worry about getting a soda that I'd be able to drink, SHE started to worry about it, too. And here's another great thing about her--she's a go-getter. So she didn't just stand there and worry. She stuck out her elbows and marched to the front of the crowd to make sure that I GOT a Dr. Pepper.

As I told this story that night, she laughed and nodded, obviously remembering this same event, random though it was. I told the crowd that I chose this story to illustrate what a loyal, thoughtful person my best friend is, so the groom should know how lucky he is to be getting such a wife. He also smiled and nodded, as if to say that he's gotten somewhat of an inkling.

At the end of the evening, the bride and groom passed out gifts to the members of the bridal party. When she handed me my bag, I looked inside, and there was a bottle of Dr. Pepper.

See why I picked her?