So apparently if you write a post about the holidays & Starbucks & the Starbucks Red Cup and your abounding joy for it, and you write it just right you suddenly become the number one hit for anyone who Google’s any sort of variation of “Starbucks Red Cup” which let me tell you, in the first week of November is a whole lot of people. And you just think to yourself “Search Engine Optimization WHAT? SUCKAS” because in reality you had no idea that was going to happen. Besides, I don’t write for search engines, I write for me and my blog and my space, and blah blah blah, THE WORLD IS MY OYSTER. Or something.

That was one of the worst segues ever, but yet, here we are. Earlier this week Mama called & told me she’d gotten a disc with all of our wedding photos on them. Two discs actually, each with our 1500+ images, one color disk and one black & white disk. Due to the alignment of the stars & my nervousness over the photos (our sneak peek contained a lot of shots with my mouth wide open & I also determined I was not digging the floral ribbon on my bouquet) I asked her how I looked. And my MOTHER, my VERY OWN MOTHER dared to pause momentarily before answering. So while I’m sure some very normal reassuring words came out of her mouth moments later, I was too busy convulsing on Chicago mass transit, muttering incoherently about “WASTED MONEY. OH MY GOOOOODNESS MY PHOOOTTOOOO ARE AWFFFULLLL.” Then I did what any logical Shriveled Up Old Bride No Longer The Pretty Pretty Princess would do, I begged her to email me a few and prove to me I didn’t resemble Miss Piggy in taffeta casing or that my hair wasn’t similar to Marge Simpson’s. This folks would be what some people call a “fatal mistake.”

I apparently, in my infinite wisdom, underestimated the time and memory and hard drive space, and Pentium Processing chip speed, and moon dust and unicorn horns and what have you involved in sorting through 1500+ images and my Mother, hearing the rabid foam coming out of my No Longer A Pretty Pretty Princess Bride mouth just began sending what she could. And of course I deemed every photo she sent The Worst Photo Ever. She also didn’t send photos of whole chunks of the evening, which of course meant OH MY GOODNESS, NOT A SINGLE PHOTO OF THAT MOMENT IN TIME TURNED OUT. HALP ME.

I’m sure you heard the screeching. You probably blamed it on small children hopped up on Halloween candy. If only you were right. Then I came home, storming in the door to discover The Hubs & The Namby Pamby a bottle into some delicious red wine and I told them that I didn’t really *care* for the wedding pictures. Which apparently is a syndrome I have been suffering from since the day after the wedding when people started uploading photos on Facebook and I apparently began muttering “WHO PUTS PHOTOS LIKE THAT ON THE INTERNET FOR EVERYONE TO SEE?! DE-TAAAAG. DE-TAG! DE-TAG!” and generally shlumping around wondering why all my friends were so cruel. And The Hubs might have rolled his eyes and TNP (The Namby Pamby) might have taken a look at some of the photos sent to me and informed me they were in fact, quite lovely. And while he is a professional B-S-er by day, he’s a brutally honest soul so I went with it.

I have since learned that apparently my iPhone screen scrunches photos in a way that makes a lot of high-pixel images look a little wonky on their wee little screens. Huh. Who knew?

So that, dear friends, is my Bride-zilla moment. I didn’t panic about flowers or worry about the cake or yell at anyone on the day of the wedding. As it turns out, the day of my wedding I flitted and laughed and drank champagne and ate two fried oysters and danced with (the photos tell me) my husband and my Grandfather and his Grandfather, and my Dad, I was twirled by lawyers and fighter pilots and my brother and I boogied to the ground and back up again both laughing the entire way. My bridesmaids zipped my dress and tied their sashes and helped me put my earrings in and applied their lipstick and apparently all let out a sigh of happiness as my veil was nestled into my hair. My cousins made friends with my bridesmaids and they sipped sweet tea vodka lemonades and mint juleps and somewhere, in the background, a watermelon carved like a tucan made the rounds. My college roommates oohed and aahed over my ring and generally looked stunning, my sorority sisters danced with Dad and my Maid of Honor’s mother gracefully waltzed and then twisted with my Grandfather. My brother and my cousin cleaned the back of my Grandmother’s Mustang convertible & attached a “just married” sign to take us on our drive away from the reception, and they pulled the car around in their tuxes, smiling widely and honking for everyone to hear and see. My Uncle’s consumed their weight in creme brulee and sliced the USC father-of-the-bride cakes while B & I sliced our wedding cake and almost sent the whole thing flying. I cried during my vows, but B spoke with amazing clarity and had a huge fire in his eyes while he promised to cherish me for forever, and the church, oh the church was just breath taking. We sang happy birthday with candles in wedding cake to my other Maid of Honor and there was a rousing rendition of Paradise by the Dashboard Light that included every ex-fighter-pilot in attendance playing “baseball” to the words, and B and I held hands and topped each other’s champagne flutes. My friends pulled out their cake charms with laughter, my cousin and Grace getting the “coveted/hated” engagement ring charms. We hugged our guests and smiled and I wish someone had told me how pretty my veil was when it was draped over my arm because it was, it was simply gorgeous. Our friends from law school charmed my parents and looked fantastic as they danced and mingled.

I don’t remember a single moment of it all, but there, in the photos it is, plain as day. Slowly the memories are coming back, but until then I have it in 3000 images, each one more wonderful than the last. Even the ones of me at an odd angle with my mouth wide open and flowers covering half my face. Even those.