Jessie.s Wedding

As mentioned earlier, I got home about 4 PM on that Friday from the rehab hospital, so we had very little time to get to Silver Spring country club for the rehearsal. We did make it in time, and that is when I told my daughter that I would be able to walk her down the aisle. It was nice to see family and friends after being stuck in the hospital for three weeks. As usual, for rehearsal and dinner, it was very casual and lots of laughter. The wedding was on the rooftop and fortunately for me, I only had talked about 50 feet. After the rehearsal, we headed back south to our future in-laws for a Hawaiin Luau. Fortunately, they'll live a half a mile from us, so it was time to go home we would not be far from home.

Early the next morning, the entire female wedding party was at our house for hair, makeup and breakfast. I got some help from family members getting into that tuxedo, which is a real pain because of the paralysis. It was very uncomfortable, plus not conducive for quick bathroom breaks. And not only that it was very hot.

On the way to the wedding there was a major car accident, which backed up traffic for over two hours. Fortunately for me my chauffeur knew a different route, and we were the only ones who arrived on time. Most of the people were an hour or more later with my mom and sister taking last-place, so we had to wait for them.

Fortunately, it was a very short wedding, actually a little shorter than they planned. They had a friend do this ceremony and he was so nervous that he forgot about half of the wedding stuff. So the wedding lasted about 10 minutes. About five of those minutes involved me walking down the aisle. It was probably the most emotional time of my life as I cried all the way down the aisle. I was okay after that, it is just that a father should walk his daughter down the aisle on her wedding day, and I was not going to let anything stop me. I did have my fly open on my tuxedo as I walked down the aisle, strictly for bathroom reasons.

My wife volunteered to do the father of the bride speech for me, because I know I would not have been able to do it with all the emotion and my voice that kept disappearing. For someone who never spoke in front of a crowd before, she did wonderful. It was entertaining and she looked very comfortable doing it. She never ceases to amaze me. Lisa's speech was a combination of slide show and Lisa's sense of humor, which was hilarious.

Considering my condition, I was able to stand for photos and dance in a wheelchair along with getting to meet a lot of people. The music was good, the food was good, there were a lot of people dancing and no one got cheated at the bar. The night seemed like it was going fast, because I was dancing and mingling with the guests, though I thought it was close to midnight, it was only about 10 PM and I was getting pretty tired. I tried to make it to midnight, but I was beat and it was very hard setting in a wheelchair for that long of time, and my butt was getting pretty sore. Plus my pants kept falling off especially when I was trying to transfer into the car, which was pretty funny. We had some friends follow us nome to make sure that they could get me into the house.

The next day, was gift opening at the in-laws place, which concluded a very busy weekend for us. Despite everything it was a great time and we got a lot of complements on how nice a wedding and was and how everyone was having a good time. I made the best of it and wanted to make sure that the focus was on my daughter and not myself.

pogo