Toddler Tuesday: Wedding edition

In light of mine and Eric's recent wedding anniversary, I am going to use this Toddler Tuesday to talk about Gabriel's experience with our wedding. 

For obvious reasons, most children don't get to attend their own parents' wedding. Gabriel was 22 months when we got married, and we opted not to try to make him do the whole ring-bearer thing, but he did walk down the aisle with my parents right before the bridesmaids (in other words, my Ma carried him). 

To start off, I should say, (you might want to sit down for this) we held our reception AT OUR HOME. Yes, that is right....in our very own house. And there's really only one reason why we did this-cost. 

Our wedding was very small-only my parents, his parents and grandparents, my siblings, and a few friends. Almost everyone arrived the night before, so Gabriel had a lot of people to play with while I slaved and stressed away about getting everything done. Since my photographer arrived from out of town the night before as well, I got some amazing pictures of Gabriel playing around before the wedding.

photo by Lauren D Rogers

                                                  Gabriel with his grandpa.

photo by Ben Patterson (my baby bro)

photo by Ben Patterson

photo by Lauren D Rogers

photo by Lauren D Rogers

 

 Blowing bubbles to occupy him while us girls got ready. Yes, that is my bridezilla face in the background. And no, I'm not ballin' enough to have my own hairdresser come to my house for the big day-that's my best friend's mom, Kelle, who took pity on me because I was planning to curl my hair myself. Bless her.

photo by Lauren D Rogers

photo by Lauren D Rogers

photo by Lauren D Rogers

So there we were...setting up the tables and chairs we rented, putting the linens on, adding the centerpieces, all while a toddler ran about half naked chasing the dog or riding on his John Deere. It wasn't glamorous, but it was us. Gabriel was having the time of his life...and didn't even mind the hustle and bustle of being driven over to the church. I headed over to the church and left him in the care of his father and groomsmen so us girls could change into our dresses. Everything went well...all up until Eric was waiting at the front of the church and the wedding was about to begin...all up until I entered the vestibule where Gabriel, my Ma, the bridesmaids, and groomsmen were waiting to walk down the aisle, all up until he saw me in my wedding dress. And then all hell broke loose. For reasons that don't quite make sense, Gabriel freaked out about me being all dressed up. Echoing through the church, much louder than the quiet instrumental music playing while people were getting seating, you could hear the wail, "Mommyyyyyyyyyyyyy, mommyyyyyyyyy" as he cried in my mother's arms. He wanted her to hand him over to me, but it was their turn to walk out. I let them go, and he cried the whole way. Cried as I walked down. Cried as I stood in front of the church with Eric. He finally quieted down but had the crying-sniffles the whole rest of the service. As soon as we were done and walked back out of the church and through the doors, little feet running up behind us. I had to hold him for most of the pictures, and it was such a mess.

photo by Lauren D Rogers

                                                 Holding him here...

photo by Lauren D Rogers

                                                       And here...

photo by Lauren D Rogers

                                And here again..............

photo by Lauren D Rogers

photo by Lauren D Rogers

 Finally, finally my dad had the genius idea to take him to the little playground they had at the church so we could get some more pictures, you know, ones where I'm not holding the little guy. We even tried to get some pictures of him with Eric and the groomsmen, you know-a boy's photo, but he's literally throwing his head back and crying for me to take him back in every one. (I would post them, but they aren't on this hard drive, and I'm still at my Dad's.) He's usually not like that, I'm telling you, something about the dress really freaked him out. 

photo by Lauren D Rogers

 Back at our house for the reception, he was back to his bubbly self. I fed him dinner before the service, so he had time to run and play around while everyone else tried to eat. He borrowed his great-grandpa's cane and took the reception's entertainment into his own hands. Gabriel's bedtime was about thirty minutes after the reception started, but he got to party for a little while. 

The wedding was a fun but overwhelming time for Gabriel. And though it might not have been quite the ideal fairy-tale of a situation, I'm glad he was there.


Happy Tuesday!

xoxo,

L