Reagan's Wedding Day

No, we aren't marrying her off already! But she has recently appeared in her first wedding, as a flower girl! And a super-cute one, I might add!

We really weren't expecting much from Reagan, and luckily neither were Jim's cousin Josh and his now-wife Erin. We thought we might get some cute pictures of her, but there was little hope that she would actually walk down the aisle. After all, she's barely 2!

Bud and KayKay came to visit that weekend and watched the boys on Sat. while we took Reagan to the wedding, a couple of hours away in McMinnville. We had to be there early so Jim could set up to run the music at the reception. And we would be staying late, until the reception was over. It was a challenging day for Bud and KK, but they and the boys all had a great time. Thank you Bud and KayKay!

We managed to get there, get set up, and get Reagan dressed in time for pictures. She wore the same dress she wore at Easter, one we bought then specifically for this wedding. She was somewhat cooperative for the pictures. She looked beautiful in her dress, of course!

She was in love with her flower basket! She screamed if you tried to take it from her, so we didn't! I practiced walking down the aisle with her and managed to get her to do it by herself too. We were all shocked that she did it and praised her like crazy!

There was a cranky period before the wedding started (the wedding was smack in the middle of naptime!) but it wasn't too awful. Then it was showtime! Reagan had spent a good little time flirting with the slightly older ringbearer (seriously, she kissed him so much it started to make me nervous), so I hoped she would at least walk down the aisle with him!

The music started. The doors opened. Reagan stepped out...and the ringbearer did not! Instead he took one look at the auditorium full of people, turned around, threw his ring pillow, and refused to take a step.

Hey, ringbearer, are you coming?

Reagan looked at me, I looked at Reagan, and then I smiled really big and said, "Okay, Reagan, go on, walk to the steps!" She thought about it for a split second, and then SHE TURNED AND WALKED DOWN THE AISLE ALL BY HERSELF!!!!!!

She paused a couple of times to turn and look back at me, but she actually walked all the way down the aisle like it was nothing. When she got to the stage, she leaned way over to place her basket down and then crawled up the two steps to the stage.

At that point she no longer knew what to do, so she just sat down... in the middle of the stage! Cousin Caleb went and picked her up and stood her by the bridesmaids, but then she noticed that she had dropped a couple of petals IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STAGE and rushed to get them. And then she sat down again IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STAGE!!

By now the bride has almost finished her own walk down the aisle and is just steps away from ascending the stage, a path that would take her quite naturally through the MIDDLE where Reagan has set up camp. So I rushed over and grabbed her myself and brought her to the pew and handed her whatever she wanted for doing such a good job and to distract her from the fact that her beloved flower basket had been left behind.

The whole incident reminded me of my own wedding, when the son of some family friends tripped and fell out into the aisle right in front of me! I had to move my skirt so his dad could pick him up out of the floor!

Cousin Josh and his beautiful bride Erin

Cutting a rug at the reception

We are still so proud of the great job Reagan did! She was amazing!

Our trip home that night, however, was really not great. But it had nothing to do with Reagan; she was asleep in five minutes and slept the whole way home. Long story short, there was a really bad wreck on the interstate and they had the whole interstate shut down and were re-routing traffic along really lengthy detours. We hit the road around 10; we didn't get home until around 3 in the morning!!!!

What an adventure! We were so glad to be a part of Josh and Erin's wedding, and we wish them a lifetime of love and happiness together!