50th Post Celebration: By the Light of the Interior Car Lamp

Last Friday, Tiffany and I were on time to our friends' wedding.* This is a big deal. We have never been on time to a wedding before. Once, we barely beat the bride. No, we did not squeeze in between bridesmaids and skip down the aisle. That would have been horrific, obviously. We slunk in down the side of the church and slid into the pew next to our friends who had saved our seats.

For our friends Meg and John's wedding on the South Shore of Massachusetts several years ago, Tiffany and I allowed plenty of time for regular summer Boston traffic for our drive from New Hampshire. We also allowed plenty of time to drop off our friend who was not attending the wedding. What we did not allow time for: traffic from a Red Sox game and a gay pride parade. We dropped our friend off on the side of the highway.

"Good luck!" we called as she walked down the shoulder of the exit ramp.

She gave a little wave. Or maybe it was a little middle-finger. We didn't have time to be sure. Because on that occasion, we made the terrible mistake of sending our dresses with Tiffany's mom thinking we would be able to change at the hotel. We weren't. Instead, we did our hair in the bathroom of a Dunkin' Donuts and changed in the far corner of the church parking lot. Tiffany was actually in that wedding, too, which added a whole other dimension of stress... and sweat, might I add. Have you ever tried to pull on a form-fitting fabric over damp skin? Not fun. Or pretty.

Anyway, on Friday, we managed to make it to Sonoma with plenty of time to spare. Kind of. We planned to change in a Starbucks bathroom while the barista prepared our chai latte and americano, but we had so many extra minutes that we drove to the house some of our friends had rented for the weekend. Only, when we got there, their cab was just a few minutes away (they, obviously, have never been late to a wedding). So we ended up having to rush anyway, stumbling around in the bedroom, shimmying into our dresses and peeling the price tags of our shoes.

We left at the same time as our friends, but Tiffany and I arrived at the winery where the wedding was taking place several minutes after they did (still early!).

"What happened?" they asked. "What took you so long."

"We had to do our make-up," Tiffany answered.

And in true Tiffany and Rebecca fashion, we had done it, pulled over underneath a street light, with the rear-view mirror and interior car lamp for a vanity.

*Note: The wedding, and our friends, were absolutely beautiful. I had goosebumps.