The Flower Girl

Reagan was in a wedding last weekend for some good friends of ours. We were pretty nervous about her being a flower girl as at the age of two, she can be pretty unpredictable in how she'll choose to behave. But our friends wanted her to be part of their special day and were willing to take the risk.

The Dress
Reagan's involvement with the wedding started several months back when we had to get her flower girl dress. We went with the couple to go look at the dress that the bride had selected and try it on Reagan. Reagan is quite the girly girl and loves nothing more than dressing up in pretty things. I put the dress on her in the fitting room and brought her out for everyone to see. She twirled for everyone and looked at herself in the mirror. Then when it came time to take the dress off, we had trouble. She fought me every step of the way in getting the dress off. She kept sobbing, "my dress, my dress."


It was quite a deja vu experience to when I was trying on my own wedding dress. My mom, sisters, and nieces were with me. The youngest niece was just Reagan's age and is another girly girl. Since she saw me trying on all of the dresses she wanted to try one on too. She picked out a dress and her mom put it on her. When it came time to take it off, just like Reagan she just kept crying "my dress, my dress" and didn't want to take it off.

Since we had the two year old in the pretty dress, my sister wanted to put other girl in a dress too and take a few pictures. She was four at the time. She had quite a different reaction from her two year old sister that wanted to live in her new dress. When my sister tried to put a dress on the four year old she cried, "No! I don't want to wear the dress! I'm TOO YOUNG TO GET MARRIED!"

The Shoes
As any good girly girl would be, Reagan chose a pair of heels to wear with her dress. Of course, this would not be her first pair of heels. Before summer started she chose a pair of sandals with a little wedge heel that she wore all summer long and wore out and outgrew. So when it came time to wear these little shoes with the heel, no problemo. She ran, jumped, hopped, and danced the night away in those shoes. You'd never have known she was wearing a heel. She did better than some of the adults that were there that clearly put on heels twice a year and acted like deer on their new legs.




The Rehearsal
We practiced with Reagan for days before the rehearsal on walking down the aisle with a basket and tossing rose petals. It wasn't going so well. Sometimes she would toss the petals out and then immediately turn back around and pick them back up and sing the "Cleanup song" while shoving every last petal back into her basket. Other times she would take out one petal at a time and strategically place them all equidistant from each other in a perfect straight line. It took her five minutes to place about ten petals five feet and if you tried to hurry her along she'd pitch a fit.

So when it came time for the rehearsal, Reagan wasn't cooperating. She boycotted her nap at daycare that day and she was tired, cranky, in a new place, and lots of new people. She finally partially cooperated but it wasn't making me feel any better for the following big day. I told the couple it wasn't too late to replace Reagan with Bailey. They could just wheel Bailey down in a wagon and plunk her on the floor and she wouldn't make a peep. They tried to assured me whatever Reagan decided to do would be fine (I think they were trying to talk themselves into believing it too). I wasn't buying it, I didn't believe they were either.




The Wedding
When it finally came time for the wedding, Reagan pulled it all together and was a champ. She walked down the aisle with the other flower girl, she even tossed a few petals, she posed in pictures. She did unfortunately only stand in the line for a few minutes before she decided she'd rather sit with us. That was fine. But then she started talking and when I tried to quiet her she pitched a fit. So I had to take her in back and miss most of the wedding. But truthfully I saw more of the wedding than I ever expected in the first place. The last wedding we went to I missed the whole thing because Reagan had just learned to do somersaults the day before and insisted on practicing her newfound skill in the nice long, and open aisle. At least she didn't do any somersaults this time.


The Reception
Reagan is the original party animal. She shook her booty on the dance floor all night long. She danced with anyone that approached her and even showed off a few breakdancing moves she had learned from a previous wedding reception with her cousin Noah.




More Pictures
Here are some additional pictures from the wedding. I had hoped to get a lot more photos, but I had my hands full and took very few pictures this time. From what I could tell they actually had an awesome wedding photographer anyway so I know they aren't lacking in any awesome shots.

Congratulations to Dave and Lori!