Almost a year ago, my best friend of 27 years announced that she was engaged. A while after that, I was asked to participate in the wedding. Of course, I agreed, and the planning went on as you would expect, complete with dresses and shoes, flowers and rehearsal dinners, but not things like showers and bachelorette parties, because that's just not Kate. Our story, however, begins with the flowers.
The flowers, which were alstroemeria, also known as Peruvian lilies, were beautiful. There were also half a ton of them. Because we were making our own bouquets, Kate had ordered a LOT of flowers. We picked up three buckets of them from the florist's shop on Wednesday evening, which pretty much filled the back end of my car with lilies. We then stored them in her back room to keep the cat from eating the leaves before we were even ready to use the flowers. Fast forward through our girls' night out on Wednesday (complete with Jello shots we didn't end up eating), 
through the (totally not worth it) manicures and pedicures on Thursday morning,
and through our lunch at the Greek restaurant (complete with saganaki - OPA!). 
After all this hard work, we went back to Kate's house to assemble the bouquets before the rehearsal. We managed to get the flowers to the dining room without incident, and got the bouquets pulled together and taped. As we were putting the bouquets 
and the bajillions of extra flowers back into the back room, I managed to catch my pinky toe on the vacuum cleaner. It hurt, but I didn't think that much of it - after all, I've stubbed my toes many times and been fine. Unfortunately for me, I had to put shoes on to go out to the car. At this point, I realized that this may not be just a stubbed toe. The minute I put my shoes on and attempted to walk, I was in excruciating pain. Knowing that I would never make it through the rehearsal,
rehearsal dinner,
and the afterparty at the pub 
like that, Kate and I made the third of four Meijer's runs of the week. I found a pair of flip-flops that were my size, as well as a pair of Dearfoams bedroom slippers (like these, only in black), because I feared the worst - that I wouldn't be able to wear the pretty shoes I bought to go with my dress. As it turned out, I was correct. It seems (and I have not gone to the doctor, so I may be way off base with this) that I have broken my toe, and so, instead of these:
I ended up with these: 
because my toe looked like this:
In the end, however, everything worked out. The cake and the bride were both beautiful,
Jill and I made her cry with our toast, which included a letter and picture from her sister and brother-in-law, who weren't able to make it to the wedding,
and a good time was had by all, even Aunt Rose.
