Marriage Pictures

So the shoes I wrote about falling in love with awhile back arrived in the mail, and they were as pretty and twinkly as I remembered from the actual store. Wheeee! The first time I took them out of the box Big A's eyes widened and she sighed like she was inhaling jasmine. "Oh. Marriage shoes! Are you getting married, Mommy?"

I explained to Big A that her father and I were already married for quite a long time now. Her little forehead knotted up as she tried to recall the wedding, and got even more creased when I said it happened years before she existed. Before Big A? Incomprehensible! She wanted to see pictures as proof, so I dragged the album out.

"This is mommy," I said, pointing at a shot of me in my wedding dress.

"You are NOT supposed to wear that on your head," she admonished as she pointed to my cloche. "No hats! You are supposed to wear ... " She struggled to come up with the word. "Like THAT," she said, pointing toward the sheer curtains.

"Well, I didn't want to wear a veil because it was a pretty casual wedding. See, my wedding dress isn't really a gown, so a hat was ok to wear with it. Plus, at the time my hair was only a half inch long all over, so the only way a veil would have stayed on was with staples or a headband. And I was very anti-headband when I got married."

Big A stared like I was a lunatic. She glanced at the next photo and shook her head again.
"No! That lady is NOT supposed to be with daddy here!"

"Oh, that's just daddy with his arm around his sister, baby. It's Aunt SIL. Don't you recognize her?"

"No! Only you and daddy are supposed to be together in the marriage pictures."

"Well, here I am without Daddy but with my brothers. See? At weddings, everyone takes pictures together." I turned the page and tried to change the subject. "Oh look, here's one of Daddy and Mommy kissing during the ceremony."

"No, no kissing!" She looked horrified. "Mommy, you are doing it ALL WRONG!"