The bride wore white trimmed in blue. Her dress was white, her skin blue.
The day last week when my sister and her fiancé were married, the thermostat at the Disney World resort — where the wedding was outside — read 37 degrees, with a wind chill in the upper teens. Somebody said it was the coldest day in Florida in five years.
If this was a fairy tale wedding, it was a Russian fairy tale – all ice princesses, helmeted heroes with frosty beards, and castles viewed through sheens of hoarfrost.
The couple stood on a hill overlooking a lake, the better to capture the vivid azure sky over the resort. It offered no protection from the wind, which tore off the bride’s veil and sent it careening toward the beach. The Disney wedding consultant, on hand for just such eventualities, caught up to it before it scuttled crablike across the sand and into the water.
At some point, the violinist took a break from playing “When You Wish upon a Star” — nobody could hear it over the howling wind, anyway — to drape his coat over my daughter’s shoulders. A caterer covered my wife and mother with white tablecloths.
“It wasn’t one of the top ten things you expect to see at your wedding,” my sister said later, speaking of the moment she turned to face the stalwart few huddled together for warmth and saw half of them bundled in linen.
At the couple’s request, the minister bypassed the Bible readings and kept his own comments brief. He asked the bride if she did, and she did. Then he asked the groom, who did too.
The weather being what it was, they cut the cake quickly outdoors but deferred sharing it until that night, at dinner inside a warm restaurant, after everybody had retreated to hotel rooms and hot showers and a strict accounting of toes and fingers. No extremities were lost.
Despite an uncooperative Mother Nature, there were no Bridezilla moments, no pre-, mid- or post-ceremony meltdowns of gargantuan — or any other — proportions.
It boded well for the future when the groom removed his jacket and used it to cover the bride’s bare arms. Later, the minister promised to be available later to give last rites to anybody who contracted pneumonia during the ceremony. To date, nobody has.
We spent the next two days in Florida, and the weather never warmed much. It clouded up one afternoon, then rained. The zipper on our suitcase split the morning of our flight home, forcing us to buy an overly expensive replacement from the hotel gift shop. (The people who call Disney the happiest place on Earth are the same ones who collect the tourists’ money.)
Meanwhile, the weather that last day was sunny and warm, with a high around 80 degrees. We experienced it from the airport terminal.
It was one of those vacations that everybody has sometimes, the kind we remember long after the bore of perfection blurs other travel memories.
Still, it was the week my kid sister got married, and the day we welcomed both a brother-in-law and nephew into the family, and that made up for the cold, the rain and the split zipper. It was still a fairy tale wedding with a happily-ever-after ending.
People who weren’t there will look at the photos and see only the clear skies and the wide smiles. They will see no evidence that we shivered and shuddered throughout.
Unless they notice the slightly blue tinge around the bride’s lips.
