Caroline's Wedding

Caroline and Daniel got married on Sunday evening. It was a beautiful ceremony in the middle of a field of blooming bachelor button flowers. The rain didn't start until everyone was under the reception tent so I'd say that it was, overall, a huge success.

For some reason I didn't take any pictures, but I'll be sure to post once I get some from Caroline or the photographer.

At the rehearsal dinner on Saturday, I gave this speech:

"Caroline and I met in the fall of 1988 on our first day of kindergarten. Throughout the school year, we became fast friends, sharing many timeouts and missed recesses due to excessive talking and laughing. So when Caroline switched schools for first grade, the era of sleepovers began in full force. If we were unable to spend every school day together, we were going to need more than a few hours on a Saturday to make up for our lost time.

Without exaggeration, I think on average we stayed together one night a week from the time we were 6 until we were in high school. And during the summer, we always reserved at least a week or two to be “sisters,” which meant that we literally stayed together 24-7, trading time between my house and Caroline’s. Delightful for us. Possibly less than ideal for our parents, but they supported it because we were so happy to be together.

There are so many stories that I could share about our childhood, but the problem I kept running into while planning to write this is that they are all self-incriminating. We weren’t mean spirited little girls, but we were incredibly mischievous. For example, one of our favorite games during sleepovers was to “steal food” from our own houses in the middle of the night. The game was to crawl through the house, usually with our babydolls and stuffed animals, to the kitchen and bring back any junk food we could find to our bedroom. We could have cared less about eating in the middle of the night but the greatest challenge we could give ourselves was to try to do anything quietly. Sure, we could have calmly walked to the kitchen and gotten food and our parents wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but it was much more fun to crawl and laugh and listen carefully for our parents to wake up and send us back to bed.

Hiding was also big time fun in our world. We would literally tie ourselves together with rope and either run or hide when it was time for one of us to go home. We liked to hide in the cabinets under sinks in public restrooms, most memorably at the Carolina Inn when Art had to come into the ladies room to find us. We liked to hide behind products in the grocery store aisles, most memorably when we hollowed out the Charmin toilet paper and waited to pop out at an unsuspecting shopper. Unfortunately, we miscalculated where my mom was in the store and jumped out in front of her, at which time we were immediately sent to the car.

Pranks like that were very amusing to us. We liked to saran wrap toilet seats, exchange the sugar for salt, and scotch tape the sink sprayer into the on position. One night when we were about ten, I even slept over at the Aylsworths without them knowing. My parents, however, knew I was there, so we were taking a risk that they might call for me, but I guess that was the game. The funny thing about that situation, of course, is that Gretchen and Art would have allowed me to come over if we had just asked, but like stealing food, it was more fun that night to sneak around and try to be quiet than do it the easy way.

A few other events that come to mind are coloring the palms of our hands and soles of our feet with lipstick and walking around Caroline’s bedroom, which then had to be repainted and recarpeted; sledding over every light in a neighbor’s yard; putting every pair of my brother’s underwear on a ceiling fan and turning it on when the room was full of people, and getting ourselves stuck inside of a pull out sofa at the beach. I don’t have enough time to explain how that one happened but let’s just say that my parents and the hotel staff were not happy with us.

Tonight I want to say thank you to Gretchen and Art for being my second parents and for loving me and Caroline enough not to ban us from one another when I am sure that it was warranted. Thank you for eating our green cakes, for forgiving our endless food fights and for patiently listening to hours and hours of whispering and laughing.

Caroline, I want to thank you for 20 years of friendship. My wish tonight for you and Daniel is that you will share as much fun and laughter as we have over the years and a lifetime full of love."