Print 
Single Page
Enlarge This Image
|
|
|
|
When the flower girl goes rogueWe picked our wedding party pretty quickly after we got engaged. It was one of the last easy decisions we made. (OK, fine, I've had my wedding party picked out in my head for the better part of a decade. WHATEVER.) We picked our wedding party pretty quickly after we got engaged. It was one of the last easy decisions we made. (OK, fine, I've had my wedding party picked out in my head for the better part of a decade. WHATEVER.) One of the easiest of those easy choices was the selection of our flower girl. I've known Sophie's mother since the day I was born. Literally. Sophie will be a few months shy of her fifth birthday next summer (her mother is going to cry when she reads that), which will make her about the same age my cousin Darcy and I were when we were flower girls in our Aunt Chellie's wedding, and she's super photogenic and chock full of personality. There is a minor concern that she will not get over her fear of Seth in time for the wedding, but we've got the better part of a year to work through that, right? As an added bonus, Sophie comes to the team with some experience. Unlike my nephew Donovan, who's been tapped for ringbearer and is a big question mark, Sophie's got a wedding under her belt already. Seth and I were in the crowd last weekend when she made her flower girl debut at her Uncle Onnie's wedding. Yes, we scouted our flower girl after she made an early commitment. This is the big leagues, not triple-A ball. We wanted to know what we would be working with. According to my (admittedly shallow) research, the flower girl traditionally represents youth and purity. The symbolic act of scattering the ground in front of the bride with flower petals is meant to protect the bride from evil. Anymore, though, incorporating flower girls (and ringbearers) is more just a way for brides and grooms to involve the younger members of their extended families in the ceremony. Most of the weddings we've attended over the last year haven't had flower girls or ringbearers. For our wedding, though, it was a no-brainer: We like kids (well, I like kids, and Seth has learned to like a one or two specific kids), and we happen to have a couple of particularly adorable specimens right here in our family (Sophie's not blood, but she's definitely family), so of course we would have a flower girl and a ringbearer. Givers of wedding advice (and there are so many of these... so, so many) recommend that having children in the wedding party is a wise choice only for brides who are comfortable with unpredictability. Children, it seems, have this tendency to go off book at what are supposed to be carefully scripted moments. Uptight brides are cautioned to stick to adults. I'm pretty sure we can handle whatever the junior members of our bridal party throw at us (no, really -- my nephew might actually throw things at us), but that doesn't mean I wasn't looking forward to getting a sneak preview of our flower girl in action.
|