Fancy Dress on the Side of the Road

Once upon a time I was a Bridesmaid. (Technically twice, but you know, not the point here.)  The bridal party was large.  As seems to be the nature in these larger events, there was a day of hair doing, and photo taking at the bride's parent's house before we all loaded into the two limos (remember, large party) for the journey to the church. Limo 1 contained the bride, the maid and matron of honor, and some other assorted bridal party members.  I was in limo 2 with the remainder of the bridal party.  We followed Limo 1 to the end of the road, to the intersection to make the turn onto the main road when the limo drive said, "Oh no." 

He fiddled with some things, he restarted the limo and we made the turn onto the main road and the limo died.  He called in, the company promised to send another car, but expected it to take at least 30 minutes.  We all pulled out cell phones.  One person alerted Limo 1.  We obviously didn't want the car carrying the bride to turn around, even if there would have been space to pile us all in there.  However, we also knew the wedding was taking place in the last slot, if you will, of the day for that church and then they had another event after, so they weren't going to hold the service for too long.   (The bridesmaids had all parked their cars by the reception site earlier that morning, so while we could have absolutely walked back to the bride's parents' house, none of our cars were there.) Fortunately a car passed by with some other wedding guests. Followed by another.  (And another problem was trying to figure out who might be on their way, but not already at the church, might know the area well enough to locate us quickly rather than getting another guest lost while searching for us.) Another two cars of guests spotted what were clearly bridesmaids on the side of the road and the rest of us managed to squish in and get a ride.  So in the end we were all there.  Probably a smidge later than the church administrator would have wished and we pretty much strode right into position to process into the church and in the end, all was well.  Fortunately the bride was pretty zen about this being a thing that was out of her control instead of getting outwardly stressed out and it became the funny story, especially as the priest referenced it in his homily, noting that there are things you cannot control.

But all of this is to say I had a pang when I saw this story about the broken down taxis leading some bridesmaids to try some hitchhiking. It worked out in their case too, when a stranger gave them a ride, and then the bride wanted to take the chance to properly thank her and so had reached out to social media. She found her helpful driver and now they both have great stories to tell.