A White Dress Stress

My two friends, both women, got married this spring. [Friend #1] has had her dream wedding planned since she was a kid, while [Friend #2] has always said she’d be happy with a courthouse wedding, but went along with [Friend #1]’s plans since she didn’t have a strong opinion one way or another.

They were getting married in [Friend #1]’s hometown, and [Friend #2] travels a lot for work, so [Friend #1] was the one onsite coordinating a lot of things, to the extent that [Friend #2] had only done one quick walkthrough of the reception venue a week before the wedding, while [Friend #1] had been in frequent communication with the manager there and had met her in person several times. It’s also important to note that [Friend #2] has a gender-neutral name.

The day of the wedding, after the ceremony at [Friend #1]’s church, two disasters struck almost simultaneously: [Friend #1]’s dress was stepped on and torn, and the reception hall called to inform them that there was an issue with the seating chart, and they needed them down to resolve it ASAP. Luckily, my friends had scheduled a bit of a break in time between the ceremony and the reception, so [Friend #1] went with her mother, who is a seamstress, to fix her dress, while [Friend #2] headed to the reception to deal with the problem there.

When [Friend #2] showed up at the reception venue, the manager got very confused, and asked her what she was doing there. [Friend #2] was very surprised to get that question, as she was still in her large, white dress, and informed the manager that she was having her wedding reception there that afternoon and needed to speak to her.

The manager immediately began sputtering and saying that there must have been some mistake, that another wedding party had already booked the venue, that [Friend #2] needed to tell her party to move on, and that they simply couldn’t accommodate them without any notice… And [Friend #2] began panicking, thinking that somehow their booking had been canceled and they wouldn’t have a venue for the evening.

It took about five minutes before the manager and [Friend #2] actually began to listen to one another, at which point they realized that the wedding the manager was speaking about was [Friend #2]’s wedding. She had only ever met [Friend #1], heard her refer to her fiancée by a gender-neutral name, and assumed that she was marrying a man. Then, when she saw [Friend #2] show up in a white dress, talking about her wedding reception that night, she thought some crazy bride had shown up to try to bully her way into the venue.

Luckily, [Friend #1] and [Friend #2] had a good sense of humor about it, and like to joke that [Friend #2] almost got everyone kicked out of her own wedding. And in case anyone was wondering, the seating issue was resolved easily, and [Friend #1]’s dress was mended so well, you never would notice the seam.