OUR LOVE STORY
It’s been a challenging few weeks. We’ve lost some dear friends and family but we still have so much to be grateful for. Ricardo and I celebrated nine years of marriage this past Thursday (May 14, 2020). I know right I can hardly believe it, time sure does fly. Before I get into that I’m going to share a little about our wedding story. We were married on the beautiful island of St. Thomas, May 14, 2011.
I picked the location, the idea grew on Ricardo as the plans started to come together. Honestly, I felt like it was the most diplomatic thing we could do as far as our families were concerned. I’m originally from NY and his people are from the south (MD, NC, TX), so someone one was going to have to travel. So I picked a neutral territory, St. Thomas. Yes of course I could have picked a state side location, but how much fun would that really have been?!
OUR LOVE STORY
In all seriousness we met a number of objectives with that location- neutral ground as far as family travel was concerned, built-in honeymoon, and an amazing location for our guest to wine down after the wedding; it was at an all-inclusive resort. What I didn’t anticipate was just how inept the US Postal Service is/was. Let me explain. I’m a planner and in my planning I thought I could offset some of the shipping cost (which start to add up with a destination wedding) by shipping a few key items for the wedding in advance. Proactive, forward-thinking right, hold your applause I’m not finished.
One of the key items I shipped was my wedding dress and my daughters flower girl dresses. Before you question my intellect regarding not holding on to one THEE most important dress I’d ever wear, let me explain. I’ll be doing a lot of explaining. My dress was very heavy and long. I didn’t want to risk it getting damaged in anyway, not in anyone’s’ overhead bin, captain’s closet, nada. I didn’t have time for anyone mistakenly ripping it or TSA saying something stupid like I couldn’t carry it on, so I decided to ship it, well in advance.
Also, I had a one-year-old at the time.
So flying with her a huge dress, baby bag and some more stuff wasn’t my idea of a good time. Of course Ricardo was with me but traveling with a toddler is just stressful for everybody. Peace of mind was priceless to me at that point, so off the dress went. I did not ship the dress a week or two ahead of the wedding I shipped it off at the end of February, let’s say the beginning of March just to be fair. Several ahead weeks should get anything within the US and it’s respective territories to it’s respective destination in time right?! Wrong!!
My dress arrived at the resort 3 weeks after my wedding. I learned it would not arrive after talking to my wedding planner the day before we were suppose to fly out. No she didn’t advise me not to ship anything in bulk (I shipped a large box) to the island because it takes a minimum of 12 weeks to arrive no matter what the post office advertises or claims.
She was great in every other respect, she pivoted when the rain begin to fall, upgraded us to better location, found flowers at the last minute, but never mentioned don’t ship anything important down especially bulk items. No one ever mentioned, suggested, implied, inferred, or insinuated the dress would not arrive in a timely fashion contrary. I looked into suing the post office I was so upset. Suing the US postal service is a futile endeavor, many have tried, many have failed.
Why did I use the post office you ask?!
I was balling on a budget and they were the most cost-effective. I asked the obvious question(s), will this get there in time? Are you sure? I was assured it would arrive in time by the post office staff and when I called the customer service line. I did my due diligence. However, it did not arrive in time. Nothing I researched indicated my parcel wouldn’t arrive in time. I was in tears, completely inconsolable, for the entire flight down and most of the day before the wedding.
But as I said I’m a planner. During the early stages of wedding planning, I ordered a dupe (aka knock-off) of my actual dress hoping it would look like the real thing but it didn’t quite measure up to my standards. We purchased the authentic version but I still kept the dupe.
In my grief and anguish I forgot all about the back-up dress. I was a mess when I realized my dress wasn’t going to be there; an absolute mess!!! I just knew I had to get there so I packed everything else we had to bring with us and we flew out. So what did I get married in? The back-up dress. But how? My dear sweet, bestie, Amanda brought the back-up dress and the dresses for my girls (their dress were also in the box).
She flew down later than us and thank God she did, otherwise it would have been a true disaster.
Hind insight is always 20/20 when you look back at it, but of all the things that went wrong and quite a few things went wrong the day of the wedding as well, the one thing I got right was me marrying my very best friend on a beautiful island, in front of my family and friends. My granny even made it. At the end of the day that’s all that really mattered. Not the dress, not the flowers, not the cake. All that mattered was us.
