Chapter 16: Get Me To The Church On Time

Mrs Flasche is a fairly attractive woman for someone her age. I don’t know what her age is but she’s pretty old. I would guess that she’s more than forty but less than sixty. Between those two numbers, I have no clue. Mrs Flasche lives next to Liz and she works as a hairdresser. Liz introduced me to Mrs Flasche and I managed a smile and a nod. I’d been feeling good and talking to Dan and Dad but as soon as I was introduced to somebody new, my voice went away again. Liz’s dad had left earlier to do the whole “Best Man” thing and get the groom ready for the wedding, so it was just Liz and me and Mrs Flasche in the house.

We went into Liz’s room where I changed out of my hoodie and t-shirt into a loose button-up shirt that Liz had ‘rescued’ from her dad. It hung loose around me and covered me down to my knees but it was good enough to wear while I got my hair and makeup done.

Mrs Flasche sat me down in a chair in Liz’s kitchen. A mirror had been propped up on the counter-top facing the chair so I could watch as Mrs Flasche walked behind me and started picking up handfuls of my hair.

“Have you washed your hair this morning?”

I nodded. “Was that right? I wasn’t sure if I should or not.”

My voice came out as a whisper but it was enough for her to hear.

“It’s fine. You have lovely hair. Let’s see what we’re going to do with it.”

She started folding and tucking it and holding it up on my head in different ways. She kept asking me which one I wanted. I liked nearly every idea she had. In the end, she did something that started off looking like a french braid which gathered all the hair together but then it turned into a knot on the back of my head instead of an actual braid. She saw the silver color of my dress and wound a thin silver cord through the knot to hold it together. There was also lots of hairpins and hairspray, but they were hidden so the silver cord looked like it was doing the job on its own. I really liked the effect.

Then she started putting makeup on my face. The first time she started, she was putting it on too thickly. As soon as she did that, I knew I didn’t like it. It felt clammy on my skin and I felt horrible. I made her stop and I went to the bathroom and washed it off. I showed Mrs Flasche my little makeup kit with just some eye-shadow and lipstick – really subtle colors. I told her that was all I wanted. My voice was quiet but it was working enough by that stage to get my point across. She tried to tell me that I could wear more for a formal function like this but I didn’t want to. We kind of argued a bit but I was feeling stubborn. I didn’t want all that makeup on my face. It felt too, I don’t know, too grotty.

I realize now that I’m writing this that I got comfortable with Mrs Flasche really quickly. I’d only just met her and already I was arguing with her. She has that friendly kind of personality – you know, easy to get along with and quick to get people to relax with her. I guess that would be useful for a hairdresser. Also by the time we got to makeup, she’d spent quite some time on my hair so I’d had a bit of time to get used to her.

Eventually Mrs Flasche agreed to stick to eye shadow and lipstick but she persuaded me to let her use slightly bolder colors. She used several layers of lipstick on me – each of slightly different color. She told me that it made the lipstick more durable and also gave the color a bit of depth. I looked at what she’d done in the mirror and saw what she was talking about. She also persuaded me to put the faintest amount of blush down my cheek-bone. She literally swiped the brush once on each side. I don’t think the bristles even touched my skin, she did it so lightly. But I could see a trace of color and I couldn’t feel it on my skin at all. I looked carefully in the mirror and decided that she was right. The trace of color made a difference to my cheeks and set off my eyes nicely.

This was fun. It was kind of doing art but with my face as the canvas. And the aim was to have the additions not stand out but blend in to the original canvas. Mrs Flasche really did know what she was doing. She might have started out doing something I didn’t like but once she knew what I wanted, she did it really well.

Liz looked at me and then looked at herself in the mirror.

“Your makeup looks so much better. Now I have to wash off my makeup and start again. I can’t sit next to you with all of this on my face when you have so much less than me.”

So Liz washed her face and Mrs Flasche had to start again. She had to use different colors for Liz, of course, since Liz’s skin is a kind of olive shade compared to mine which is almost white. Once Mrs Flasche was finished with Liz, I thought her face looked so much better.

Mrs Flasche stood back and looked at the two of us together.

“I’m glad you spoke up. With your young skin, the less-is-more look definitely works for the two of you. I’m too used to working with older women where I have to fill in the cracks with a spatula. You both look lovely.”

She clapped her hands.

“Now! Upstairs, the two of you, and get into your dresses. Let’s see what the whole package looks like.”

We went up to Liz’s room and changed into our dresses and put on our pumps. We had to fiddle about a bit and help each other get the dresses sitting just right, but finally we were happy. We giggled a bit as we were getting ready simply because we were both in such a good mood.

I stood back and looked at Liz. She was wearing a pastel lemon dress with a tight bodice that then flared out from her hips down to just below her knees. The sleeves were short and were just a bit puffy without looking silly. The neckline dipped down a little but not enough to show cleavage or anything like that. It probably sounds like a dress that a younger girl would wear but it really wasn’t. With her hair up nicely and the little touches of makeup and the dress showing just a hint of her curves, she looked really beautiful.

My dress (well, Tara’s dress really, but I was wearing it) was silver with a sort of silver thready texture to the surface which glistened when I moved. It covered one shoulder and left the other shoulder bare. The neckline, if you could call it that, went in a straight line from my right shoulder down to just below my left armpit. That’s why I had to wear the strapless bra. The left strap and top of a normal bra would have been visible and ruin the line of the dress. The bodice fit quite closely. With a little curve in my waist and my padded bra, it made me look quite curvy. The dress dropped straight down from my hips to about mid-calf. Actually it was mid-calf on my left side, on the right side it was below my knee because the hem sloped at a steeper angle than the neck-line. Liz said I looked awesome.

When I had first tried it on at home a few weeks back I had panicked because I thought I looked like a little girl wearing a grown-up’s dress and therefore I looked silly. Now that I was standing here in the full outfit, I knew I didn’t look silly at all.

I don’t know if I’ve gotten the message across very well but this whole process was kind of fun. I walked into the house wearing jeans and a hoodie with my hair loosely tied back and I had gradually transformed into somebody quite different. I don’t just mean the way I looked, either. It had been Nervy-Bec who walked into the house but now I wasn’t her anymore.

I looked in the mirror and saw that I had automatically gone into that “strong” pose of mine, with back straight and chest out and shoulders back. That other Bec was there. The one that Mum keeps painting – that poised, strong young lady who was a smaller version of Mum— stared back at me from the mirror. But now she looked even more than that. She looked poised and dignified and mature and elegant. Her eyes sparkled and her mouth hinted at a smile.

She took my breath away.

Liz gazed at me. Her eyes were shining. She didn’t say anything.

I picked up my little handbag and held out a dainty hand for Liz to take.

“Shall we, my dear?” I asked with a silly, posh sort of accent.

“Yes, my dear. I believe it is time.” Liz replied with exaggerated poise but then she ruined the effect with a little impish grin.

We paraded down the stairs for Mrs Flasche to inspect us. She beamed with smiles as she saw us coming. We had to do little spins so she could check the total look and she clapped her hands in appreciation.

Then she pulled out a camera and wanted to take photos. I stopped her and took the other two on a tour around the house until I found a background I was happy with. Then Mrs Flasche took photos with three different cameras – including the camera in my new phone. The first few photos we did formal poses. Then we did a few silly photos as we did exaggerated versions of the sorts of poses models sometimes do in fashion magazines.

In case you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m kind of shy. You’d probably expect me to hate having my photo taken and you’d be right. I mostly do hate it. But I’ve grown up with an artist for a mother and an aunt who’s a professional photographer. I’ve been posing for photos and paintings since before I was born – literally (Mum did a painting of me as a fetus based on my ultrasound pictures). Neither Mum nor Aunty Penny would let me get away with posing badly simply because I didn’t want to do it. So posing for the camera is kind of in my bones.

Occasionally, when I’m in the right mood, I can forget about all that and have fun. Getting these photos taken was definitely one of those times. Being all dressed up and posing made me feel very grown up. Then we did the silly ones because sometimes you have to laugh at yourself – especially when you catch yourself being all grown up.

Finally we were ready and Mrs Flasche drove us to the church. Liz and I sat in the back seat of Mrs Flasche’s car, and to say we were excited would be an understatement. I chose the best photo of Liz and me together and sent it to Dan’s phone and to Dad’s phone.

Dan sent a message back saying “Be still my beating heart! “ He even spelled it all out properly.

Liz asked about the ID-bracelet I was wearing – fortunately it matched with the dress. So I spent the rest of the trip showing her my bracelet and the little card in my purse that goes with it. The story about why I was wearing the bracelet was too long to tell during the car trip so I promised her that I would tell her all about it later.

The church was an old-fashioned kind of thing with stone walls and high, thin stained-glass windows all down the sides. We entered through big double doors at the front. Inside there were wooden pews in rows facing the front. There were little flower and ribbon arrangements down the central aisle which were obviously there for the wedding, plus a couple of big vases of flowers on each side. The altar down the front was covered with a plain white cloth and had a cross on a stand sitting in the middle of it. I looked around and realized that this was the second church I’d been inside in the last couple of days. It was quite different from the other one but it looked nice.

The stained glass windows were interesting. I wanted to go around the church and look carefully at each one but Liz wouldn’t let me.

There were already quite a few people sitting down inside and an organist was playing muzak. Liz and I sat down near the back where we would be out of the way. Liz knew the groom a bit and had met the bride a couple of times during the preparations for the wedding. I didn’t know either of them. Liz told me that Carlo, the groom, had been in her dad’s unit and her dad had saved his life one time so that’s why he asked her dad to be Best Man. I asked what happened but Liz didn’t really know. She said her dad and his friends wouldn’t talk about it.

We’d arrived a bit early so we had time to sit and talk some more. About half the talk was about what the other women were wearing as they arrived and half the talk was me filling her in on some of the stuff that had happened over the last couple of days.

Eventually, the wedding started about ten minutes after it was supposed to start. Mr Davidson looked gorgeous in his tux. Carlo, the groom, looked okay too, I guess, but he was a bit too thin and reedy looking for me. And the other men – best men – groom’s men – whatever they’re called, they looked nice too. The bride was wearing this beautiful white full-length gown. It was a fairly traditional wedding dress with lots of white satin and lace and a train and everything. The bodice had a pattern stitched into it and there were little pearls attached everywhere the lines of the pattern met up. The front of the dress below the bodice was in layers with each layer dropping further down until the bottom couple of layers reached the floor. The edging of each layer had the same type of stitching along it so that it would stand out. Each layer swooped down to floor length at the sides so it had this really nice effect like an opening flower or something. It really was beautiful. I’ve drawn a sketch of the gown at the side if you’re interested.

Liz whispered to me how she loved the dress and hoped she’d get to wear a dress like that when she got married. I whispered back that I already had a wedding dress for me which was Mum’s and Nana’s. Then we stopped talking because we wanted to watch the ceremony. The bridesmaids’ dresses were the same pale lemon as Liz’s dress. In fact, I could now see that Liz’s dress was a simpler version of the bridesmaids’ dresses. All of the bridesmaids looked beautiful.

The Maid of Honor was in a wheelchair. Liz told me that she was the bride’s sister and she’d been in a car crash when she was a teenager. She was the reason Liz was at the wedding. The Maid of Honor couldn’t dance with the Best Man in that first dance, so Liz was going to dance with her dad as a kind of fill-in. That’s why she was wearing a dress that was like the bridesmaids’ dresses. And I got to be there so that Liz would have a friend to sit with her.

The wedding was very interesting. It was also very romantic. I kind of got swept up in it and kept imagining that it was me standing up there in my white dress while some big handsome man promised to be faithful to me for ever and ever until death do us part.

There was a break towards the end when they went into a corner to sign the official documents. While that was happening, a group of four women stood up and sang the song “Hallelujah!” by that Canadian guy – I forget his name.

Then the wedding party came back in and there was a final prayer thing, and they walked down the aisle and out the front of the church. Then there was a lot of milling around and there were lots of photos taken on the steps of the church.

Liz and I sat down on a little bench off to the side where we were out of the way. I pulled out my sketchpad and drew a sketch of Mum in her wedding dress so I could show Liz the wedding dress I’m going to wear at my wedding. Then I drew a sketch of the bride from this wedding in her wedding dress and with her new husband standing beside her in front of the church. I made it so the steps they were standing on were out further from the front of the church so that the whole church was included in the pictures. In the photos they were taking, they would either only get some of the church, or the wedding party would be really small in the picture so the whole church was included. That’s why I like drawing instead of taking photos. You can make the picture better than real life. Photos are stuck with exactly what’s there. Unless you do Photoshop stuff, of course, but that’s kind of hard to get right.

At one point, Liz had to go over and be in a couple of the photos with her dad and so on. I was happy sitting where I was and drawing so I hardly noticed she was gone. Then Liz came and got me and dragged me over to the steps because they were taking a photo of everyone who was at the wedding, all crowded together. My head was full of the picture I was drawing but I kind of automatically looked and smiled when we were told to.

Eventually, all the official photos were done and Mr Davidson came over to us. He said we were both looking exceptionally beautiful today. He grabbed someone to quickly take some photos of the three of us together in front of the church – him in his tux and us in our nice dresses. I made sure to get some photos on my phone so that I could show Dad pictures of Mr Davidson in his tux.

Then the whole crowd started walking down the block to the country club where the reception was to be held. It was only about five minutes walk and the day was clear but not terribly warm. It felt a bit strange to be walking down the street in a big crowd with everybody all dressed up like that. Everybody looked at us as they drove past. I kind of hid behind Mr Davidson because I didn’t like people staring.

We walked through a gate and along a path that led around behind a hedge and suddenly we were in a different world. The traffic noise disappeared and we were surrounded by manicured lawns with beautifully arranged flower beds scattered around. Then we went inside the club and up some stairs. Halfway up the stairs, I glanced back over my shoulder for some reason – I forget why.