Bright and early on the wedding day, mr rampy was a-calling Neiman Marcus to see if the spa could slip me in for a much needed hair appointment. As luck would have it, one stylist could squeeze me in just before the official opening, if I could get there in under two minutes and sneak into the mall through the loading dock.

Done and done. And I mean done.

Fifteen minutes later, now possessed of a lovely upswept 'do, I dragged mr rampy into the mall proper to go buy a fancy lipstick. I was going to do my own makeup, you see. But then I saw someone getting a makeover at the Clinique counter, and I cracked and got one for myself as well. My technician (so cute in her little white lab coat) and I bonded about my skin tone and what spring shade of eyeshadow would photograph best, while mr rampy loitered around, then bought a watch, then loitered around while looking at the watch.

On the way out of the mall, I kept exclaiming loudly, "Oh honey! I'm so glad we stopped to do my hair and makeup before we eloped!"

Mind you, all my efforts to get dolled up proved to be an exercise in the utmost futility once I donned my lovely vest. Just as the other bridesmaids and I had suspected, the fact that this top is cut like that chicest of garments, the potato sack, means that it flatters the figure of, oh, no one. And thank god sis-in-law hired an overzealous photographer who shot roughly four hundred rolls of film, or I might have somehow managed to suppress all memories of this experience after a decade or two. Of intense therapy.

Just for kicks, when mr rampy and I got to the church I put my top on backwards to see if sis-in-law would notice. To her credit, she did, and she was very tactful in pointing out my 'mistake'. At least the other bridesmaids found it amusing, and the photographer took a picture, so I will eventually have Exhibit A and Exhibit B if I ever want to stage an art show entitled: "Ugly: Slightly Less Ugly."

No big disasters while we were all getting ready. Several of the other bridesmaids used to do gymnastics with sis-in-law, and they were all freakishly limber and prone to suddenly slide into the splits or lean over into a headstand, so they amused us by practicing cartwheels and pyramids and other athletic feats they might perform going down the aisle and up at the altar. Then we spent about half-an-hour smearing as much body glitter as possible on our arms and faces (so that at least part of us would be pretty, rather than Victorian wallpaper swatch/peasanty). In the end, the only thing that ended up staying sparkly was the coats and arms of our groomsmen escorts, especially the ones married to some of us.

No one fainted into candles or tripped during the ceremony. The most slapsticky thing to happen was when the maid of honor, who took her skirt-straightening duties very seriously, had to dive for the hem of sis-in-law's dress as the newly-weds were leaving the altar and beginning to process down the aisle. The MOH lunged after them, grabbed the hem, and flipped it so high up that we almost saw England, France, etc. But it was very smoothed out once she was done, so it's all good. Especially if the video camera behind the altar caught the back-view of that moment.

After the ceremony, the wedding party boarded a limo-bus that drove us around to pretty spots to take wedding pictures. The high point of this trip would have to be the bottles of champagne and beer that the bridal couple's parents had stocked the bus with. Unfortunately the bus driver was either a teetotaler, bored, or just stupid, because when we deboarded at the first stop for pictures, he decided to empty everyone's glasses. There we were, posing prettily by a creek, when suddenly we spotted his tiny figure at the door of the bus, gaily tossing champagne into the gutter.

mr rampy's father spoke to him, but it was already too late.

Next we went to Pioneer Plaza and took pictures of various members of the wedding party riding the steers or (the gymnasts) doing acrobatics on the horns. mr rampy's dad was giving me a leg up onto the steers, and apparently the heel of my shoe cut his hand. mr rampy made it sound like I had sliced a finger off, but it really wasn't that bad. When he backed up and banged the back of his head on one of the steer horns...that was worse. Poor daddy mr. rampy.

The reception was all posh and at the top of one of the buildings seen here. The acoustics of the room left something to be desired, however. When the softspoken best man was giving his toast, our side of the room couldn't hear him at all and decided we would just wait for the video.

I pulled the anchor charm out of the cake, so apparently I am destined for a life of stability. As opposed to endless wealth, which would have been mine had I pulled the moneybags charm.

The reception went by really fast, probably because I skipped out well before the end to go help mr rampy, two of mr rampy's best friends, the MOH's boyfriend, and three of sis-in-law's college friends go mess up sis-in-law's honeymoon suite. The college friends were less than bright. As we were driving to Deep Ellum to buy shocking things at Condom Sense, they kept asking "Are we at the hotel now? Now?" nonironically and while the van was still in motion. One of mr rampy's friends kept looking at me and rolling his eyes every time they spoke, mostly because each new thing they said topped the last one in dumbness.

They were on a riff about finding hot blonde Dallas 'talent' and getting lucky when we pulled up in front of the store. Rather than come in and help us shop, they hit the ground running and scattered to three separate bars in search of beer and 'talent'. We made our purchases and rounded them up like the harried mothers of a pack of errant offspring. Errant special offspring.

Back in the car, they once more asked if we were at the hotel, at which point mr rampy's friend groaned, "GOD! They should have signs pinned to their fronts with their names and addresses on them. And: 'Feed me beer'."

Then we got lost, or rather the hotel got lost, because we knew were we were, we just didn't know where the hotel was. We were kind of worried, because we needed to mess the room up and get back to the reception before sis-in-law left.

"Don't worry," mr rampy's friend reassured me as we passed another exit sign without having found the hotel. "At least 40% of the people in this car can read."

Finally we pulled into a gas station and looked up the address of the hotel in the yellow pages. Five minutes later we turned the corner of the street it was on...only to discover that it was two blocks from the building the reception was in.

'Security' let us up into sis-in-law and new brother-in-law's room when we said we had some gifts to leave them. And then left us alone. Nice. Apparently 'security' is sometimes just a ceremonial title.

Sis-in-law's dumb college friends' one outstanding quality was that they were very big and strong, so they took the mattress and box-springs off the bed and stowed them in the shower. The rest of us inflated our purchase, remade the bed with the bedding over the metal frame, and tucked our purchase in on one side. After I drew a kissy-face on it with my fancy new lipstick. Then we unscrewed all the light-bulbs but one, strewed little sex toy thingies all over the place (including in the mini-bar) and made our escape.

By this point the reception was over, so we went to the Crescent to join up with all the after-partiers. The last time I was there, the bar (Beau Nash) was not that hopping, but this night it was, to the point that there was a line out the door into the lobby. The rest of the party had already secured the conservatory for us, however, so we got to feel all Studio 54 when one of the waiters emerged from the bar and plucked several of us out of line by patting us on the head and escorting us around the other waiting people.

It was all very Metropolitan, except I was too exhausted and bored to enjoy it. mr rampy's other friend (the one not mocking the 'talent'-seekers) kept counting down how few hours of sleep he would have ("seven...six...") before getting up to fly fish. I made a "If by 'fly-fish' you mean 'watch A River Runs Through It'" joke, but I was too tired to put my heart into any really witty banter.

Finally it was all over and we could all go back to our hotel and take our scary wedding clothes off and sleep and sleep and sleep.

The sleep of the already happily-married, interrupted only by intermittent nightmares about the vest secretly eliminating all other tops in my wardrobe so that one terrible day I would have to wear it again. As sis-in-law seems to think might happen.

If mr rampy and I ever decide to gather our wedding party back together to renew our vows, I know who'll be wearing the vest.

Oh yeah.