As soon as I got engaged, I couldn’t wait to find my dress. My Grandmother came to visit soon after and she and I made a beeline to the bridal salons. At the last appointment of the day, I found my match. The gown was simple, yet elegant, very classy, and very glamorous. Best of all, it was half off. Only thing was, because it was a sale item, it had to come home then and there. This terrified me because I knew I’d be consumed with worrying about the giant, white bundle of silk, but I went for it anyway.
The day of the wedding, unlike most couples, we took all our photos before the ceremony. We had the greatest time posing and laughing and getting all our pre-alter jitters out of our systems. Then it was time. I thought maybe I should visit the bathroom once more while I had the chance.
My fiancé and Iput together the entire event ourselves, which included all the decor and the guests’ welcome gifts. One of these welcome gifts was a very fragrant, very brown candle. I was thinking about making sure we gathered all the items we had made so our photographer could shoot everything and as I was leaving the bathroom, I spotted one of the candles and excitedly grabbed it. Unbeknownst to me, it had just been blown out and there was a pool of wax on top. It splashed all over me.
You know when people describe having out of body experiences?
“Oh my God. Oh my God. What did you do? Did this just happen?” Someone apparently told me to take it off and I remember standing wearing nothing more than my shoes and earrings starring in disbelief as a team of ten hovered around my dress. “We need an iron.” “No, that won’t work.” “Don’t burn the fabric.” “Get a toothbrush.” I woke up when my fiancé calmly said to me, “Jennifer, put some clothes on.” In that moment, I knew I was not going to let this ruin our wedding, “Just leave it. Just leave the wax.” What was I going to do? Curl up in a corner and cry while my fiancé and fifty of our closest friends and family anxiously awaited our walk down the aisle? I just kept repeating, “I’m fine. It’s just a dress.”
Like most brides, I had spent the better part of the six months before our wedding in full beauty prep mode so that I could look—and feel—my best. I had suffered through flaky, itchy Retin-A treatments so my skin would glow; biked seven miles to and from work work and practiced ashtanga yoga; and did a brow and lash tint (that nearly blinded me).
In the end, no amount of worrying and preparation could have made our day perfect. I didn’t have complete control. What mattered was not the food, or the decor, or even the dress. What mattered was that I was marrying the person I love and all the people who care about us were there to see it. What I did have complete control over, was the way I let what happened affect me and I made a decision to not let the spill (what some now lovingly refer to as the “waxident”) ruin our day. And looking back, I wouldn’t change a thing about it. We now remember the incident as something that was just part of our wedding. It truly was the most beautiful day, wax and all.
