Kera's Wedding Part 1

Blog- Kera’s Wedding
This weekend I went to Colorado to my friend, Kera’s wedding. Kera was one of the girls I led to on our team to Bangladesh in 2006. Her wedding was on a Friday so I had to ask off work for that Thursday and Friday- not an easy task but I was permitted to miss school. I flew out early on Thursday morning towards Denver. The weather report said it would be cold but I really wasn’t prepared for frigid conditions. When the plane landed, the man next to me opened his window to reveal a snow-covered landscape. I opened my mouth in shock. I had no idea there would be snow at the end of March. Isn’t that supposed to be springtime?

It turns out that the worst blizzard they had seen all year was developing as I sat on that plane. Due to the severe weather conditions, Kera and her fiancé, Steve, were a bit late picking me up. Conditions just seemed to worsen as we drove towards Kera’s apartment. Also as it was the day before their wedding, Kera and Steve received a phone call just about every three minutes on that drive home.

The rehearsal and rehearsal dinner scheduled for that night were canceled due to the fact that many of their friends did not own four wheel drive cars and could not make it to the church. Instead of a rehearsal dinner, there was a small family gathering at Kera’s parents’ house to which me and my other Bangladesh teammates/wedding guests, Rachel and Drea, went. It was cool to see where Kera had grown up and meet her family.

After the party the four of us went back to Kera’s apartment to get some rest before the big day. The snow was scheduled to stop falling so we assumed the following day would be somewhat uneventful after the snow-filled day we’d just had. We were wrong.
In the morning, Kera was whisked off to perform her pre-wedding tasks. Drea, Rachel and I drove Kera’s car to perform our own pre-wedding tasks. As we were driving through the still-snowy conditions, a man started gesturing towards our car. We had no idea what he wanted but finally decided to stop at a nearby gas station to inspect the car for problems. Immediately we discovered that we had a flat tire on the rear passenger side. So, here we are, three out of town guests driving the bride’s car through the snow when we get a flat tire. Great! Rachel was ready to try to change it when a good Samaritan/flooring contractor named Kevin, came by. He offered his assistance to us. He helped us fill up the spare tire and put it on the car. He even had kneepads for Rachel to wear while she was assisting him. After we got the tire on, we headed to the church where we were supposed to be helping to set things up. We figured someone there could direct us to a tire place where we could get the tire patched.

On the way, like sign from above, we spotted a place called Tires Plus. We dropped the tire off there to get patched and continued on to the church. We helped move some things around in the church for a bit. Then Rachel showed us her leg. There was a swollen red bump above her ankle that did not look good. Kera’s sister is a nurse so we had her look at Rachel’s leg. She was alarmed and told us we needed to see a doctor and get it looked at quickly. It seemed to be some sort of infection. Rachel lives in Maui, where staph infections are prevalent so we were worried that this might be one. We heard about a little clinic inside of Walgreens and headed there to get Rachel’s leg inspected. While we were there, the tire place called and said the tire was irreparable. We needed to go back and get a new tire put on. Of course! The doctor at Walgreen’s prescribed some antibiotics to heal Rachel’s infection and then we headed back to Tires Plus. We dropped the car off and hung out at Einstein’s Bagels until the new tire had been put on. Then we headed back to Walgreen’s to pick up Rachel’s prescriptions.

After all this, we headed back to Kera’s place to rest a bit and pick up our dresses for the wedding that we had inadvertently left there. We ran into Kera, who we updated on the day’s events. Then we headed to the church to do the flowers. Somewhere along the way, we had become florists. Kera had intended to do the flowers herself but realized that might not be a good way to keep her stress level down.
When we got to the church, the flowers were not there yet so we just hung out. When they did arrive, we got to work trying to make Kera’s vision of her wedding day flowers come alive. Luckily her idea did not take much time or skill and we finished with plenty of time to get ready for the wedding. The flowers looked really nice and the important thing was that Kera thought so too.

After we finished the flowers, Kera asked Drea, Rachel and I to help take pictures for the photo guest book that Kera wanted to compile. I felt like some sort of weirdo given the way people looked at me when I asked to take their picture. Oh well, anything for Kera. We tried to get as many pictures as we could as well as made sure everyone signed the actual guest book until some older lady told us to “shut it down” so we could start the wedding.
To be continued…