This weekend, my husband and I are headed to a wedding in Vermont.  A Sunday night wedding in Vermont.  Which pretty much means we have to take Monday off from work.  Which pretty much stinks.  But as this is a travel website, and not a “how to plan your (2nd) wedding as to not inconvenience everyone you know” website – I’ll leave it at that.

In fairness to the happy couple, children were invited for the weekend – a generous and kind offer on their part.  We, however, could not imagine  a six hour-long car ride  filled with “he’s on my side of the backseat.”  and “She’s breathing too loud!”  So we opted to go away for the weekend alone.  Mind you, our twins are nearly 11, and we have NEVER gone away for more than a weekend without them.  So the prospect of a long car ride, without horrifyingly bad pop songs on the radio, endless arguments, and lots of “when are we gonna get theres?”  was pretty appealing.  As was the possibility of having a conversation with my husband that wasn’t monitored by two little pitchers with ENORMOUS ears.

And that’s when the bride sent me an email: “Do you have room in your car for someone?”

She’s the bride.  How could I say no?  Of course in retrospect, I could have said “We’d love to, but we’re driving up a day early and stopping overnight at my sister’s.”  But I guess I’m either not that devious, or not that quick, because that excuse didn’t occur to me until about three days later.  Too much later, in other words.

So now, instead of a quiet, un-monitored conversation filled drive with my husband, I will have a long long drive with a stranger – the bride’s make-up artist – in the back seat of our car.  I’m sure she’s lovely.  I’m sure she’s nice.  And in gratitude for us giving her a lift, she offered to do my make-up, too.  Which is nice – but no thanks.  She’ll have to do the bride’s make-up close to the actual wedding at 6pm, which means I would have to be in full make-up by about, oh, I don’t know – noon.  And by 6:00, I’ll look like my normal faded self anyway.

A young bride without children (though her husband to be has a few), doesn’t realize what a luxury it is to have 6 hours (each way!) alone with your husband during which you can ACTUALLYT HAVE A CONVERSATION.  It doesn’t occur to her. It’s not mean, or thoughtless, it’s just not in the realm of her experience.  It truly doesn’t occur to her.

So we’ll drive her.  And we’ll make a lot of small talk.  And three years from now, when young-bride is on baby number two, I will plan a party that starts at 7:30 pm on a Saturday night. Because it won’t occur to me that that’s probably bed time in her house, and a difficult time for her to get away.  I will serve dinner at 9:30.  Because I will have forgotten that when you have babies, you get to bed at around that time. And it will be difficult for her to get home to relieve her baby sitter until at least midnight.  Which, since she’ll have a newborn, will be only a few hours before she needs to get up anyway.

Only I won’t, really.  I’ll go to the wedding.  I’ll get all teary eyed.  And I’ll know that the brides teary eyes aren’t getting all black with rings of mascara because of me.  Because I drove her make-up artist there.  And that will “make up” for everything.