By: Elaine Martin
Summer means many things to our family…exponential growth of freckles, sleeping in as late as we want, two months of looking at my humid frizzy ponytail, and occasionally, a summer beach trip.
One particular trip stands above the rest in our memory. It is lovingly referred to as “The Grandma Trip.” We were travelling with family friends, minus the Dads. We traded our hubbies for our mothers, so we had two grandmas, two moms, and six kids. Yep, we were a party on wheels.
The climax of the trip was our day at Sanibel Island. We had poured over brochures of the joyful, tanned families and were convinced our day on the island would be just as photo worthy. Rest assured, we do have one magnificent photo of the day, but it is not anything you will ever see in a brochure.
We finally hit the beach – yep, the glorious shores where we planned to find tons of seashells to fill our plastic buckets. We set up camp with our blankets, towels, picnic basket, and rainbow beach umbrella. At the word “GO!” we paired up and went exploring, swimming, and seashell hunting.
The next few hours of our beach day were calm. One child we nicknamed the Digger. He was convinced that with a tiny shovel, he would find a secret pathway to China and fortune cookies. Another child was the Feeder. She ignored our warnings as well as the posted signs and threw her food to the birds. Needless to say, we had every winged creature on the western coast of Florida sitting with us under our tilted umbrella.
The sun eventually moved lower into the sky, and the beach had become fairly empty. As people were exiting, we saw one person coming in our direction with several large cases. As we watched her unpack, she was pulling out items quite unlike ours – her trunks included white tablecloths, folding chairs and table, and a lot of tulle. All at once, it clicked – she was setting up a beach wedding!
We were about 40 yards away from this impromptu wedding, and the Grandmas were thrilled! There was no way they were going to pass on the chance to see a romantic, sunset beach wedding. We gathered our crew and returned to our own soggy beach towels we now called seats while the invited wedding guests started to arrive.
As I watched these beautifully bronzed beauties take their places, I turned my eyes towards my motley crew. We had been at the beach for hours, so our look was a sharp contrast to the new arrivals. In place of glowing skin, we had crusty sand plastered to our newly sunburned skin. Seaweed decorated our necks instead of the summer necklaces the Beauties wore. Their hair had been curled and pinned perfectly at a salon. My hair? It was a perfect mess, with crushed seashells mixed into my sea salt, windblown, wiry locks.
The wedding was about to begin. The camp setter-upper now took the role as the Wedding Officiant. Music wafted out of her CD player as the bride came out of the tall grass on her daddy’s arm. The beautiful moment changed when a hurricane strong wind came from nowhere, blowing her dress and veil. Our Grandmas gasped, us girls held our breath, but the boys in our group laughed out loud. We were obviously not going to be the best-behaved wedding guests that day.
The vows were eventually exchanged. It was apparent the bride and groom put much love into their words, as their guests were wiping away tears at the exact moment our Feeder child decided to open the potato chips and share the love with the birds near us. In 5.23 seconds, there were swarms of seagulls and their cousins hovering over us. I quickly grabbed the greasy bag and threw it and the contents, so the wind current took it and the birds quite a distance.
As quickly as the wedding was set up and started, it was over. Hugs and congratulations were shared and cameras were clicked. The Wedding Builder/Officiant then transformed into the Caterer as she opened a cooler and brought forth food and drinks for the guests to enjoy. Our kids, who knew how a wedding reception works, stood up and headed for the refreshment. My friend and I and I knew that was our cue to grab and go, quickly packing up and ushering our offspring to the parking lot.
Driving away, we agreed our beach day was definitely something we would always remember. It was then our Digger piped up and said, “I wish I had dug a little deeper, and they could have had their honeymoon in China!”.