Today Dan and I have been married for two whole years! Instead of gushing about how smart, funny, caring and good looking my husband is (although I could do it for days on end) I thought I would tell you about how our wedding day was almost a disaster. And no, I am NOT exaggerating.

During our engagement (and for a good portion of the time that we were dating), Dan and I were doing long distance. I was in Cape Town and he was already in Johannesburg. Obviously, there was no way that I was getting married anywhere else other than the Mother City.

Our wedding day was on a Saturday and we decided together that Dan would fly down on the Friday evening rather than waste a day of leave that we could use for our honeymoon. And so the tickets were booked. By the time Friday 24 May rolled around, we hadn’t seen each other for 3 weeks and so we decided that I would fetch him from the airport that evening and then take him to where his parents were staying for the weekend. We just needed to see each other to calm our nerves (and have a smooch), three weeks is a long time! That afternoon, Dan called and said that his plane had been delayed from 5pm until 8pm and so he would only be landing at 10pm. I arrived at the airport that evening and waited patiently for the notice boards to say that his plane had landed. 30min late… 60min late… Finally the board said landed! And then just as suddenly, it changed to “rerouted”. Whaaaaaaat?! Turns out that the mist was so bad in Cape Town (and it really was, you could barely make out the mountain) that the plane wasn’t able to land and flew back to JHB. No biggie…except I was getting married the next day! I went home and waited patiently next to my cellphone to hear from Dan. Finally somewhere around 12am he gave me a call. There was no need to panic, there was a 7am flight the next morning, he was going to sleep on the floor next to the check in counter and would be in Cape Town at 9am the next morning. This calmed my nerves a bit. I mean, how much does a guy actually have to do on the morning of his wedding day? What was so frustrating is that so many of our guests and bridal party flew in from JHB and Durban with zero problems, it was just Dan’s flight… Murphy’s law hey.

Because I had to be at the hotel at 9am the next morning to start with my hair and make up, my Dad said that he would go and collect Dan for me. My cellphone was literally glued to my side. I’m sure I must have irritated the living daylights out of my hairdresser and make up artist! 9am came and 9am went and still, no husband-to-be in Cape Town! Finally my Dad called, and it wasn’t good news. The mist was still too bad to land and so the plane had to turn around again. But they couldn’t go back to JHB because that would mean that the crew would have worked too many hours which was illegal (or something to that effect) and so Dan was sitting in George. Oh, his phone had also died, fun times! Luckily he called me off other passengers cellphones. By now, everyone knew that he was getting married in 6 hours time.

I have to say, people really rallied! My dad was trying to get their work plane to fetch Dan, my poor Nanna kept calling to say that she was on her knees praying and had called all her friends to do the same. I called the priest who was going to marry us (I had only met him two days before because the original priest that was going to marry us had to go in for surgery, and I thought that was a big deal…pffft!) and he said he would come and marry us at any time where ever we were. The One & Only (where we had our reception) were incredible, saying that they would move our reception until later, offering us their helipad, friends were pooling money to try rent a helicopter. I mean, it was just madness! The pilot had said to Dan, that even though technically he wasn’t allowed to disembark (for the life of me I cannot remember why), he would make an exception. This way, Dan could rent a car and drive to Cape Town and arrive hopefully by 4pm. After much um-ing and ah-ing, we decided that if Dan got behind the wheel now, he would drive like a lunatic. The pilot had said that he would be trying to land one more time a little bit later, so we piled all our eggs into that basket.

By this time, my hair was done, my make up was done and I was pretty much in my dress. All I needed now was for the groom to be in the same city as the wedding! Finally, at 1.30pm my dad sent me a picture of Dan walking into the arrivals area of the airport. Oh my word, the relief was insane! I think my bridesmaids as well as my mom and I gave the hugest whoop of joy!

The poor man rushed to his aunts house, showered, put on his suit and raced to the church. He got there 20min before I walked down the aisle.

In hindsight I’m glad that we didn’t see each other  the night before our wedding. Besides the stress of the airplane antics and only getting 3 hours of sleep each, we were so excited to see each other, I mean I practically ran down the aisle.

Our wedding was everything we wanted with all the people that we loved, there will never be a more perfect, loved filled day!

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