Sunday 11 October 2009

Wedding night

The one good thing you can say about some adventures, with rough times or bad endings... is that they make for excellent stories later. Unfortunately, that doesn't always hold true at the hospital, what with privacy laws and such, but as far as travelling, there are no holds barred. It's time I told of one of my adventures while down south...
A large part of the reason I went to Winnipeg as early as I did (and worked my butt off to get there) was to attend the wedding of one of my best friends. Okay, lets be honest here, I was one of the bridesmaids, a little more important than just attending the thing. By the Wednesday before the wedding, I was spending all my time with the bride and the other bridesmaids, and we were all sleeping over at the bride's home, a lovely old house in the country. Because I just didn't feel like thinking through what I needed, I grabbed all my luggage and kept everything at her place. We spent time doing everything from decorating the church and reception hall, to picking up altered dresses, getting our nails done, getting together with various members of the brides' family... you know, all those important pre-wedding things. Things came together quite nicely, even if the week of sleepovers was leaving all of us with a little sleep debt.
Myself and my friend Laurie (one of the bridesmaids) were trying to work out how we'd get back to the city after the wedding, and after a few quite plausible possibilities, decided it was simplest to borrow a car, leave all our stuff at the house and spend one last night after the wedding at the bride's place before heading back to the city (since the bride would be off somewhere else for the honeymoon, she was quite happy to tell us where the spare key was). Less to worry about on the wedding day. Or so we thought.
The day was beautiful, if long(up at 6am to do hair), and by the time the dancing was done and the decorations pulled down, it was midnight. Laurie got a ride to pick up the car, came back to pick me up from the reception hall and we were off to the house. I pulled the key for the house out as we parked, went and unlocked the door to the front porch. We both slipped in to avoid the mosquitos and get out of the cool air. I moved to grab the inside door... and it was locked. No problem, still had the key... which fit... but no matter how I turned it in the lock, the door remained locked. Nothing I tried would open that door. We could get into the garage, but that didn't do us any good. The front door to the house didn't fit the key. All the windows and doors were locked tight. All I had to my name outside of the house was what I was wearing. I was tempted to break a window. Very tempted. Reason won out. Laurie, at least, had thought to bring her purse with her...
I'll finish this after work. Have a good day!

2 comments:

laurie said...

oh heather...that is sure bringing back memories...is it going to be like the night we spent in a ridiculously cold dorm room in Tasmania!? love you!! and that new picture is fantastic, a great shot!!! xxx

Esther said...

nothing like leaving us hanging....i never heard about this adventure when we last visited, but i'm pretty sure it was after this happened...
thanks again for the lovely and long walk. i so needed that chance to talk...