Ring Bearer

The reason for our trip to FL in March was my little sister's wedding, she married her high school sweetheart, and a great guy.  She was also brave enough to ask little Z to be the ring bearer for the grand event.  Thankfully the wedding was in March, and the weather was not super hot, because as it was, convincing Z to get in his little suit was... challenging.  He fought, screamed, resisted, and after much sweat and tears, he finally was wearing his shirt, and pants..

Doesn't he look like the cutest little man?  As you can see we bribed him with crayons and a coloring book, somehow crayon ended up ALL OVER the couch in the bride's prep room, but hey! The kid was dressed, whaddaya want?  Of course he wasn't all the way dressed, getting his little suit jacket on him was another ordeal, my sister said he didn't have to wear it bless her heart, but damn it I paid $40 bucks for this suit and the kid was going to wear it at least for 30 seconds so we could get a picture, I mean really, we'd come this far!  After much bribery we have this money shot

If you do not just melt at the picture of this tiny little man in a suit then you have no soul.  And in case the torture was not complete, the child still needed to perform his ring bearer duties, you know, actually walking down the aisle.  We were not fool hardy we were well aware there was no way in H-E-double hockey sticks that this child was walking down the aisle by himself, luckily(?) I was the matron of honor (omg how old does that sound?  I *begged* her to still call me a "maid")  and my sister being indecisive and hating to offend managed to have 2 more bridesmaids than groomsmen, so my little man walked me down the aisle.. pay no attention to the stark white sausage shoved in the blue casing, clearly I need to up the ante on c25k..

 See the lollipop in Z's hand?  Yes, so a little about this trip, we live in AZ, which stays on mountain standard time all year, so in late March, we are 3 hours behind FL, so this 4pm wedding was 1pm for our bodies.. wanna guess what time nap time is?  Yah.. 12:30 :p.  So obviously, Z was feeling SUPER cooperative.  He did manage to walk down the aisle, and he even stood with me, for at *least* 5 minutes, but folks, it was an outside wedding, and my child loves the outside, but not so much standing still in a suit in the outside, so he wanted to go explore.  I sssshhhhed him once, but we were right next to the microphone, so that was my only attempt, after he shouted "wanna go sit with DADDY" I gave up

Look at that smug little cutie sucking on his lollipop.  Yes, you won Z.  The ceremony was beautiful (I think, I also had to wrangle the flower girl, who was the same age as Z, yay me!), but the torture for Z was not over yet, because, it was PICTURE TIME.  The photographer was awesome, thankfully he has 4 kids at home so Z's antics didn't phase him, which is good, because after the ceremony Z was in this kind of mood

After pictures we ate dinner, and the DJ cranked up the music, at which point Z declared "wanna go home!"  So we compromised with the venue patio, we let him change out of the dress shirt and put him in his official tshirt my sister gave him

And he played with my 4 yo cousin, and one of my other cousin's kids, and all was right in his world

Honestly, for being 2.5, dressed up in a suit, and asked to perform in front of people he's never met, he did fabulously, and we snagged some pretty cute pictures, even if my dress did end up a sticky mess from the lollipop hugs :).