Well, it's 8:30 on Sunday morning and here I am already with the report on last night's festivities. It really is amazing, considering that it involved a two-hour long ceremony in an nice warm (ok, stifling hot) church followed by a formal dinner for 60 people. The fact that I did it and lived to blog the tale this morning probably owes a lot to the fact that while I served lots of wine and VERY nice French champagne to other people, I didn't drink any myself.

As for the ceremony- it was pretty much as depicted at left, right down to the angels. OK- there weren't actual angels. But my adorable twin daughters DID look positively ethereal. I hope to have some pictures to post tomorrow and then I'll let you be the judge.

Yesterday began before seven am, as I had to drive Severin to a church youth group event. The kids were going out to a village to distribute the grain purchased with the funds they raised last month. They bought in bulk and had to bag the corn themselves. It was a long, hot morning of work for all the teenagers, but they were really proud to have raised nearly 10,000 US dollars!!! They helped out a lot of needy families with this huge sum!!

Next, I got the girls and we headed off to the beauty salon. I had made appointments for the four of us two weeks ago. But somehow they managed to overschedule their morning at Ananda Beauty and I felt more frazzled than beautiful as the minusule salon filled up with NINE other clients, most of them looking rather of annoyed as service was so slow and spoadic, with only two stylists on duty.
But the Jacobs had precedence and Alexa had her heart set on a head full of curls. Mallory went for curls as well, but it was no use. We tried lots of hairspray, but what we needed was an Act of God. The second we got home, those corkscrew curls went as flat as....well, something that is REALLY flat. Whatever else Mallory may have gotten from me (stubborness? Warped sense of humour?) she did NOT get my hair. Of course, no one would actually want my hair, but it does hold a curl and mostly does what it is told, if told authoritatively enough.
So, it was with a sliver of actual hope in my heart that I gave the hairstylist a small picture of Marilyn Monroe. (Once, years ago in Chicago, a modeling agent told me I had the look of "a young Marilyn Monroe". I think it was a polite way of telling me to brush my hair and get my eyebrows professionally waxed )
Anyway, I thought the older, polished Marilyn look could work-big, loose curls up off the forehead. It was an idea, anyway. Gael (my hair guy) peered at the little picture and got to work.

He pulled on my hair and brushed on it and my three girls (who were all done and looking gorgeous) stood there looking at me with very concerned, frowny expressions.
"Maybe you're flattening out the top too much" I ventured.
"No! Trust me! It's going to be great!"
More brushing.
More frowning on the part of the Jacob Style Patrol. Slight head shake from Valentine- the JSP commander.
"Maybe you're flattening out the sides too much?" I said, vainly trying to push it all back up into a semblance of Marilyn-ishness.
"No! It's looking great!" he insisted.
I tried squinting. Nope. Still didn't look great. In fact, although I would swear that I'd shown him a picture of Marilyn Monroe, he'd apparently modelled my hairstyle on that of Bozo the Clown instead. Now, he is a style icon in his own way, but not one that I, personally, wanted to ressemble.

Instead of saucy, smooth, face-framing curls, my hair was flattened down over the top and down the sides. Then at ear-level it exploded into a bunch of fuzz.
It was the Anti-Marilyn of all hairdos and it was all mine.


'Yikes!' didn't quite cover it. And the more Gael touched it, the worse it got.
I finally just told him to Leave It Alone.
I considered using the blue plastic cape across my shoulders as a makeshift hood so I could get out to the car without anyone seeing me. In fact, maybe I'd wear it for the actual event that evening. It figured it would be easier to explain why I had a beauty-salon cape on my head than it would be to explain why I had Circus Hair.

Once I was safely at home, I pushed, prodded and pinned my hair until it looked like something that a female human might possibly want on top of her head. In fact, it looked kind of nice. It didn't have anything even vaguely Marilyn-ish about it, but at that point I was just glad not to be a hideous freak.

Mallory decided to quit fighting a hopeless battle and opt for a straight-haired look. Pulled back with a blingy tiara, it looked really sweet.

But we didn't have much time to fuss over hair. It was soon time to head over to the restaurant to assemble the cake, set up the tables, arrange the flowers, etc. Valentine and Mallory were a huge help. It would have taken me all afternoon without them and instead it was done in less than one hour!

More tomorrow!