5 Yards of Mosquito Netting

I need your help. I've decided that I need to start giving speeches at Toastmasters again. I think the last speech I gave was a target speech for a contest two years ago. That's much too large a gap. I'm afraid that my skills are getting a bit rusty.
I've decided to work on project from an advanced manual on humorous speech. The first project I want to do is give a funny speech.
This is where I need the help of any of you that read this. I am going to write the first draft of the speech I plan to do. If you have any comments, suggestions or smart remarks please let me know.
Thank you.

Five Yards of Mosquito Netting

At the beginning of June in 2003 my life was changed. C and I were enjoying a drink and conversation at a local coffee shop. We were talking about the "M" word. Marriage. He started on a five minute monologue about love, partnership and others things and ended it with a question. "Will you marry me?" I wish I could say that I said something wildly romantic or burst into happy tears. Instead I asked "Are you done yet?" This would have quelled most men, but not C. C is of much sterner stuff. I'm not sure what he said, but after he replied I did do the romantic thing. I put both hands on his face, looked him in the eyes and said, "Yes".

This meant I would have to plan my wedding.

In the interest of disclosure I have to say that when I was younger I watched with rapt attention when Diana Spencer and Sarah Ferguson walked down their respective aisles. For awhile there I was very into reading books on weddings and wedding etiquette. I was interested in the ceremony and the reasons why some things are done the way they are. For instance the reason why the bride stands on the left is so the grooms sword hand is free to defend himself. Obviously this is a tradition from long ago that has been carried down even though there is no need for it. It was fun to learn about these things,but all academic. I wasn't dreaming of my own wedding.

I was completely out to sea. I turned to bridal magazines for help. They weren't much help at all. They were all meant for much younger women and their fiances who were just starting out. There were articles about wedding styles, colours, choosing attendants and dealing with your future mother-in-law. There was nothing in there about what to do when you are over 30, with a groom who had been married before. There was no advice on how incorporate stepchildren into the wedding. I didn't care about mother-in-law advice.(my future mother-in-law had died two years before I met C.) What I needed to know was, how to deal with an ex-wife.

I thought planning the ceremony and what would come after would be the hardest part. That's the way the magazines made it sound. There was advice on guest lists, ceremonies,receptions, how to pick a band or DJ, photography and videos, flowers and food. It seemed like this would be an overwhelming task.

It wasn't. We had a small guest list. We decided to a have a late morning wedding with a formal five course dinner to follow. We would not have a dance or anything like that. It suited our style and budget perfectly. The hard part, as I soon realised, was about to come.

I had to pick a dress.

I'm not a big dress person. If forced to dress up I prefer a skirt and some sort of top. When we first started planning the wedding I was hoping to wear either a white or off white tea length dress with maybe a crown of flowers in my hair or a very pretty rose pink lace dress that I had bought for some pictures a while ago. Since we were having a formal church ceremony.( to appease my mother) I would have to buy an actual wedding dress.

I was not looking forward to it. The only people I had to help me select this thing were my mother and sister. These were the same two people who picked out the horrible bridesmaid's dress that I wore in my sisters wedding. I wasn't sure I could trust their judgement, but they were all I had.

There were lots of dresses in the wedding magazines I had bought. All of them looked nice. None of them were being worn by short,stout people like me. I was able to come up with a list of things I wanted in a dress. I wanted sleeves, no train, no sequins, nothing low cut, nothing tight and nothing that would make me look like a macaroon cookie. I did not want to look round,white and fluffy. No veils.

We went to the bridal shop. I saw a lot of nice dresses. None of them had sleeves. I must have been the only bride that year that wanted to keep at least her upper arms covered. My choices were strapless and spaghetti straps. I chose the spaghetti straps.

I tried on dress after dress. There were a few really pretty ones, but it looked like the dress was wearing me, not the other way around. I finally settled on one. It has spaghetti straps, a lace bodice, a very small train (that I didn't realise until I got to the final fitting) and it seemed like it would be comfortable to wear for the entire day.

The saleslady brought out a veil. "No," I said, "No veil".

"But this would look so nice with your dress," she said.

"No, I insisted, "I do not want to wear a veil. I'll look like I'm swathed in mosquito netting."

My mother asked me to just try it on. I did.

"See, I was right, I look like I'm a bee keeper," I said.

"It will look better with a tiara," Mom said.

The sales lady brought out a modest looking tiara of silver decorated with crystal,pearls and leaves. It was nice so I decided to buy it. Maybe I could just wear it without the veil.

My mother bought the veil. She and my sister more or less insisted that I needed to wear it. To please them I did although I felt silly the entire time.

I took it off as soon as I could. I still have it. It's in a shadow box box along with some other memorabilia from the wedding. I still think it looks like mosquito netting.

I can already see that this will need a lot of work to turn it into a speech.

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