a funny thing happened on the way to the wedding...

No wedding story is complete without a bridal emergency. And this wedding story is nothing if not complete. Friday morning the bride had her nails done - lovely french manicure. By the rehearsal dinner Friday night, her left middle finger nail had a small nick. This wouldn't have been a big deal at all except for it being on her left hand. It would show up in all the hand pictures! Well, the bride and a bridesmaid thought it was a small enough nick that they could fix it at the hotel that night without any problems. Their patch job ended up causing a much more noticable problem for said fingernail. So we decided to find a professional to fix this nail.

Saturday morning we headed to Macaroni Grill: the bride, her mother, and the bridesmaids. We were about 10 minutes early, and one of the girls said she had seen a salon nearby that she thought we could get into and out of and still be back at the restaurant in plenty of time. So we drove around to the cutest little salon I've ever seen in my life. Pink everywhere. We go inside, and announce our bridal emergency, only to be greeted by, "We're just for little girls." Seriously? An entire salon and spa just for little girls? Is there really a market for that? I guess the pageant girls keep them in business. Anyway, they didn't have any french manicure supplies, so we went back to the restaurant to work on plan B.

Now, we were the first party in the doors at Macaroni Grill. And we made it abundantly clear that we had a wedding to get ready for and couldn't take all day in the restaurant. But I guess we were just lucky enough to get the waiter who just didn't get it. An hour and 15 minutes later we got our checks. And then for 10 minutes we watched him wander around with our payments as he fumbled his way through ringing us up.

We now have about 5 minutes before we are supposed to be in the hotel room for some candid "getting ready" photos with the photographer. And we still haven't fixed this fingernail. So one car of girls goes back to the hotel to plug in hot sticks, curling irons and the like, and our car heads for the mall. The bride and I run in while the other girls park. No time to waste here. We race to the map and locate the nearest nail studio (which was aptly named Nail Studio) and make a mad dash down the escalator and beyond.

Fate smiled upon us. The Asian ladies in the nail studio were only too happy to help a sister out. Of course, they didn't want to just fix the one nail that was messed up. No. "Ooh, they do bad job! We redo whole thing!" We argue that we only have time for one nail. "But it look bad! If we do just one nail, it no match, look bad!" We affirm that we're willing to take that chance. "It only take ten minute, we redo whole thing!" We make it abundantly clear that we have exactly 5 minutes to get one nail fixed and be back at the hotel to get ready. Finally, the lady caves and in under a minute has redone the one nail we asked for. For the very reasonable price of ONE DOLLAR.

And, just in case you were wondering, it was a perfect match to the rest of the manicure. Crisis averted.