Maybe you didn’t spend the last nine months stressing about whether or not I would deliver a baby in the middle of my big brother’s wedding, but let me tell you- a whole lot of people did. When you plan a wedding, you try to eliminate every stressful factor so that the day will go smoothly. But you know what is hard to eliminate?

The groom’s sister having a due date three days after the wedding.

First babies are late, I assured them. I think the doctor was wrong about the due date, I promised. I’ll just get my dress extra large, I calmly said. Because I was absolutely set on going to this wedding, on celebrating Zach and Liz, and this baby just needed to fall in line. When May rolled around and my doctor started saying that I wouldn’t make it to the wedding pregnant — I panicked. I think everyone involved in the wedding panicked, and the prayers for this baby to make an early (and safe!) arrival redoubled.

And arrive he did, reflecting the severe FOMO that characterizes his mother, determined to show up at the party. One week after welcoming Henry, James and I loaded every single baby item we own into the car and headed to Charlottesville to party down. I was nervous about the weekend, nervous about Henry screaming all weekend, disrupting everything, and about how I would handle all the activities at one week postpartum. I think that it is only due to the mass collective prayers of people I had never met (like, I think that half the wedding had been following my cervix dilation from afar and stress-praying), but it really was a wonderful weekend. One week-old babies are way calmer than two week-old babies (as we are finding now!), and Henry basically slept or snuggled the entire weekend while his parents partied down like the carefree youths that we are decidedly not.

Zach and Liz hired the most amazing wedding photographer, but I hauled out my camera for some candid dance floor pics…and then I pawned the camera off on others to help take them so I could get my dance moves on.

Maybe because I spent weeks fearing that I wouldn’t make it, but I think this was one of the most fun weddings ever. It was the finale wedding for my siblings, the last of us three to get married and complete our family. And what a finale it was!

Dancing with my new sister!!!These three TORE IT UP all night. Charlie (far right) and his wife are friends that we love getting to see, and we were bummed when Ellie couldn’t make it. Even though her due date for her second child wasn’t until mid June, she was showing signs of coming early. Charlie came… and then woke up to a text early Sunday morning to COME HOME. He dashed back to KY and welcomed a little boy hours later! Something about this wedding… it made all the babies come early! My people! My brothers have excellent taste in women. Those two ladies bless my life more than I could have ever imagined.Two sets of very proud parents……and one extra proud grandpa! My mom spent the week before and after the wedding with us in DC helping out, but the wedding weekend was the first time my dad met Henry. He is one very smitten grandfather!These ladies. Childhood besties who spent a lot of the wedding holding my child so I could celebrate my brother.

I don’t necessarily recommend trying to have a due date on top of a major family wedding… but it sure happened to work out well, leading to a weekend celebrating one new member of the family, and introducing another!

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