These are the shoes I wore when I was a bridesmaid at LittleSis’ wedding, in the spring of 2002.

I’ve been a bridesmaid three times — once for SmokingToaster, once for my older sister SocialButterfly, and once for LittleSis. For SocialButterfly’s wedding I had a cute pair of white pumps with a squashed heel (I love a squashed heel!), but I never did find any other outfits that they went with, so I never wore them again. Eventually I gave them away.

These grey shoes that I wore to LittleSis’ wedding look kind of boring in this photo, but I really like them. They’re a very unusual colour — almost shimmery but not glossy, purple-grey without any hint of silver. Plus, they’re Rockports, so they’re super comfy, made for being on your feet all day and then dancing all night. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ve worn them since. They look lovely with the pale lilac dresses we wore (which I made, because I am all crafty that way, and the line forms to the right for KUDOS), but those dresses are floor-length, so I haven’t had a lot of call to wear mine in my everyday life as Human Dishrag. I haven’t yet found a nice dress to go with them, either. I bet a pair of dark grey dress pants would look smashing, though. Memo to self: on next dress-up occasion, buy grey dress pants.

LittleSis’ wedding was probably the best wedding I’ve ever been to. All of my family was there and since I wasn’t the bride, I had lots of time to spend with them. I talked to everyone and ate tons of cake (and sat on a piece, but don’t worry, my dry cleaner got all the chocolate out) and took a million pictures. I spent a lot of time dancing with my (then) young niece and nephew, who had never been to such a big party with a dance floor before. They were so cute and I think that night is really when I realized how much I love them.

For their first dance, LittleSis and her new husband did a choreographed tap dance which was SO fabulous. All of my sisters and I are tap dancers — I still dance once a week, shout-out to my awesome teacher Sheila — and CanadiensFan#1! learned the basics so they could do this one special performance together. I just about passed out from delight. There’s a video of this dance and if you can take your eyes off of the gorgeous couple in the foreground, you can see me in the background laughing and clapping and displaying pure joy. Later LittleSis told me that seeing me in the background so obviously happy was her favourite part of the video.

To this day, I think she does not know that her wedding fell just a few weeks after I’d had a miscarriage. I lost one baby before we had Captain Jelly Belly and at the time I really thought that nothing happy would ever happen to me again. Three glorious children later, the pain has been dulled, but I can still clearly recall the anguish and horror of that time. When it happened I really did not see how I could possibly go through with being in the wedding — even leaving the house seemed like an insurmountable problem.

But I managed to get there, and when I was surrounded by my family — everyone so happy, everyone so loved — it made it all better.

So seeing me be happy in LittleSis’ wedding video — watching myself heal, frame by frame — was my favourite part, too.