Western Wedding

Western Boots For Today's Weddings

If your young daughter has been asked to be a flower girl in a summer wedding, you are no doubt coordinating her outfit from head to toe and that includes her western wedding boot.

When it comes to her western wedding boots, the last thing you want your daughter to experience -- especially during last-minute jitters before going down the aisle -- is sore feet in dressy shoes that may be uncomfortable, stiff and slippery.

Here's a clever, inexpensive and practical idea for solving the shoe dilemma. Buy a pair of white slip-on canvas shoes (available at many discount stores for less $ 5). You'll also need strong fabric glue, ribbons and rosettes, 1/2-inch-wide lace trim or braiding, and pieces of lace.

Begin decorating the shoes by gluing the lace trim to the rubber edging around the shoe. Set aside to dry. Arrange other lace pieces, buttons and bows over the shoe, gluing as you go. Leftover lace scallops from a curtain valance or old tablecloth are perfect for placing over the toe area of the shoes.

Let the glue dry completely before wearing the shoes.

Tip: You may want the lace to have an antique, off-white appearance. Before gluing it to the shoes, dip the lace in a cup of warm pekoe tea.

Remove the lace when it is the desired shade and let it air-dry.

The only thing unholy about matrimony are the shoes you have to wear if it's a formal wedding.

Several nights before our daughter McNair's wedding last Friday evening, I dreamed the chandelier fell just as I was being ushered down the aisle on the arm of her brother a now-man, who in his once-upon-a-childhood zipped the bride up in a sleeping bag and sent her down two flights of stairs. I'd sent him to his room, as I remember, and as he rounded the corner he'd shot back, "Why did I have to get her for a mother-in-law" The idea being that he did not want me as his actual, full-time and very legal parent. It was his way of once-removing me.

Now, here I was holding on to him with drop-dead pride shooting through my veins like adrenalin as he ushered me into mother-in-law-hood. Not only that. Just the night before, brother George had toasted McNair in front of God and all our relatives with words that made me forget my aching feet, made me whisper prayers of thanksgiving for divine providence, the magic and mystery of time and for getting better-than-I-deserve kids.

The chandelier, of course, didn't fall in the middle of the ceremony, but you can imagine the double take I did when I read in the newspaper that the chandelier had, in fact, fallen during a wedding that same day on one of the soap operas. I don't think it killed anybody, but the whole service went up in holy smoke just like in my dreams.

Western Wedding