Is My Daughter Up To The Stressful Job Of Flower Girl?

One of my best friends is getting married in October. She’s substantially younger than me, meaning nobody she knows has any kids in the appropriate age range for the important job of flower girl. I, on the other hand, have two children who love this woman so much that they pray for her every single night. She asked the older one — and the younger one, if capable — to be her little mini-attendants. There was much rejoicing in the household when this request was made. But now I wonder, are they even up for the task?

For one thing, they show remarkable disinterest in weddings. When the Royal Wedding took place in April or whenever, I showed them some highlights from the big day. They asked me to turn off the television.

Then there’s the confusion. They ask me if they were the flower girls in our wedding. Um, no. I mean, how do you even answer such a question? They were utterly devastated, by the way, to find out that they weren’t at our wedding and weren’t even born yet.

Finally, there’s a bit of stage fright. We’ve put them through some pretty serious flower girl bootcamp. OK, I guess what I mean by “bootcamp” is that we’ve asked them to practice walking down the aisle at church a few times. If the wedding were at our church, I have no doubt they’d nail this thing. But it’s going to be at some huge Greek Orthodox church with an iconostasis and those weird sit-stand chairs and ladies pinching their cheeks and stuff. And every time we have them practice outside of our church, they act weird — run too fast or get distracted or something.

I know I shouldn’t worry and that they’ll either get the job done or not — and working with two of them means our odds are slightly improved, right? Part of my problem is that I’ve been in enough weddings to know that flower girls and ring bearers don’t have perfect rates of success.

The first wedding I was in was my aunt’s. My cousin was my partner. He froze at the narthex and never went one step down the aisle. At my cousin’s wedding, my niece only made it down the aisle because my sister picked her up and deposited her there in frustration. At my own wedding, I had all my nieces, nephew and godchildren accompany us out of the church. At least two didn’t make it. One because she was sleeping.

But now that it’s my own daughter, the pressure is on. I don’t want to disappoint the bride. What if, as 3-year-olds are wont to do, the older girl puts her finger in her nose mid-processional? What if the younger one, as she’s been known to do, just lifts her skirt over her head and shouts “I’m hiding!” during the sermon?

Please tell me you have some tips.