Lesson Learned – Things don’t always go as planned

I’ve come to grips with reality this week. My wedding day may NOT be perfect.

As I mentioned before, my fiancé proposed with a placeholder ring last January. At that time I was living in Africa and he didn’t feel comfortable traveling there with valuables. Fortunately, this enabled us to pick out the ring together when I got back to the States last spring – he picked the diamond, and I chose the setting. Our jeweler predicted the ring would take up to 2 months to complete and I recently overheard that the ring is ready! Hooray!

It couldn’t have come at a better time. It’s been nearly 5 months since we got engaged, but since both of us are live in different cities (he in NYC and me in DC) and most of our friends and families live in Chicago, we haven’t had a real acknowledgement/celebration of our engagement. Moreover, besides our mothers and brothers, our family members have yet to be introduced to one another. As a result, we decided to plan an engagement party this June 27th in Chicago. Not only will this enable our friends and families to meet and celebrate, but it will be the perfect place to show off my sparker (a vision I’ve been dreaming about for months). I’ve been growing out my nails, moisturizing my hands and trimming my cuticles all in preparation for the big unveiling.

So you can only imagine my reaction last Wednesday night as I was being rushed to the emergency room – for accidentally amputating the tippety-top of my pointer finger on my LEFT hand (while cooking). I sounded something like this, “WAHHHHHH, WAHHHH,why did this have to happen now! Weeks before I showcase my ring for the very first time! My freakish finger will steal all the attention!” I got a lot of laughs from hospital staff but I was pretty serious.

And so ladies and gentlemen, here it is….the big unveiling.

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I’m not sure what will look better at the real unveiling of the ring. Should I cover up my finger with gauze as is, which will be a huge distraction to the ring — or should I go au natural, and let everyone see my finger with half of the tippety-top missing? What is the greater distraction?

Have any of you had similar plans go drastically wrong? Either at bridal events leading up to the big day, or on the wedding day itself? How did you deal with them?