My brother got married this past Saturday, and I had promised him some months ago that I would stay Sober at his Wedding.  At the time he asked this of me, I was lucky to go two days in a row without binge drinking, and had given up long distance running in favor of sitting on my back step and smoking, brooding and being morose, thinking that some people get too lost to ever be found.

In the months that followed, I went to treatment and got ahold of my addiction.  As I write this, it has been 87 days since I sat in a hospital with inexplicable shoulder and rib pain and asked the doctor for phone numbers to contact detox facilities.   I have been sober for 84 of those days, the first relapse an appalling disaster that landed me and my intractable vomiting in the hospital needing an IV to treat my dehydration, the second a few weeks later after some totally unexpected health news about a treasured family member threw me for a loop.  The night of the rehearsal, I had three white wine spritzers, to the complete displeasure of my body, which has lost both its tolerance for alcohol and its patience for this toxic garbage, and I went home sheepish and disbelieving that in three short months I have gone from nearly daily binge drinking to handling booze like I did when I was a teenager.

So it was that when the morning of the wedding arrived, I had no physical interest in consuming alcohol, and immense emotional interest in honoring my promise to my brother.  Not drinking was not a problem, until 11am when the champagne came out at the hair salon, and the bridesmaids sat with their elegant coifs and shaped brows, drinking their bubbly.  Suddenly, all the pride I had felt over the past three months about my decision to get into recovery seemed to vanish, and for a little while I felt awkward and stupid and small, the lone woman in this jubilant party of celebrating women who lost her right to drink a long time ago, and couldn’t risk a single sip in case it flipped that proverbial switch that all alcoholics know about.

But shortly thereafter, when nobody said anything or seemed to care, when we all fussed over each other’s hair and makeup and made last minute arrangements about transferring cars, it began to matter less.  Off we rushed to the bride’s  house, where I drank Diet Coke from the bottle and scraped my fresh heels on the driveway to roughen them up.  On went our dresses, our jewelry, the tacky red chiffon garter I bought as a sassy antidote to my flowing, delicate, pastel dress.

An empty champagne bottle lay waiting for us in the limousine hired to drive us to the wedding venue, remnants our groomsman had left from their ride.  More corks were popped, and I filled my glass with more diet Coke, appreciating my clear head and the opportunity being sober provided me to notice and commit to memory the thousand details that make a wedding day such a special one: The sun on my little girl’s golden, curled hair, her flouncy skirt bunched on the seat as she sat behind me; the bride, sitting opposite me, stunning in her dress and more stunning still in her radiant calm; the autumn leaves rich against the late afternoon sky, a perfect backdrop for the pictures to be taken only an hour or two later.  I drank sparkling water at the champagne toast after the ceremony, and sent for pots of tea to warm myself in the early evening’s chill as we posed for photos.

At the reception, I watched as the faces of a few guests turned crimson, knew that some glasses were being filled each time the waiter passed by the tables.  Nobody got out of control, but several did wind up drunk, one guest falling asleep in his chair, another telling me early in the evening that she was on her third glass and then later, when I teased her, insisting she’d had only two.  I don’t judge any of these folks.  Weddings are a time, if ever there was one, to eat and drink and be merry, and I suppose if alcohol adds to merriment for some, then bottoms up.

This wedding, as all weddings are, was a day for my brother and his new wife to make promises to each other, vows to honor over a lifetime together, as life challenges them, and time both changes and deepens their bond. But it was also a day to keep a promise to my brother the groom, and to myself.  And I did.