Here's our little bridesmaid....or was she? She looks happy enough in this picture after the wedding, but it was a different story at the ceremony itself.

Cate looked very adorable in her bridesmaid dress, which had been carried oh-so-carefully all the way from Alaska for the wedding. She got dressed in the hotel that morning, and we set off via subway to the wedding. She looked so cute walking through the streets of Tokyo, that people were constantly pointing and bowing and smiling. One stranger, dressed in traditional kimono, even stopped to gesture with her camera, indicating that she wanted to take Cate's picture. Christopher would have loved all this attention, but it made Cate rather nervous and shy to be the center of attention.

When we reached the wedding villa, she went upstairs on the roof for the rehearsal and had more strangers talking to her Japanese. They were trying to be kind by getting kneeling to get down to her level and speaking to her, but it was in Japanese and she couldn't understand. I'm sure from her perspective, it was scary to have strangers in her face speaking a language she couldn't understand. Even the minister, who did speak English, seemed to frighten her. She ended up crying for her mommy and burying her face in my neck while refusing to walk down the aisle.

We tried everything -- would she walk down the aisle if mommy walked with her? What if Wai Lim (her new friend from Hong Kong) walked with her? No go -- after all the effort to get her to her first flower girl gig (all the way in Japan) she ended up spending the ceremony in my arms with her face buried in my neck and her legs balled up in fetal position on mommy's lap. Luckily, Wai Lim was only to happy to pinch hit and take over the necessary duties.

It was a bit like the Kevin Henkes children's book "Lily and the Big Day" -- a favorite at our house. In the book, our heroine Lilywants to be the flower girl for her teacher's wedding, but he chooses his niece with Lily then acting as the flower girl assistant. But at the last minute, the flower girl gets cold feet and Lily ends up walking down the aisle with the flower girl, thus saving the day. I just never figured Cate to be the one in need of assistance -- I always figured her for the Lily role. Ah well.

That said, if you ask Cate she'll still say "I was the flower girl." I guess in her mind, the fact that she was wearing the dress made it so. Performing the duties was not paramount in her mind to being able to claim the title.