“I’m sorry about my son”, isn’t exactly the words you want to hear your mum say to your new wife, 2 days after your big day!
But who can blame her, because I did one of the worst things you could imagine.
After what was the wedding day of our dreams, we moved into our new flat to start our life together. We were super excited to get married life started by doing normal domestic chores … you know like a proper married couple.
Our plan was to go file our marriage certificate at Paisley town hall; return the cake stands to the bakers; drop Shareen’s wedding dress to the dry cleaner … plus about 15 other tasks!
All was going well UNTIL a couple of hours after leaving home, Shareen looked through the car window of my Volkswagen Golf & said,
‘Osmaan, where’s my wedding dress?’
Instantly I had a flashback & inside my head I said some sweary words.
Let’s rewind back a few hours ….. Shareen loaded up my arms with a mountain of things to take down to the car … including her beautiful wedding dress inside a clothes carrier bag.
As there was quite a bit to fit in the car, I thought it would make sense to put the back seats down. So I put everything in my hands down behind my car & jumped into the back of the car to sort the seats out.
Then I had a brain wave ….there’s more to come down & there’s now a free space right outside our front door! So it would make sense to move the car there, instead of having to walk an extra few metres, wouldn’t it?
I jumped in the car, reversed the car to my new space, then ran upstairs to get the second lot of stuff. Then in we both jumped into the car & we went on our merry way!
Luckily our first stop was handing in those marriage papers, because it turned out that I forgot that Shareen’s wedding dress was behind my car. So when I moved the car, I reversed over it!
I still remember saying to Shareen, ‘The car sounds weird’, as we drove down our street.
But the noise went away once I drove over the speed bump, so I thought no more of it. But in actual fact, I was driving with the dress under my car down the street & the speed bump helped dislodge it from my tyres!
Once the penny dropped, we drove back home as quickly as I could … with silence all the way home. As I turned into our street, there was Shareen’s veil billowing in the wind against the railing … right next to a main busy road!
I stopped the car, scooped up the black tattered clothes bag & we went upstairs to our flat.
Silence again! Yes, she didn’t shout or scream or cry or anything! Not even when she opened the clothes bag & saw the tyre mark right across the bottom of the dress.
Luckily the top of the dress with all the detailed, shiny & sparkly bits was protected by the bag & wasn’t damaged. Phew!
Can you blame my mum for saying those words to Shareen, when she heard what I did? Of course not!
So why am I sharing one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done in my life with you?
Well even when you think the worst things has happened; it doesn’t necessarily mean it will end up in a complete disaster.
The next day, we took the wedding dress to the dry cleaners. Seriously the look on the girls face when she saw the tyre print was priceless! She’d never seen anything like that before.
She took the dress into the back & sprayed her special liquid … whilst I was saying all the prayers I could under my breath.
The smile on her face said it all when she came back through. The biggest & dirtiest mark has just vanished! Luckily the whole dress came back from them a few days later looking as good as new ….apart from a tiny burn mark right at the bottom underneath! I think the dress wanted to keep a little souvenir from the saga!
Many times in business we can think …‘It’s a disaster’ when things don’t go to plan or you ‘mess up’. But when we look back on it, it’s very rarely the end of the world or as bad as we think.
7 years later ….Shareen & I are still married. Plus we’ve got a funny story to tell our kids& you!
I also learnt that trying to do things quickly & taking a shortcut rarely works either. Seriously I was just being lazy by wanting to move the car literally a couple of metres closer to our front door& look what happened as a result!
I’m sure there’s many more lessons inside this story for you to take away, so I hope you can learn from my stupidity!
Have a fun week growing your business & catch up again soon.
Best wishes as always.
P.S. – After all that, the wedding dress has never been worn again & still sits in a box. So even if it was ruined, would it have really made a difference? 😉
P.P.S – A few months later we were at our friend’s Gavin &Lynsay’s wedding, sitting at a table with people we didn’t really know. As the conversation flowed, one of the people piped up & said, ‘You won’t believe what Gavin’s friend did to his wife’s wedding dress’. Guess who he was talking about?
