This is Your Aircraft

It's difficult to get married in a foreign country. I've been working on the arrangements for months! We had to send birth certificates to the Secretary of State for a special stamp, after being translated into Italian. We had to go to the Consulate with witnesses for another official document. And, we had to make an appointment with the Embassy in Rome for another document. There is a lot of room for error, and if one thing goes wrong, the wedding can't happen.

That reality struck me as we were returning to the gate after taxiing to the runway in Houston. The flight had been rerouted to a longer flight path and we had to return to the gate for more fuel. We had a 1:50 layover at Dulles before our connecting flight to Rome. As the minutes ticked by I started getting nervous. When they started letting passengers off the plane I thought we were doomed!

I started looking up alternate flights we could take to Rome if we missed our connection. We had to get to Rome in time for our 2:00 appointment at the Embassy or or wedding would happen! I made that appointment months ago, if we missed it we wouldn't be able to get another appointment until the following week, if we were lucky, and that would be too late!

There was a BA flight out of Dulles at 6:00, that would get us in at noon, and a Luftansa flight at 6:15 that arrived at 12:30. Either of those might work, provided there're seats available, and United would reroute us. All the scenarios were running through my head. Do I be hysterical bride to the desk agent? I should have worn that tshirt that has "Bride" in rhinestones across the chest! Or do I play calm and kind person. Or does the squeaky wheel get the grease, and therefore should be loud and obnoxious? 

Finally, we were taxiing back out to the runway. Estimated new arrival time was 5:30, the same time our connecting flight was scheduled to take off. I was panicking, we were going to miss our flight...unless the connecting flight happened to be delayed too. I quickly and clandestinely turned my phone back on and googled the flight number. Unbelievably, our connection was delayed until6:00! As long as we were able to land when we got there, didn't have to wait for a gate, and the connecting gate wasn't at the opposite side of the airport we would make it!  I was relieved.

Two and a half hours later as we prepared to land, and I'm still closely monitoring the minutes, the flight attendant says on the PA, "for those of you traveling to Rome, this is your aircraft."  LOL!