Thanks to A Wedding and a Social Story

We went to a wedding on Saturday afternoon. The weather was as perfect as the bride, the groom was handsome. My girls were stunningly well behaved and happy.

I wrote a social story to help the girls through the wedding ceremony.

Heidi did very well during the wedding itself, the noise bothered her a little but a pair of headphones helped with that.

Annie was fascinated by the service and followed along intently with everything that was happening.

Both girls were *very* impressed with being given bubbles to blow over the happy couple at the end of the service.

We had two tricky moments. One right after the service, Heidi was desperate to ‘catch the bouquet’ and did not want to leave until the Bride had thrown the bouquet. Attempting to leave triggered a tear storm, we eventually compromised with a promise to stop at Safeway and buy Heidi some flowers of her own.

When we got to the reception venue Annie got very difficult – wanting to run into a creek, not listen when we asked her to stay off the drive way – and subsequently getting dangerously close to cars driving in. She was challenging in a way I find hard to explain or put a finger on, doing the opposite of what was requested of her and just doing her own thing heedless of consequences.

I went and sat in the car with her for 10 minutes, just the two of us, thankfully that made a huge difference, I suspect Annie had just been overwhelmed and didn’t know how to wind down again.

Heidi impressed me greatly by saying “My wiggles are getting bigger. I need to go for a walk on a path to see a goat.” Shows a huge level of self awareness about her sensory needs. We went for a walk and actually spotted the goat she mentioned. We even found some dandelions to make wishes on and flowers to pick and put in daddys pocket.

The reception venue was beautiful. The girls had a ball exploring the grounds outside and did a great job at sitting up at our table for dinner – right up till it was time to change into PJs and head home at 9.30pm. It really helped that there was a room set aside for the girls to play in or go just for some quiet time out, Annie spent lots of time in there drawing whilst Heidi was happy to sit at the table with Daddy and his iPhone.

It was a lovely day and our girls being so very agreeable left myself and Ralph able to focus on the ceremony and the happy couple and celebrate their joyful day to the full.

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Life, the Universe and Autism