“White wedding” took on a whole new meaning for me, a couple of years ago.

I’m reminded of this by the convergence of three things: another wedding in the family this summer, the pending conversion of yet another neighbourhood dairy farm into a subdivision, and the playful reincarnation of the iconic Got Milk? campaign.

(Bear with me — this will all start to make sense in a minute!)

So, as I’ve hinted, we’ve just celebrated another wedding in the extended family — and those of you who’ve been there can well understand the potential for both magic and disaster. So many details to coordinate with military precision! Everything must be perfect… Such high expectations, and such high stress!

Well, our most recent family wedding breezed through on the magical side, I’m thrilled to report.

But in this story I’m about to tell you of another wedding, a few years back… not so much.

Let’s not even speak of the soloist’s hiccups, the drunken photographer, or the brutal heat wave that turned the wedding reception into a sauna and the expensive ice sculpture into a melting lopsided phallus that soaked the buffet table linens.

No, we’ll pass over those minor points.

Because the element of the unexpected that came closest to causing a Total Bridal Meltdown was the adorable flowergirl. Six years old, angelic in pink satin, with blond ringlets cascading from a wreath of tiny rosebuds, tiny patent leather shoes…

Angelic? Give that child one piece of candy too many (and no, it wasn’t me who did that!) and she turned into hyperactive devilspawn:

Poking her finger through her Granny’s antique silk lampshades. Hog-tying the cat with ribbon stripped from the wedding gifts she’d decided to open. And drawing big blue daisies on the train of the wedding gown — minutes before zero hour — with a leaky ballpoint pen.

Yep, that’s what I said.

While the bride was sitting about in her lacey underthings, under the hairdresser’s care, and the limousine was pulling into the curb, and the father of the bride was pacing the front hallway with his watch in his hand — the flowergirl drew big blue flowers on the pristine white field of the wedding gown.

With a ballpoint pen.

See, this is the point where the milk comes in — and a tip from the calm and practical wife of that same dairy farmer whose fields, sadly, have just been sold off for building lots (because that’s what happens to far too many family farms, these days: but don’t get me started!) –

Milk removed the ink stain.

Soak in milk, rinse in cool water. Soak and rinse, soak and rinse, until the spot comes clean. Then a quick bit of work with the hairdresser’s blow drier — and the gown was once more whiter than the bride’s conscience… er, white enough to walk down the aisle!

Yes, it’s true. Milk can take out many kinds of ink from almost any fabric that you can get wet without worry. Whole milk works best, by the way. Mind you, there’s nothing I’ve found yet that will get out ink from permanent markers (which is probably why they call them “permanent,” d’ya think?), but for your basic flowergirl graffiti with a regular ballpoint pen? Magic!

And perhaps best not to talk about what happened to the unwisely artistic flowergirl, when her mother took her upstairs to have a little chat…

The key point is, a glass of milk saved the wedding day.

Now, the people over at Got Milk?, keen folks though they may be, won’t be bragging up the stain-removal properties of milk. They can (and will, at the drop of a hat) tell you all about the other benefits of milk — healthy hair, stronger nails, better sleep, and all that lovely PMS-fighting calcium, and so on — but they won’t tell you that milk gets out many kinds of ink stains.

My theory: it’s probably because milk’s not registered as a laundry product, and there isn’t the “scientific evidence” to back up any big ink-cleaning claims. Fair enough. But I can tell you — I was there; I was the one who wrestled the Satanic pen-wielding flowergirl to the ground; and I saw the milk do its magic with my very own eyes.

Got wedding? Got kid?
You might want to pick up a quart of milk.
Just sayin’.