We Dare You: Ride Bikes at Your Wedding
The sales associate who was helping me try on gowns at the bridal shop didn't know what to say when I asked her, "Do you think I can ride a bike in this dress?"
To be fair, it isn't something most people do at their weddings.
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My husband, Nick, and I love riding bikes, especially in urban areas, and when we travel we always try to test a city's bike share program. It's the best way to get to know a place, free of tour buses and stuffy taxis. During a pre-engagement trip to Paris last April we used the Velib bike share as our primary way to get around, winding through the labyrinth of streets in search of cheese, chocolate, and wine.
Bikes had been such a big part of our courtship in Paris, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and New York City that we felt we had to incorporate them into our wedding last September in Philadelphia. We found a convenient solution: the city's new bike share program, Indego. They agreed to lend us 30 bikes so that we could ride from the ceremony at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology to our reception at the Vesper Boat Club.
We didn't let a drizzle of rain stop us. Our wedding party hooted and hollered and rang cowbells. Drivers and pedestrians stopped to take photos of us and yelled their congratulations.
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It wasn't easy to ride in my dress. I had to hitch it up over my Spanx to keep it from getting caught in the spokes, but I hardly noticed what I was wearing once we hit the pavement. It was the best two-mile bike ride of my life.
Jo Piazza is the managing editor for Yahoo! Travel and the coauthor of the novel The Knockoff.
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