I don't know what bearing a wedding has on how long you stay married. Today is our 22nd anniversary so it seems worth a trip down memory lane regardless.
Our wedding day was pretty wonderful considering we loved each other and mainly just wanted to get married. Other things went well too such as our clothes and the photos and food and flowers. It was a low-budget wedding and we made it look as good as we could and most of the people we loved were there.
There were the usual disasters. The hairdresser decided that even though the up-do hairstyle we’d practiced the week before was quite sublime, she fancied I’d look better on my wedding day with a nice 50’s beehive. I cried from the hair salon to the church where my bridesmaids immediately went into action with curling irons, gels, bobby pins and hairspray. I think they enjoyed it actually, being urgently called into action to avert a crisis, all on deadline.
Things were a blur from there: the ceremony, the reception line, cake and drinks, a short limo ride, dinner, and then just like that, we were a married couple.
And then just like that, while driving out to my relative's condo, we had a fight.
I wasn’t a normal teenage girl, I guess, in that I didn’t spend much time thinking or dreaming about weddings or dresses or anything really to do with getting married. I mainly just thought about guys. About the only thing that had ever crossed my mind was how cool it would be to have your getaway car be completely decked out.
Being that we were married during the holiday season, our bridal party decided to wrap our car in Christmas paper. They also wrote on the windows with soap and lipstick, tied things to the bumper, and as a macabre and utterly bizarre finishing touch, they impaled a fish on the car antennae. It was quite spectacular.
As we drove off, the fish started a very slow, very wobbly arc across the front windshield as the antennae bowed and then slowly bounced back into position. Then it did it again. Sloooow arc, nice bounce then boing! Back to the other side again. For some reason, my new husband and the one driving the car, found this distracting. He was also concerned about our car overheating being that it was wrapped in Christmas paper.
I was thrilled with the spectacle of our car, the noise we were making with cans from the bumper and the honks and waves we got. The fish was kind of a wild card but it added a unique touch. All in all, the experience was meeting my expectations and I was quite thrilled.
About a mile down the road, JJ turned over to the side of the road and got out. He didn’t say anything, just stepped outside and proceeded to rip paper off the car and remove our fish from the antennae. It was very cold outside so he was working very quickly.
The rest isn’t even really worth retelling in much detail. There was a lot of shouting and disbelief and waving of hands and threats and an attempt to re-impale the fish on the antennae. For the most part, the person representing the Left Brain side of the argument won with sound points about actually getting to the place we were going, not just driving the car to be seen. There were some compromise pieces of paper left hanging on and of course, everything else that didn’t impede our journey.
After a stop at a grocery store to buy cold medicine, we drove the distance into North Idaho and managed to get into my aunt and uncle’s condo without triggering the alarm and disturbing the neighbors. We collapsed, exhausted and worn-out, but happy and married.
Thinking back, I’m not really sure what a perfect wedding would look like or how ours might have been different. I imagine how much you spend probably has some bearing on perfection.
In reality, I think the perception of a perfect wedding has much more to do with expectations or what a wedding is even supposed to represent. Our wedding was simple and meaningful and pretty much how we wanted, right down to all the mistakes that end up being what we tell the stories about.
We keep making mistakes and we kept making mistakes, even that night. We learned that spermicidal foam can and does explode when not opened properly. It will also stain beautiful linen lampshades, even if they don’t belong to you.
Twenty-two years later, I’m pretty happy that’s how things started out. We haven’t really stopped arguing or loving each other like crazy or doing things the wrong way and then, having it all turn out to be a beautiful after all.
Happy, zany, amazing anniversary, JRJ.
You still rock my world.
