Posts tagged wedding

The great thing about getting married at a little-known park a few blocks from your house is that you can go there anytime you like and it will still be your wedding place. Churches are pretty, but 10,000 people might get married there in its lifetime and they will go there every Sunday and the industrial Berber carpet and padded chairs will forget you were ever there in all the traffic—-if such things can retain memories at all.  But with a park, the chances of anyone else getting married in that exact same sandy, ant infested patch of Bermuda grass that you did are very slim. The trees and earth, even in their winter slumber, will remember you and will secretly belong to that moment forever.

Which is why last night, on the date marking our second month of marriage, we walked together to the park. We exchanged lace and suits for puffy down coats and hats, but I had stuffed my grandma’s wedding handkerchief in my pocket—-a little token that I had with me walking down the aisle in October. When we got to the place, we split up and he took his spot beneath the trees and I came down the hill in the dark, white lace handkerchief draped humorously over my green stocking cap. The park was silent and dark and geese squawked somewhere out of sight. Nothing hinted of a windy, warm October afternoon 2 months ago, but in the silence I could imagine the red and cream paper lanterns swaying in the trees, sweet, sad fiddle music and the rows of smiling people watching my dad and I make our way up the bumpy runner. Dan would be waiting for me then, dressed in a sandy suit, untidy Dennis the Menace hair gleaming like the halo of a 6 year old in a Christmas play. Tears streamed from his ice-blue eyes and his smile radiated with every ounce of happiness a person could contain. Our pastor’s son would preside with words of wisdom that we would repeat, hardly hearing them….

I was still only halfway down our darkened “aisle” before Present Dan, at the altar spot, reminded me that I needed to trip a little bit on the invisible runner if we were going to make this legit. (Hurrah for being eternally ungraceful!) So after an over-dramatic stumble, I walked up to my husband of 2 months and we happily skipped all the ceremony bits we could barely recall. Flipping the handkerchief up, he went straight to the part where he could kiss the bride, with only geese and raccoons to cluck if it went overlong.

We stood there in the frigid December air for what seemed like ages. The park shelter that once held a wedding party was once again dirty and inhabited by the brown paper bags of hobos’ empty whiskey bottles. The small patch of forest that had walled the place into seclusion had a gash cut into it by a newly finished road that let in ambulance sirens from the hospital across the river. The stupid neon sewer pipes from the McLean/Central intersection pierced the once tree-lined horizon like the tacky skyline of a Star Trek planet. The grass where we stood was dead, but then, it was dead when we got married too. We had changed in the past 2 months, but not as much as our surroundings it seemed. Still, it was our spot, and with or without an overpaid videographer, I’m sure I’ll remember how it looked that day forever.

*

We slowly walked back down the aisle, extremities half-frozen and ready for the warmth of apartment and bed. Halfway home, we passed Dan’s old apartment complex and a part of me still twinged with the old familiar fear that he might have to go back to that place and leave me for the night—-but we kept walking. Christmas lights turned unremarkable Craftsman bungalows into fairytale cottages and we longed for each one as we passed. At 11:00 we reached the front steps and the cat greeted us noisily as we locked the front door. We brushed our teeth and fell into bed with the devotional book my mom gave us. Between the dishes and tacos, French movies, weird British sodas and long walks, that night encompassed married life as we had hoped it would all the months prior to October 2nd, 2010.

***

Admittedly, two months is hardly a landmark, and today only marks our first year together. Still, something tells me it’s a good idea to stockpile memories in writing why they are still fresh, and gauging from the length of this post, I’d say they are ripe for the picking. Marriages are a bit like parks, after all, and we will go through winters and the color will leave the world for a bit. But when we’re standing together in the dark and cold, we can still walk to that patch of grass in a half-forgotten park where once upon a time, on a golden Autumn day, two stories ended and one story began, “And they lived….” And the earth will be there to help us remember.

So far, being married feels just like dating, only easier and without the awful part where he says good night at the end of the day and sleeps somewhere else.

I know I still have a long road before me, but as of right now, this is the happiest I’ve ever been and it is freaking amazing.

The thing I’ve realized about getting married is that it’s like NOTHING you’ve ever experienced, and it definitely doesn’t feel like watching a wedding in a movie. No, this is a whole new beast. But we humans like generalizing things based on what we know, so I’ll try anyway.

Five months away, getting married does feel like watching a romcom. You associate with the general lighthearted excitement, drama and romance that the quirky blond experiences prior to the wedding, but in the end, the credits roll and it’s not you and those few emotions are all you can associate with that great event so far away.

Two months to go, however, getting married starts to feel a lot like watching a Wes Anderson drama or some gritty indie flick with weird, raw emotions, fears, longings and a whole bunch of other crap you don’t really want to understand. People cry and fight and die and sometimes things don’t go happily ever after in the end. And while the movie invokes deeper emotions than the romcom, it’s still a stringy brunette marrying Owen Wilson, and it’s easy to fall back into the comforts of Romcom dreamland after the gritty nightmare fades a little. However, something much bigger is looming ominously overhead, and whatever it is won’t let you sleep in romantic idealism long.

Four days away, that’s when you start feeling like someone plucked the stringy brunette out of the gritty indie drama and shoved you up on the screen and conveniently forgot to give you the script. You still sort of feel like the Romcom Bride; your hair got screwed up and your face looks vaguely like a pizza, but you’re definitely not in that genre anymore, Toto. Families are selfish and filled with hate and they won’t come happily coming together in the end. They’re doing construction by your ceremony and the park isn’t quite as pretty as you remembered it. Money is scarce and your fiance is stressed to the max.

And hell, it’s you getting married! You are going to be living with this random man you’ve picked out of millions and you will have to choose to love him every time he talks about video games instead of real life. It’s funny when the guy talks about nerdy things and embarrasses the girl in the romcoms, but it’s a little different in real life. You and he have to work to make this work because life won’t fade to black after he kisses you and swings you around in front of a happy, clapping audience.

No, getting married is nothing like anything you will ever experience sitting in the dark of the matinee. Two days to go and all passivity vanishes when you realize that you’ll be giving your very heart and soul to someone outside of your warm, protective shell self, and that’s dangerous and risky. But when I look at him and see the warmth, love and loyalty in his soft blue eyes, I have no doubt that he will wrap my heart in a blanket and carry it as carefully as a clumsy, nerdy puppy-man can. I know he might stumble, and I’m sure he might chew on my nerves a from time to time, but through it all, he will be doing everything he can never to drop me. Just knowing that makes all the worries, fears and doubts roll away like the names of stringy brunette actresses and their fade to black lives.

So I say, let’s do this marriage thing. No more fears, no more doubts—-just happy stomach butterflies. I’m ready to live and no amount of pessimism is going to ruin our fun.

…Gang aft agley.
Annnnd the whole duplex thing fell through because my brother has decided that he wants to continue living with the folks.
Sigh. So much for the hoping.

Also, that phrase is way better in Scots.

11 Days and Counting
Oh Lord. I have 11 days before D-Day and the civil war that is going on between the north butterflies and the south butterflies in my stomach has reached Irish proportions.

To-Do List:

• Get hair colored
• Arrange decorations
• Get Marriage License
• Get credit card
• Figure out favors
• Repaint cake topper hair (Dan looks great, but the color I picked for my hair is still very brunette. I am not a brunette. At least, not as of right now. Tomorrow? Who knows.)
• Make sure the bridesmaids dresses don’t look hideous
• Call church to make sure I have a backup in case it rains (I’ve been telling people I already did this. I haven’t. I suck.)
• Find tables
• Vows
• Wedding Day schedule
• Pray that my feet won’t fall off
• Pray it doesn’t rain (it looks questionable)
• Bachelorette party
• Wonder why Bachelorette isn’t a word recognized by most spell checkers.
• Read up to find out what the heck is supposed to happen in the next 11 days so I can tell other people, who apparently have no desire to do it themselves.
• Not kill Dan/drive him insane with my incessant sobbing

It’s a very stressful month. I’m pretty sure that honeymoons were invented so brides don’t go on a violent, post-wedding rampage at the office. Hurrah wedding stress/PMS anxiety! I feel awesome!

*dry heave*

Somehow, something happened.
We went from being sure we were going to be stuck in my closetless (but cute) one bedroom apartment forever to suddenly finding ourselves a duplex with 2 bedrooms, a dishwasher and a basement! This is better than bad—-it’s good!

So here’s how it may go down:

Firstly, a map.

College Student X and College Student Y live in one of my family’s duplexes down the street. College Student Y has become unhappy and wants to leave, and since she’s not on the lease, she can go whenever she wants. But College Student X would be left alone with no way to afford the duplex and he’d have to break his lease if he wanted to leave. However, College Student X is best friends with my little brother, so he asked my brother to move in with him. But that’s still a lot of space for 2 boys, and the duplex is a bit pricey for my brother…slight conundrum.

Except! I live in a one bedroom apartment with a roommate. It actually works out pretty well exactly how it is. However, she is only living here short-term until Dan moves in in October, so most of her stuff is still at her parents’ house, which is the only way she could fit in here comfortably.

Unfortunately, when Dan moves in, he won’t have a lot of stuff, but he’ll have way more than my roommate, who brought only clothes and a few books. It will go from comfortable to cluttered in 10 seconds and claustrophobia will set in the moment he carries me over the threshold.

But the great thing about college boys is, they don’t have a lot of stuff. Two college boys have about the same amount of stuff as one girl. Therefore, if my calculations are right, my brother and College Student X could fit comfortably into my apartment, Dan and I would take their duplex, I don’t have to clean nearly as much when I leave, we take on eachother’s leases and everyone goes home happy. I’ve talked to my mom, who’s partly in charge, and she said it’s very doable.

But the part that I like best is where everyone goes home.

…Let’s just pray that my calculations go through…

(Only downfall to this move: This duplex sits squarely in front of the big, beautiful blue Dutch colonial house Dan and I desperately want and is still currently for sale. Oh the agony…oh the torment….)