Happily Ever After

Last weekend, in a brief moment of remote control ownership, I tuned into basic cable and saw a very disturbing show called "Rich Bride, Poor Bride." I watched two episodes and didn't see what I would call a "poor" bride--although actually, after they blew their budgets, both brides probably did end up poor. One couple spent about $75,000. They talked her out of having live peacocks at the reception.

That makes me think about my own much simpler but very nice-for-Farmersville wedding over a decade ago. In many ways it was a disaster.

We were engaged for a year and a half; we had plenty of time to plan but fates conspired against us.

By the time we got to the week of the wedding, we had buried two people on the guest list and paid our respects to a distant uncle. One of the people we lost was my husband's grandfather who died Monday, we had visitation Wednesday, funeral Thursday, rehearsal dinner Friday, wedding Saturday. How his grandmother handled it is beyond me.

On a lighter note, there were plenty of other problems awaiting the bride. My first-ever manicure was cancelled at the last minute, leaving me no time or energy to reschedule. The day of the wedding my hairstylist stood me up. Luckily, this was small town America and my mother tracked down the owner of the shop who came in with shaking hands to work on my hair--and she still charged us.

My husband's uncle who hadn't lived here for decades got in his head that he knew exactly where the church was. When he showed up at the Methodist church in town (instead of the Presbyterian church in the country), he did what any small town America person would do. He stopped a random person on the street and said he was looking for our wedding. And they knew all about it.

What else happened... Oh, yeah, the cake almost fell over when we cut it. And it POURED DOWN RAIN.

I had this vision that when we exited the church all our friends and family would be there showering us gently with a curtain of bubbles. Instead my new and blessedly devoted mother-in-law almost hyperventilated trying to create the same effect by herself when we got to the reception.

So a decade-plus later of wedded bliss we look back at the aftermath. If our wedding was a movie, there would be the voice over at the end that tells you what happened to all the players afterword:
- The cake lady closed shop
- The hairstylist left and formed a new shop--and she had the nerve to call and ask if I would move with her
- The photographer later botched a wedding, harassed the bride, and ended being criminally charged
- The reception hall is now closed and slated for demolition
- The DJ went back to his day job as a barber
- My brother got married on the same weekend a few years later and it POURED DOWN RAIN.