Maybe it's just that it's wedding season and our fridge is becoming cluttered with save-the-date magnets and wedding invitations, but I've been thinking a lot about our wedding lately.
It was a disaster.
I'm not being dramatic here either, it was truly an absolute disaster. This past semester I took a creative non-fiction writing class (seriously, seriously ridiculously awesome class with an equally ridiculously awesome professor. I highly recommend it) and we had to write creatively about a memorable event in our life. I wrote about the wedding and my first draft was 27 pages. Single spaced. Seriously. Needless to say, the maximum on the paper was 7 pages, so I had to make a few cuts and I chose to narrow it down to the three worst things that happened. I chose: Our location closing down ten days before the wedding (damn economic recession!), our flower order was lost (that's right. I went to pick up my flowers and there weren't any. Not cool) and the person who's only job was to show up and unlock the church neglected to show up and unlock the church.
This sounds terrible, I know, but it's really only the tip of the iceberg. Here are some honorable mentions that, unfortunately, couldn't make it into my paper:
-The police showed up when they saw a bunch of dudes in tuxes and a girl in a big white dress claiming we all looked "suspicious". When we explained to them why we were loitering in a church parking lot, the officer looked at me and said (I swear), "How do we know you're really here for a wedding?". Uh, really? See above, re: dudes in tuxes and a girl in a big white dress. There's nothing like having the cops crash your wedding to add that little extra something to the festivities.
-My maid-of-honor dropped the wedding cake. Luckily, she dropped it in the lobby of the Embassy Suites (that's right, this is an absolutely shameless plug! They were able to do my wedding in ten days, so I'm dropping their name!) and the chef actually wound up reconstructing it (thankfully it was still in the box when she dropped it). Considering the fact that it was practically flattened, they did a really great job. I probably would have never noticed it was different if Josh hadn't leaned over during our first dance to ask if our cake looked lopsided to me. It did.
-My maid-of-honor (yes, her again!) forgot to bring Josh's wedding ring to the church. She took the matter into her own hands and found a solution that involved briefly bullying and verbally abusing Josh's brother until he surrendered his own ring to use as a stand-in. It may sound like I had the worst maid-of-honor ever, but I completely disagree. She's obviously entertaining as well as an out-of-the-box problem solver, which, if you think about it, are the best qualifications in any maid-of-honor (and best friend, for that matter!).
-The guy who did my hair for the wedding spent the entire hour trying to talk me out of getting married. He said everything going wrong was a sign that I shouldn't get married. The only sign I saw was that I should have gone elsewhere to get my hair done.
However, not everything was bad. Also, lost in the 20 or so pages that I had to cut were some great moments and some incredibly helpful people.
-First, Embassy Suites (endorse, endorse, endorse) totally saved the day. We actually ended up writing a letter to their corporate offices about how great they were and seriously name-dropped our butts off. I really hope some people got the credit they deserved.
-Right after Officer Loitering asked me if we were really there for a wedding, I felt like my head was about to explode (wouldn't you?!). I happened to turn to my future mother-in-law who saw the look on my face and kindly and calmly reminded me that I didn't want to spend my wedding night in jail. Which is always a good lesson. So is remembering to take a second to breathe, which I think was the lesson within the lesson (and something I've never been very good at!).
-The person who failed to unlock the church was neither dead or injured in any way, just so you know. They did, however, get fired. I feel bad that they lost their job (well...sort of. I'm sorry, but they almost ruined our wedding and there was one before us too that they didn't show up for. That's just not okay). The silver lining was watching my mom make approximately two calls and getting the President of UNM (we got married in a really awesome chapel on campus) on the phone, who apologized profusely and promptly someone to unlock the church. My mom is a bad ass. She's practically Chuck Norris in heels.
-My brother, circling the church in his tux contemplating any kind of post-life ramifications we may have to deal with if we broke into the church, while at the same time expertly surveying which window would be best to throw something at, to break into the church. Actually, now that I think about it, it's no wonder the cops came.
-My other best friend (not the scrappy cake-dropper, but a dude who we'll call Foster) said the one thing that he knew would calm me down. In high school, we were theater geeks and there's a theory that when you have a really terrible dress rehearsal, instead of being freaked out, you know that all the mistakes came out in rehearsal and now the show will be great. So, bad rehearsal, good show. Disastrous wedding, good marriage. It was the perfect thing to say and he completely saved my sanity by saying it.
Clearly, I had far from a fairytale wedding. But you know what? What's life without a little disaster? Boring. Disaster can be the glue that holds us together. It makes things interesting. We think our wedding story is hilarious and not because time has passed and we can look back on it with a few years of marriage under our belts and blah blah blah. We thought it was hilarious while it was happening. We wound up having an amazing ceremony performed by my fantastic father-in-law (who was so fantastic that he's a hot commodity within our group of friends! Everyone wants to be married by him!) and a really fun reception. And most importantly, at the end of the day, we were married. Which was all we wanted. Who cares about a wedding, really? It's one day. Marriage is the rest of your life.
And the rest of our life started with laughter. You just can't ask for more than that.
