PractiGal: June 22 -- a nice day to get married!

Of course marriage isn't about the wedding day. The cake, flowers, and guests are all fun parts of the celebration of the committment you make on that day.

But one of the questions on Michele's site today is Where did you get married, and was it a fancy wedding? Since today my husband and I are celebrating our 4th wedding anniversary, I thought I'd respond to that question here.

We were married at a local university's interfaith chapel. It was an especially hot and humid June day in upstate NY, and there were even a few raindrops in the morning. I had done most of the planning for the day, so things were just as I wanted them. My husband would have been content with much less, but he knew that this was important to me, so he supported me in most of the decisions (more on that later).

My husband was very involved in choosing who would officiate at our ceremony though. Since we weren't members of a church, we didn't have someone who'd automatically marry us. We shopped around. We went to several churches, of different denominations. After a LOT of shopping around, we found a minister whose approach and sermons we liked very much. We started attending his church as guests and ultimately asked him if he'd marry us. We were thrilled when he said he'd do it.

Besides the minister, my husband had one wish for the day -- that a cold Guinness be waiting for him at the reception. Simple needs. I like that.

We arranged to rent out a Bed & Breakfast with a party room for the weekend. The capacity of the party room was 65 or so, so there was the limit for our guest list. This worked out perfectly, as we wanted a smallish celebration. We rented tables and chairs, arranged for a caterer (who'd bring the Guinness), a cake, and so on.

Well, the "so on" may be the only area where we disagreed. In some areas, we agreed to go frugal; I printed the invitations on special card stock on my laser printer and burned CDs of music to play at the reception on a rented sound system. In other areas, we spent the bucks -- good food, beer and wine, a flamenco guitarist, ugly orthopedic white sandals for me (ghastly, actually, but comfortable), and flowers. Ah, the flowers.

I met with the florist by myself. I didn't really know what I wanted. I knew what I liked, but I didn't have a grand vision of what I wanted. I'm not a woman who'd had her wedding day planned in her head for years. We didn't have any sort of theme (other than tasteful, simple elegance) and I had just one attendant, my sister from Colorado, whom I'd told to wear "whatever."

I went with the florist my friend Kristi had at her wedding, because her flowers were simply gorgeous. The day of the meeting with the florist, my sister went shopping for her dress. I needed a swatch of the color she planned to wear, so I could take it with me to the florist. Just in the nick of time, as is her style, she called me from David's Bridal in Denver. "How's red?" she said. Fine. Just tell me the dress's part number -- I looked it up online and it looked fine. So, I swung by my local David's to pick up a swatch of fabric and was off to meet with the florist.

Brad is a very experienced florist, and has done big-time events in New York City and around the world. His work was beautiful. We talked, with him asking me about who'd have corsages, etc, how many tables there'd be, where we'd want arrangements at the ceremony, and so on. I signed up, and gave him a deposit. When I came home my hubby-to-be was floored that I had signed up to spend hundreds of dollars on flowers. He made a case for little bundles of flowers from Wegmans, our grocery store. And Wegmans does have perfectly lovely flowers. But I wanted this florist and the arrangements he was going to make. Perhaps not very PractiGal-ish of me, but what can I say... I am a romantic and a sucker for flowers.

The actual wedding ceremony was very nice, despite the lack of air conditioning in the chapel. Did I mention that it was hot and humid? My poor husband's glasses were all steamed up, and he was sweating so badly in that monkey suit. When we play back the video of our wedding, you can hear hubby breathing loudly into the microphone before the ceremony started. The poor man was roasting and gasping for air; every time I hear it I think, "Oooooh! There I am, about to marry Darth Vader!"

We rode in an antique car to the reception, and when we arrived I promptly surveyed the party room to make sure that everything was just as I wanted it. I noticed a couple of minor things that weren't "just so," and one big thing.

There were bottles of beer lined up on the bar. Hmm. We had arranged to have beer on tap. I charged over to the bar, scanned the bottles, and saw that something was missing. "Hi," I said, "I'm Marie ... WHERE'S THE GUINNESS?" Somehow the caterer missed that one key element of our conversation. I explained to the bartenders that that had been my husband's one request, and that we needed that corrected. They went and got some. Alas, it was not cold, so my husband had warm Guinness on our wedding day. (Yes, I know the Irish don't drink it cold, but my husband is not Irish and likes it cold!)

Our first dance was to Etta James' "At Last," and we carefully moved our feet as we'd learned in our last-minute dance lessons. We mingled with our friends and family, and that evening stayed at the B&B with some of our out-of-town family. We'd been promised the left-overs from the caterer, and we were ready to dig in later that evening. Except, somehow this part of the deal had fallen through. The left-overs were nowhere to be found. So, we ordered a big pizza instead! And ate cake -- there was plenty of cake.

One of the best parts of the day was unwinding with my new hubby after all was said and done. We relaxed in our room's huge jacuzzi tub and told each other about how the day went for each of us, before the ceremony. It's very different for men -- he picked up his tux and took his car to the carwash that morning!

That's still one of my favorite parts of the day -- telling each other about our day, at the end of the day. And that's something that I like very much about marriage -- the fact that we're always there for each other.

Here's a piece I wrote last year for my husband. It still applies today, so I'm re-posting it. Happy anniversary, honey! I love you and would marry you all over again, in a heartbeat.

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The excerpt below is from a post originally published here on June 22, 2005:

I never had pre-wedding jitters, thinking "am I marrying the right person?" Nope. I was 36. I was "mature." (I prefer that word to, um, other words.) I had been around the block enough to know what made a man a 'good man,' and what made a man someone for me.

My man is honest. There's never any guessing about whether he's being straight with you. He is. I love that about him. There are no games.

But there IS fun. There are practical jokes. There's Mr. Bean. Monk. Odd humor. We enjoy odd humor together. I remember on an early date going to see the movie Mumford. There were only a dozen people or so in the theater, and we were the only ones laughing. Didn't anyone else get it?

That's another thing I like about him. My husband 'gets it.' He's a deep thinker. Sometimes my brain can't keep up with all of this ideas and thoughts, but I love that he's always thinking.

And he's always thinking of our family. When I was pregnant, he busted his butt to make updates to our kitchen, because I insisted on having a dishwasher. He's a very handy man, and it seems that there is no task too big for him to take on.

My husband is all of these things, and he's very handsome and sweet, to boot. I am a very lucky lady! Our son is a lucky little boy.

Many years ago, in a yoga class I was taking, the teacher always had us do a "visualization" at the end of class. We were to imagine something that we'd like in our lives - personal, job, love, whatever... I always pictured the same thing. I'd see myself working around a yard, on a tree-lined street, with a little child running around, and a car would pull into the driveway -- it would be my husband... and the little child & I would go to greet him.

Thanks for helping to make my dream come true, sweetie. I love you! You are forever my Pickle Man.

Comments

As one of the lucky guests at your wedding, I can say it was exactly as you wanted it to be: simply elegant. You were stunning, your flowers were beautiful, and everything about the day was special.

And everyone has those things that just don't go as they should at their weddings. For some reason, our unity candle disappeared. We have no idea where it went, but it never made it out of the church!

Posted by: Kristi | Thursday, June 22, 2006 at 01:31 PM