Wedding Stories
January 27th, 2012
Reverend Jack married us at the chapel of tackiness forty-eight hours before we flew to Japan where my brand new husband and I spent one night together before he left me to serve aboard the USS Midway, an aircraft carrier that is now a museum in San Diego. I was unfamiliar with Navy life, had never been on a naval base and it took me a week to find out there was a bus I could take to get around Yokosuka. I worked the night shift before the day we got married, from 6 pm to 6 am. We called Reverend Jack at 8:00 that morning and he said he could marry us at 10:00 so I opted to stay awake another 2 hours. I didn’t mind that there was no time to shop for a white dress and veil. Nor was there time for wedding invitations. Luckily, my husband’s grandmother had given him her wedding ring, so we had that covered, plus it was something old and it fit. I wore a blue dress. I didn’t have anything new, but, you know what? That was 28 years ago. We are still in love and enjoy telling people who perceive us to be so conservative this story. It shocks them, I suppose with good reason. Especially the part about me working the night before we married. Inevitably people ask, “Would you do it differently now if you could?” You bet, I say. The thing I’d do differently is I would have married him exactly the same way 10 years earlier. It’s being together that matters, not how you seal that commitment. Your marriage is not a wedding. Your marriage is bigger, more important and a lot more gritty than pretty if you’re living a real life. Learning to love each as you change and age is a marriage, therein is the gold. Whatever way you decide to do it, will be all right.