How I Planned Your Wedding (18 page)

E
very family has its own idiosyncrasies. In the end, you have to remain true to what you really want for yourself, deep down.

There are warring families who make the Medicis seem like the Tanners on
Full House.
Some couples deal with different religious backgrounds, divorced parents or same-sex unions. Everyone’s going to have an opinion on what you do, but you’re the one who will have a lifetime of memories from the occasion, so trust yourself.

Today, matrimony includes a multitude of styles, beliefs and loves. When I talk about “your” fiancé I’ve been referring to “him.” I’ll let my friend Julie take it from here, since she’s a little, ahem, more qualified than me to talk about marrying a foxy lady.

WIGGS:
Did your mother play a part in your wedding?

JULIE:
My mom passed away before any of my sisters or I could get married. During our ceremony, we took a moment to acknowledge all those who weren’t able to be there.

WIGGS:
What have you learned about the meaning of a wedding, both for you and your wife, and for your loved ones?

JULIE:
We had two weddings—one for our family and friends and one for us.

When we were planning our ceremony, we knew that it wouldn’t “count” in any kind of legal way. So for us, it was about our community committing to us as a lifelong couple. Our vows were not only vows
to each other, but vows that we’d be active in further bettering our community.

This wedding felt real—as far as we knew. We still celebrate this day as our anniversary. As the weeks and months went by, we really began to realize that there was now something physical mandating our relationship to be permanent. This made me much more accountable for our relationship. We finally realized the weight of the marriage.

WIGGS:
What was unique about your wedding?

JULIE:
As one of our “big three must-haves,” we knew there needed to be a heavy dose of live music. We held the ceremony in a music hall that had the elements of both a rock club and a chapel. We were married on stage.

Jen came down the aisle holding a candle with her parents by her side, I followed carrying a candle of my own and my father on my arm. It was dramatic and heartwrenching and SO us.

The most important thing to us was to have a wedding that could not have been anyone else’s.

WIGGS:
Tell me your best wedding drama story. I KNOW you’ve got at least one. Please. You have to. Otherwise I’ll feel like a failure and my entire book will be totally lame.

JULIE:
Probably the most dramatic element of my wedding was trying to find a wedding dress. I must have tried on thirty gorgeous, white, fluffy, perfect wedding gowns. Every time, I would say, “Wow. This is beautiful, and I look great…and I feel ridiculous.” From the very beginning, I had my ideal wedding dress drawn on a scrap of paper. Black and white lace corset top with a piecey, kinda rock ’n’ roll skirt. Believe it or not, this dress does not exist. Just when I was ready to give up, I found it. Black lace halter top with a low back (to show off my tattoos) and an asymmetrical satin pickup skirt with a big black sash around the waist. It was classy and rock ’n’ roll all at the same time. I knew it would work well with the faux-hawk hairdo I had planned. Before I even zipped it up, I knew.

WIGGS:
What are the three pieces of advice you’d give a bride?

JULIE:

1. Choose the three things that are your priorities for your wedding. No one can have the perfect EVERYTHING. For us it was great music, great food and an environmentalist message.
   
2. Delegate. If something isn’t going as planned, mention it to one of your helpers and then let her take care of it.
   
3. Don’t let your marriage just be a self-congratulatory event. Figure out what your love was put on the earth to do. Know that your marriage needs to have a purpose (and not just to stave off loneliness).
   

WIGGS:
What resources did you find most valuable in planning your wedding? Were there any unique challenges that you and your wife faced as a same-sex couple?

JULIE:
My favorite guides were the books that had some kind of punk element to them.
Anti-Bride Guide: Tying the Knot Outside of the Box
was a particularly good find.

We didn’t have any relatives who made a statement with their absence, or who sent nasty responses to our invitations. I bought the engagement rings outside of Dallas, and made a point of saying I was about to propose to my
girlfriend
—and they barely batted an eye.

We even had one of the girls at David’s Bridal blush bright red when we told her we wanted to look at bridesmaid’s dresses for our wedding. At first we thought she couldn’t handle the idea—turns out she was about to propose to her girlfriend that night.

Maybe your nontraditional situation isn’t being a same-sex couple.

Maybe you and your betrothed belong to different religions. Aubrey had a rabbi and a priest stand at the altar as she got married, leading her and her fiancé through various religious traditions. I was a bridesmaid and I nearly fainted (literally, and had to get another bridesmaid to prop me up) from the emotion evoked by drawing from two different spiritual cultures.

Maybe you have divorced and remarried parents, so your family has doubled in size. Susie’s stepfather became “Dad” while her biological father remained “Daddy.” Dad led her halfway down the aisle, where Daddy waited to escort her the rest of the way.

Maybe you don’t want to have a traditional big, white wedding at all. Lindsey invited everyone to an “engagement” cocktail party. In the middle of the evening, she sneaked away and switched out of her navy blue dress and into a knee-length ivory gown and birdcage veil. Minutes later—to the delight of her guests—she appeared in the room on the arm of her father, walked to the middle of the crowd and was married to her fiancé.

You know the one thing all these couples have in common? They all say their wedding was the happiest day of their lives, and they all ended up married to their soul mates.

B
y the time Dave and I started thinking about our honeymoon, every red cent of our wedding budget was spoken for. And then some.

Early on, we’d decided not to monkey with a huge, monthlong vacation halfway across the globe. We didn’t have a crystal ball, but we both knew we would be exhausted after our wedding, so we wanted to find a place to hole up and do a whole lotta nothing. Even if we’d had money left over, we wouldn’t have wanted to go somewhere that would call for all-day treks to the most important tourist landmarks. And since we were broke, well…the old two-person pup tent in my parents’ garage was starting to look like our only option.

“At least we won’t have any wedding stuff to worry about,” Dave said gingerly.

“Yeah…” I said, my skin already tingling with phantom itches in anticipation of the clouds of mosquitoes that tend to find me whenever I’m in the wilderness.

I thought back wistfully to my mom’s suggestion, days into our engagement, that we honeymoon at the Château Frontenac in Quebec. Oh, well. We could have a lavish vacation some other time, when we hadn’t just spent twenty grand in one day.

My mom’s maternal instincts must have kicked her in the gut over this, because the day Dave and I decided to go camping for our honeymoon, she called me and asked what we were planning to do in
the two weeks before we had to return to Chicago and start classes at our respective grad schools.

“Oh!” I said brightly, taking a fake-it-till-you-make-it approach to being excited about spending my first days of wedded bliss in a sleeping bag on the ground. “Well, I think we’re going to go camping! You know, get away from it all, lose ourselves in the middle of nowhere…”

My mom’s silence on the other line was as thick as full-fat mayonnaise.

“Yeah, and then someday we’ll do a big celebratory trip, like, when we have the energy and…stuff…?” My voice trailed off.

“Well. That doesn’t sound very romantic.”

In my fragile, I’m-trying-to-be-okay-with-not-having-a-nice-honeymoon-even-though-my-armpit-hair-is-already-startingto-get-furrier-in-retaliation-for-me-not-being-able-to-shave state, I got defensive. In a cantankerous tone, I lashed out at my mom.

“It’s not exactly easy to have a romantic honeymoon when we don’t have any money to spend on it,” I snapped.

I waited for my mom’s cranky reply, but instead, she said simply, “I’ll call you back. I have an idea.”

SUSAN

HOW THE HONEYMOON REALLY EVOLVED

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Elizabeth comes from a long line of manipulative yet goodhearted women. It seems to run in the family like a clockwise cowlick. My mother’s mother was famous for convincing everyone that the only recipe she could successfully produce involved canned fruit in heavy syrup, large-curd cottage cheese and a dollop of Cool Whip, thus escaping the need to cook for years. She had
more important things to do, like teaching us to play pinochle, crocheting toilet-paper covers or painting elephants on greenware mugs.

And my mother. Don’t get me started. In our family, “Clara Lou” is often used as a verb. As in, “I just got Clara-Loued into leading a game of charades at the family reunion.”

Elizabeth was the first grandchild, awaited by my mother with the kind of anticipation most people reserve for Halley’s Comet. My daughter and my mother are as thick as thieves. I have pictures of them doing everything together, from lying in bed and taking one bite from every chocolate in the box to see what’s inside, to doing each other’s hair in cornrows, to knitting rugs for Barbie’s dream house.

The pair of them are inseparable—and the honeymoon was no exception.

There’s only one problem. Even the most evolved, easygoing and original couples are going to have a hard time bringing their grandparents along on the honeymoon.

The good news is, my mother is living proof that it can be done. And done well.

She heard through the grapevine (okay, it was me) that the wedding budget was spent, and there was little or nothing left over for a honeymoon. The bride and groom were looking into borrowing the neighbors’ VW Westfalia camper, grabbing a can of mosquito repellent and heading to the Starlite Motor Court for a couple of nights. It was better than heading back to the office or lecture hall two days after the wedding, but just barely.

Grammy and Pa to the rescue! Wishing to give the happy couple a memorable gift, they decided to lavish them with a dream honeymoon. And, boy, did they.

They found a resort amid the majestic vermilion canyons of southern Utah. The Inn at Entrada has private little casitas with kitchenettes and views of the red-rock buttes and the wide western sky. It has fountains and pools, a golf course and a day spa. It has high-speed internet, endless hikes in the wilder ness and HBO on Demand.

Oh, and one other thing. The dream resort, the perfect spot for the happy couple to adjust to married life
just happens to be seven miles from her grandparents’ house.
Imagine that!

So Elizabeth got to have her honeymoon and her grandparents, too. Kudos to Dave for being a good sport about it all, and to the grandparents for arranging everything and for giving the newlyweds plenty of space. The bride and her grandmother did manage to organize a couple of double dates, of course.

Seriously, this is in keeping with what we all believe—that spending money on an extravagant honeymoon is one thing, but spending time with your grandparents is priceless.

ELIZABETH

Days later, Grammy called and proposed giving us a honeymoon at the resort in her town. And, Dear Readers, it was awesome. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that honeymooning with your grandparents isn’t fun. Dave and I had an amazing time hiking the canyons of southern Utah during the day and going out to fancy meals with Grammy and Pa each evening. Pa would order Dave a tawny port at the end of each dinner and the four of us would watch the sun go down. During these long days after my wedding, my grandparents opened up to me about their own fifty-five-year marriage, sharing the secret to staying in love forever: “Everything is fifty-fifty,” Grammy told me. “No matter what.”

“Yeah,” said Pa, giving Dave a look that spoke volumes about another secret to a happy marriage: the wife is always right.

Sure, we didn’t go to an over-water glass-floored hut in Tahiti, spending our days getting couples massages and sipping piña coladas. But—and I mean this in the mushiest way possible—I cherish the memory of our honeymoon as a time spent learning from our elders,
enveloped in the love of multiple-family generations, with a little bit of prune juice thrown in to keep us regular. I wouldn’t trade that for the world.