Weddings and Funerals, Part 2

Flash forward a quarter of a century, or so, and we were now the parents of the bride-to-be. As I recall, we more or less knew it was coming so it was not all that surprising. (Interesting fact: The first time my wife’s mother EVER met me she guessed I was the one.) And before we go any further, here, bear in mind that my daughter is the only child of two only children. This may partly explained how the wedding turned into a rather large production.

Now, I don’t mean to sound like a curmudgeon, but the position I took on the planning was akin to the position that the people of London took during the Blitz. Hunker down in an air-raid shelter and hope a bomb doesn’t come crashing through. This partly explains why I don’t have that many memories of the planning process. In fact, my wife had a great deal more to do with the planning process than even my daughter. I think that is often the case but I believe the percentage of maternal input on this one was higher than many. So my memories of the process are kind of spotty and involve only those few parts where I had direct input.

One of the places where I wound up having a disproportionate influence was (Are you ready for this?) selection of the wedding gown. Yup. Believe it or not. And the reason this came to be is that I am a native New Yorker and learned to drive in and around the city. There were two bridal gown showrooms in the city where they wanted to look. One was in Brooklyn, one was in Queens. As it happens, I was summarily told that I was to be the, well, chauffeur. Now, I can find my way around the city without working up a sweat if I’m traveling by subway (that’s metro, underground or u-bahn depending on where you live). But traveling outside of Manhattan and certain parts of the Bronx by car? Not so much. So I made sure to get directions on how to get to our destinations on Mapquest. Smart, right? Not so much. This was the trip on which I became convinced that any resemblance between Mapquest and real roads and exits is purely coincidental. The specific exit where we were supposed to leave the highway and travel by local streets…does not exist. The exit before did. The exit after did. Not the one we needed. So, I took the next exit and backtracked. Eventually, we found the place.

We walked into a very sedate, almost somber waiting area. I plopped myself down expecting to be left there, opened the novel I had brought and proceeded to bury my nose in the book. That lasted until the consultant came for the ladies (my wife, my daughter, my mother and one of the bridesmaids). I was schlepped along although they gave me a chair outside the little changing room but not before I looked around and said, “I am in wedding gown hell.” So I plopped myself down, opened the novel and proceeded to bury my nose in the book. Every now and again, they would emerge from the changing room and I would kind of look up and note that my daughter had on a different gown. This went on for many chapters of my novel until she came out in one gown. I did my usual look up, then down…but then I looked up again. I actually got up (making like I was just stretching my legs) and walked over to take a closer look. If there was a gown that had been made for her, this was it. After the consultant had come to get that one and was taking it back, I got my wife’s attention and said, “That one looked beautiful on her. Don’t say anything to the people here but let her (my daughter) know what I said.” My wife told her and she started crying because when she tried that one on she thought it was just right. The fact that I had even expressed an opinion and one that was so positive was all she needed to hear. Not long after that, we went to the second place. This time I was left in the car so that I could read and listen to the Yankees game on the radio. That was an indication to me that unless something REALLY special was seen at the second place, a decision had been reached. In fact, that was the case although we ordered the gown through a local place in Connecticut and had a local dress shop do the alterations and fitting.

I was spared many of the trips to various possible venues for the wedding. In much the same way that when we have moved, I have only been taken to the serious possibilities for a new house, I was only taken to the serious possible choices for the wedding. One of these was a local hotel which turned out to be THE place. My wife negotiated a package for a ballroom for the ceremony, the big one for the reception, the catering, special prices for the rooms for guests and a wedding night room for the bride and groom and the parents of the bride. What I did not expect was the food tasting. Food tasting? You don’t just pick a selection off a list? You have to go taste it? Apparently yes. One evening, there we were, the bride and groom, bride’s parents (that was us), groom’s parents and one of the brides maids and groomsmen who were, at the time, also engaged. The wedding was going to be Memorial Day weekend, so spring fruits were in. That meant that the soup they were proposing was some sort of cold fruit soup. Cold fruit soup? I DON’T THINK SO! Neither did the groom. So, that meant that it was necessary to have, at the reception, two bowls of chicken noodle soup because the two of us were not going to have any fruity soup. The salad was another one of those frou-frou things. I don’t remember what sort of ick salad was decided on but the groom and father of the bride were getting special plates of salad made with real (iceberg) lettuce and French dressing.

The wedding cake tasting, on the other hand, was rather more pleasant. I have no idea how they found it but one Saturday, we went down to Old Saybrook to a restaurant on Route 1 run by a very nice young woman. We had a very pleasant lunch and the sample wedding cake was delicious. And I don’t much like cake with icing. She also insisted that when the time came, she did not want them having a saved piece for their first anniversary. She would make a small brand new cake for them as part of the price. As things happened, this was a rather moot point, but I anticipate.

My other major contribution to the wedding was arranging for a person to officiate. The wedding ceremony was going to be a civil ceremony but no one had any idea where to find someone to officiate. At the time I was one of the DMV hearing officers. Several years earlier one of our female hearing officers had been selected as a judge of the superior court. I suggested her as the person to officiate and she happily accepted. (She did a marvelous job, by the way.)

The month before the wedding was the shower. It turned into a Jack and Jill shower (meaning the guys got to go to it, too.) Here, the major issue was parental…not us, but OUR parents. Well, the mothers, specifically. For reasons unrelated to anything relevant herein, my mother and mother-in-law had not spoken for many years. Since they were both invited to the shower, to say nothing of the wedding, it took some diplomacy on the level of the SALT talks to arrange for them both to be present. Fortunately, all came off without a hitch.

Not too long before the wedding I recall a flap of some sort over the bridesmaids’ dresses. The ladies involved ranged in size and shape and there was some dispute over what would look good on ALL of them. The details escape me but the resolution of it was that I stepped in and resolved it by imperial fiat (okay, as imperial as I ever get). But that was the end of that.

So the Memorial Day weekend finally arrived. The rehearsal dinner was held in the lower level of a local pizza restaurant that has since gone out of business. (No, neither our wedding nor my daughter’s had anything to do with that.) This was notable only in that in negotiating the stairs, my father-in-law fell. Nothing funny there, but things surrounding this wedding were always interesting.

The big day, Sunday, rolled around. Now, understand that the Sunday of Memorial Day to me means: Monaco Grand Prix followed by the Indianapolis 500 followed by the Coca-Cola 600. It is my holy day of auto racing. I made it clear that when we got to the hotel, the ladies would go to the room reserved for the bride and bridesmaids and I would plop myself in front of the TV in the room for the groom and groomsmen and watch the Indy 500 and NO ONE WAS TO BOTHER ME. That was the plan, anyway. That Sunday, Indianapolis was suffering periodic rain showers and the race was very late in starting which I found infinitely frustrating.

Then I got the call. What call you may ask? It seems that my daughter had forgotten her foundation undergarment and without it she was NOT GETTING MARRIED! This was around 2 PM with the wedding scheduled to begin around 6 PM. My wife said she knew where it was and she would run home to get it. I thought about that one for a split second and vetoed it because she needed to keep a lid on the pot that was beginning to boil over. She told me where to look and I hopped into my car and blasted off. I admit it. I was exceeding the speed limit badly but here’s the deal. My daughter was very friendly with many of the police officers in Newington and Wethersfield and the groom’s brother worked for the Rocky Hill Police. Those were the three towns I needed to transit and I figured that if I was stopped, once I explained who she was and what I was doing, I’d get an escort with sirens and lights. So I got home and started to look. Why I flashed on this, I do not know but something made me think it was in a bag from J. C. Penney. I went like a beeline for that bag and there it was! Had my wife gone to look for it she would never have found it. So, back in the car, warp speed engaged, and I had completed my mission.

By this point, it was close enough that I migrated to the ladies’ suite, turned on the Indy 500 and got dressed. The race had experienced some rain delays and, sadly, I was not going to get to see the checkered flag. (Juan Pablo Montoya won it that year.) And let’s not even talk about the Coca-Cola 600 which was scheduled to start at 6 PM.

The wedding itself was fairly anti-climactic. The ceremony was very nice and we had the privilege of walking our little girl down the aisle. I sat between my mother and mother-in-law with each of them holding one of my hands wondering if I was going to pass out with anxiety.

The reception was…well, a reception. Much eating, much drinking and much dancing. The girls from the Irish dance school performed beautifully including my daughter. I’ve mentioned it before, but my favorite picture is of her dancing the hornpipe in her wedding gown and Irish dance hard shoes with one of the other girls literally holding her dress up and out of the way while they danced. Every few minutes, through the reception, my daughter or I would walk out to the hotel bar to check on the TVs and find out who was leading the race and what the score of the Yankees-Red Sox game was. (Martinez outdueled Clemens and the Yankees lost 1-0 and Matt Kenseth won the race.)

Following the reception, we went to the room that had been reserved for us. As we were changing out of our party duds, there was a knock on the door. It was our daughter, still in her gown. It seems that the suite that was provided to the bridal couple…had no furniture. None. Nada. Nichts. Rien. (Heck, at least there was furniture in the suit we got for the wedding night. It was twin beds, but at least it was furnished.) So they did a bit of scrambling as the hotel was full up and found them another room. Shortly after that, there was a knock on the connecting door to our room. The only room they had for them was the one connected to OUR room, a fact that was of infinite humor to my wife and me but somewhat less to the young ‘uns.

Sadly, the marriage did not last long. Literally, before we walked into the room for the ceremony, my wife and I both told my daughter that if she wanted to back out, we would support her. She said no, she would go through with it. There’s a particular picture of us walking her down the aisle. She has the picture and has shown it to every one of her friends. She has told them that should she ever get engaged again, if they see that look on her face walking down the aisle, to tackle her and drag her out.

To be continued…