The Wedding Of The Decade (Again!)

I love you. I really do. And that’s why you’re getting this little bit of fresh preamble to a whole bunch of stuff you may have read before.

Last Friday, I explained to you how February 29th (Leap Day) is our wedding anniversary, and that we only celebrate our anniversary every four years. I reprinted the story of how we met and fell in love. It was a good story.

The story of our wedding is a good story, too. That’s what you’re going to be getting here, following this tedious bit of re-capping. I’ve put it out here before, but now is as good a time as any to put it out here again, don’t you think? You’ll be getting it all in one installment this time, unlike the first time when it took a week or so. You’ll still have to click through to further parts of it, but only because it would take up too much room on one page. Also, I’ve edited it quite a bit. For instance, I’ve removed a number of digressions. If you know me – and I’m pretty sure you do – then you know this pained me a lot. Digressions are my life. However, as I say, I love you, so no sacrifice is too great... blah blah blah.

Tomorrow, I’ll be back with all new material. I’ll pick up the love story of MY WIFE and me where the wedding ended. Tomorrow, you’ll get to go on our honeymoon, you perverts. Or maybe I’m the pervert for inviting you. In any case, that’s where we’ll be headed. We’re married, so it’s OK for us, but you should probably bring protection.

Now, without any further ado (because I’m a-tired of a-doin’ this all) here is The Wedding Of The Decade (again)!

THE WEDDING OF THE DECADE

Most marriages begin with a proposal and so did ours. Many women tell charming stories of how their future husbands creatively proposed to them. For instance, they might have been sitting in the stands at Fenway Park and, during the seventh inning stretch...

***Felicia, will you marry me?***

... flashes onto the scoreboard while Felicia’s boyfriend, Archie, suddenly drops to one knee in the aisle. While everyone in the park cheers, Felicia tearfully says, "Yes! Yes!" and she wraps her arms around Archie, hugging him tightly.

(Meanwhile, Archie is thinking, "What the hell? I dropped a quarter here. Is she that happy for me?" while in another part of the ballpark there’s a totally different Felicia telling her ex-boyfriend, Rocky [they broke up in the sixth inning in an argument over the infield fly rule] that she wouldn’t marry him if he were the last man on earth, so he can take that cheap ring he got from a Crackerjacks box and shove it up his ass.)

Well, there was - I’m sorry to say - nothing so glorious about my proposal. It was one of the worst proposals ever. It was so bad, MY WIFE will probably be extremely embarrassed (for both of us) if I go into detail about it. So, I shouldn’t. However, I know that I can’t totally cop out, so I’ll try to put it as delicately as possible, using all of the linguistic powers at my command to make it sound more romantic than it actually was.

We had just finished doing the horizontal bop and, between gasping breaths, I said, "Hey, would you like to get married?"

(Don Juan? Casanova? Those bums have nothing on me.)

MY (future) WIFE said, “What do you mean by that?”

She was not joking. You see, for the previous 12 months I had been telling her – whenever marriage happened to come up during conversation – that I had no desire to ever get married and that I didn’t believe marriage was necessary if two people really loved each other. She had no reason to believe I had been lying when I said those things, so her question was certainly pertinent.

And I wasn’t lying when I said those things. I had, at the time, no desire to get married and I really did believe (still do) that marriage isn’t necessary if two people truly love each other. However, just because something isn’t necessary that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be nice, and the desire to get married is always affected by whom you have the opportunity to be spliced with.

My most previous relationship had been hideous. It was full of trivial arguments that escalated into full-scale shouting matches and an almost totally-at-odds-with-each-other view of what our future plans should be. Whenever she brought up marriage – which was every other day – I cringed.

Now, understand that I was no saint in that relationship. I was probably as much to blame for the ridiculous amount of fighting we did as my girlfriend was. And not all of the arguments were trivial. We had some extremely major philosophical differences and they were, in my view, irreconcilable. However, we soldiered on – an apt description, considering how much of our time we spent at war with each other – until she finally had the brains to leave me.

(She didn’t tell me she was leaving me. She told me she was going to visit some friends of ours in Florida and that she’d be back for Christmas. Then, a couple of days before Christmas, after I had spent half of a months pay on gifts for her, I received a “Dear John” letter. Nice.)

Anyway, I had been completely and utterly soured on the concept of marriage, mostly because, from my limited experience, it seemed like something that a woman wanted to force on a man much more than something a man might actually want and find pleasant. Being a contrarian by nature, the easiest way to get me to NOT want to do something is by telling me that I have to do it. So, I never gave marriage any sort of serious consideration, nor did I think I ever would.

Sometimes, though, you realize that the situation you’re currently in isn’t anything at all like the previous ones you’ve experienced. At that point, if you have any brain, you understand that the situation calls for a different approach altogether. So, I had to consider whether marriage was actually something that could be a good thing. And I had decided that, yes, it was - if you were married to the right person.

MY (future) WIFE was the right person. I had no doubt about that. And I had no doubt whatsoever that we could live together and be happy. So, would a proposal be in my best interest? Most assuredly yes, because I figured that she might not be willing to stick around if I didn’t propose. Therefore, I had been considering proposing to her for a few weeks before I actually did it. I hadn’t made any real plans concerning HOW I would do it, but I had been a musician, so I figured I could improvise.

And, although I didn’t know it at the time, MY (future) WIFE was pondering whether or not she could continue as we had been. Some time after the fact, she told me that had I not proposed she was probably going to tell me that her values wouldn’t permit her to continue our relationship without being married.

So, there you have it. I proposed, albeit in a truly non-spectacular fashion, and she, being caught totally off guard, told me that she had to think about it.

Yup. She had to think about it. Which meant that I, too, had to think about it, until she had an answer for me, which meant that I became a basket case until she told me yes or no. I had assumed that she would break down into tears of joy and immediately say "yes" - I was a catch, after all - but my expectations were not met.

(The word "catch" in the preceding sentence can best be defined in the same sense as what might be found at sea - something fishy.)

So, I awaited her answer, much as you will have to await the next installment. See you then.

(Nay! Thou needn't wait! GO TO PART TWO RIGHT NOW!)