6AM Saturday morning came very quickly. Mind you, neither of us had been sleeping that well for the past several days. We'd been doing everything we could for wedding planning, coordinating the comings and goings of friends and family, spending long hours outside of the apartment doing various tasks, and really, we hadn't been able to get rest. Sleeping but four hours or so before we had to be awake for at least eighteen more was us just running on fumes -- but it's not like either of us could actually sleep through the wedding day, of course...no matter how tired we were.
So. We got up, we threw on some comfortable clothes that we could work in, and went over to the VFW hall at 8AM to set up. We were, thankfully, not the only ones setting up -- several of our friends/party members were there super-early to help out, even though it wasn't required of them, and all of the parents and Daisy's sisters/their husbands and kids arrived to do the same as well. With everyone's help, we had everything set up within an hour or so, maybe a little more. And that means everything -- music, lighting, candy dishes, tables/tablecloths, pictures, slideshows, etc. It was all done quite quickly. Of course, getting everyone there for the run-through and planning was another issue altogether.
I'd like to step back for a moment, again, and once more reiterate that I have never been married before. I did not know how any of this stuff was supposed to work. I knew I was supposed to show up, we'd walk down the aisle a certain way, we'd exchange our vows and rings, our brother-in-law performing the ceremony would pronounce us man and wife, and we'd get applause as we walked out... I mean, that's the way it's supposed to work, right?
Well, apparently there's a lot more to it than that. There's a script of sorts, for one, for the officiant (our brother-in-law), there's a set order as to who was walking whom down the aisle and when, a set order to when the kids (as the flower girls and ring bearers) would go down the aisle, the walking-down-the-aisle music (both ways, in and then out) and then the exit process -- which was like the entry process in reverse...basically, anyway.
We went through the entire walkthrough of the ceremony three times, maybe four. I can't remember as my brain was fried from getting so little sleep. We did it until all of us knew what we'd do, when, and how. At the end of it, I turned to April and said "I still guarantee you that I'll screw something up."
That's the only thing I was nervous about the whole day, actually. People asked me if I was nervous about getting married. They asked me a lot. In the two weeks leading up to the wedding, it had to be the number one question posed of me, and I heard it no less than three times per day when we were in mixed company -- from basically everyone. No, I was not nervous about getting married; it feels like Daisy and I have already been married for years, and in the week since we have been married, not much has changed in our relationship or around the house -- it's just all legal now, and we call each other "wife" and "hubby," respectively. I mean, Daisy's family accepted me long, long ago. They all love me and I love them. I've been part of the family since Daisy and I got together, so all that's changed is that it's official in the eyes of the law and the eyes of society.
Yay, no more living in sin!
Ahem.
So. Once the actual walkthroughs were over, we all dispersed around 11 -- giving our schedule orders that we'd all return to the VFW by 1:45 for the photography, which would be done before the actual ceremony (which was scheduled for 4PM). Daisy and I went to Walmart (she had to pick something up, though I can't remember what now) and we came back to our apartment, where Daisy got a shower and started on her makeup. In the meantime between then and the photographs, April and her husband and Jane all came over to our place so that they could see it and meet the cats while I got ready -- which basically involved me putting on a different shirt, pants, my jacket, and my shoes. April also had to pick up her jacket from my place, a spare jacket that I'd kept in case anyone in my party needed it for the actual ceremony, because she'd not brought one with her. No worries. The spare jacket didn't fit me anyway, and at the end of the night it ended up being taken home by one of Daisy's bridesmaids, who planned to give it to her mother.
At around 1:15 or so, after Daisy had long left the apartment to get ready at her parents' house and get into her dress, we left my place -- I rode with April and her husband -- back up to the VFW, stopping at a CVS first to get a lint roller for our wedding best, as one cannot step into this apartment without getting cat hair on them from my little loveable beasts. I didn't even try to sit down after I'd gotten dressed up for the wedding due to cat-hair-paranoia, and I still got rogue hair on me. We got it all off of us when we got up to the VFW hall, on time, but nobody else was really there yet. Rae was there, and a few members of Daisy's party were there, but noticeably absent were her parents and sisters, as well as Daisy herself. My parents were there already, of course. I texted Dan and Amanda -- the remainder of my party who had not yet arrived -- to tell them they were late for photos, and they responded that they were en route.
As soon as they walked in the door, I immediately went fuuuuuuuuuck. I'd forgotten Dan's shirt in my apartment, and I'd also forgotten the marriage license, which was on my desk in the computer room.
Let me explain.
Because Dan replaced Parker in my wedding party at the last minute, Dan didn't have a tuxedo shirt to wear in the wedding. I did order a spare, but my dad forgot to order his own shirt as well, and that spare went to him. I had an old tuxedo shirt in my closet in my regular t-shirt rotation, though it wasn't exactly the same as the rest of them. It was close enough, though, and unless you were looking to spot the differences, you wouldn't be able to. So I pulled that one out of my closet at the last minute -- smelling of boxed-up clothes, traces of cigarette smoke and the cats, I'm sure, from being in my closet in the Newton house for years -- and set it aside for Dan. I left that shirt on the desk in the computer room along with the marriage license and my dad's groomsman's gift (a bottle of Southern Comfort).
"We have to run back to my place," I said to my mother. "Have to. We'll be back." And we turned tail, jumped into Dan's car, and hightailed it back to the apartment -- which, amusingly enough, is pretty close to the VFW. It's within a five-minute drive, and it's quite literally a straight shot back and forth on one street. I ran inside, and by the time Dan had circled the car around the lot and back around to the door again, I was back outside with all of the items in tow. The entire trip down here and back took maybe ten minutes, max.
When we arrived back at the VFW hall, everyone else had arrived -- but I wasn't allowed to go inside. Daisy was inside in full dress, and the first thing I saw was our brother-in-law, who was officiating, running out to the family car, jumping in, and basically screeching out of the parking lot...quickly.
Oooookay, I thought. So apparently he forgot something else too. That something, as I would find out later, was that Daisy had left her veil at home at the parents' house. Daisy couldn't have the photos taken without it.
I told Dan and Amanda to go in and get my dad, to tell him to come out and get the bottle of Southern Comfort from me -- I couldn't bring it inside as it was not only against the rules of the VFW, but I couldn't see Daisy yet. One of the photos she so desperately wanted was the "you turn around and see me for the first time in the dress" photo, so that she could get a genuine reaction shot. So, outside in the sun, wearing more clothing than any man with long hair and a thick beard should ever wear in the beginning of summer, I lit up a cigarette and waited.
A few minutes later I was told to walk down to the bottom of the parking lot (where there was a very pretty small wooded area that we'd chosen to use for the pictures) and wait with my back turned to the building, as Daisy would be coming out in a few moments. She did, she got the reaction shot (which was indeed genuine and was because her dress was so gorgeous), and we began taking all of the photos.
The results? Well, even a week later, we haven't seen all of them -- we will pay our photographer the other half of her money and we'll get them on disc sometime this coming week, I would imagine -- but we have seen a few of them. Of those few, this one is still, and will probably be for a while, my favorite:
I told you the dress was gorgeous.
We took photos for more than an hour, with different people in different combinations -- the entirely family shot, the entirely wedding parties shot, shots with my parents, shots with her parents, shots of just the groom's party, shots of just the bride's party, etc -- and finally, at the end of all of those shots, our photographer (who was and is a very, very sweet woman that Daisy knows, one that I'd like to invite to dinner parties and the like with her husband) took the pre-wedding photos of just the two of us, like the one above, in various poses and backgrounds.
Finally, all of us began to make the trek back inside the VFW for the ceremony, and began our line-up processes as all of the guests began to arrive. We actually had far fewer guests than we were expecting; Daisy and her parents had booked catering for 100, as we figured with 70 confirmations and people getting second helpings of food, that would be enough. By the time everything had settled down and everyone had taken their seats, we maybe had...fifty? Total? Including the family and our parties? Something like that. It was far below our original expectations, with many people being total no-shows (and of those people, most of them not even telling us why afterwards). Of the people who did come who weren't family or in our parties, about fifteen or so of them I already knew -- Daisy's friends and my own -- but the rest of them I had no clue who they were, and they kept to themselves and never even introduced themselves to me all night. Daisy introduced them to me later, and I exchanged handshakes with them and the like, but none of them interacted with me or Daisy after that. Which was, needless to say, sort of odd. Apparently they were people Daisy worked with at her old job and their husbands/wives, but eh.
Anyway.
We started a bit late, as all of us got our places and we waited until all of the guests were seated, but the ceremony went off without a hitch -- and it was very nice. Our brother-in-law who married us wrote a very sweet sermon-like piece about how marriages are like knots, the kids were...well, kids, and went AWOL during their walk down the aisle, throwing the pillows and flowers and running around screaming -- which was to be expected, of course -- and the reason why I gave the rings beforehand to my dad, my best man.
Before the ceremony -- me a few days before, Daisy the night before/morning of -- we wrote our own vows. Daisy said hers first, then I said mine, then our brother-in-law pronounced us man and wife. Remarkably, neither I nor Daisy cried, but I can only imagine that our mothers were crying, as well as some members of the audience and members of our parties. By the way we were situated on the stage, all of the family not in the wedding (our mothers, her dad, and at least one or two cousins) were behind me and to my left, so there's no way I could've seen if they were.
As an aside, I was later told by no less than five people that my vows to Daisy made them cry -- including my own friends and our photographer.
So there it was. It was done. Finally, we were husband and wife. We exited the building in reverse order, as was the plan, and once we were outside, the photographer whisked us away shortly after everyone had come back out so that she could get more shots of us in a different location, which took about half an hour or so. When we had finished, the food was arriving, having been catered by Fazoli's.
We were married, yes, but the adventure hadn't ended yet. What happened next? Well, that's a story for the next post.
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