Wednesday, July 23, 2008

When I Planned My Wedding...

Nearly two decades ago, when my husband first proposed, I had no idea how insane it was going to be to plan my wedding. For one--and the biggest reason it was insane--my husband-to-be was in the Navy (like Ben in the online read I wrote for eHarlequin) and he shipped out shortly after proposing. That meant the bulk of the planning was on my shoulders, with him pretty much unavailable for questions (in those days there was no e-mail, only good old snail mail). We tried to think of as many things as we could before he left, but there were about ten thousand things we didn't :-).

Still, we did pretty well. It wasn't until the very last days that things got kind of hairy. We were getting married on the naval base, and the day before the wedding, the captain of the base called and said he wanted the driver's license numbers and license plate numbers of every single guest coming to our wedding.

Uh...what?

It would have been nice for him to tell me that back when we booked the base chapel, so that I could have asked for that info when I sent out invitations. Or even as I started receiving response cards. But the day BEFORE? We had lots of out of town guests who were already on the road (in the pre-cell-phone days) and no way of getting this info. Eventually, my dad, who was in the army, talked to the captain of the base, and we managed to get around the license plate/license thing.

Most everything went off without a hitch. The details that had seemed SO important for months and months of planning suddenly became moot points once I had that man I loved on my arm :-) and we were dancing to the band. Now, 18 years later, I can tell you the color of my bridesmaid's dresses but doubt I could name all the flowers in my bouquet or all the songs they played at the wedding. I just know we had a wonderful time and danced every second we could.

And I remember one thing...probably my favorite memory of the day. My husband, who isn't much of a singer, sang along to one of the slow songs, just murmuring the words in my ear (it was just so sweet), and then at the very last moment, dipped me, and kissed me. That moment was captured on video and on film. If I remember nothing else about my wedding, that's the minute I want to hold onto--him holding me tight and singing love songs just to me.

Now that's romance :-)

Shirley

posted by Shirley @ 6:00 AM