Quickie Weddings…Revanche ♥ PiC

Soo many pent-up blog posts to share with you! Well, let’s start with this: Check out the story of Revanche and PiC’s Faux-lopement, a tale told in three installments…

Here…

and here…

and here…

What an adventure!

But isn’t getting married always an adventure? (To say nothing of staying married…)

Best wishes to Revanche and PiC, excellent young people

♥ ♥ ♥

Reminds me of my own wedding…

My mother wanted to throw an elaborate shindig. So impressed was she that I had snared a corporate lawyer on track for partner at one of the most prestigious firms in the Southwest, she determined to create a Big Society Event. She planned to hire out space at Mountain Shadows, then a very tony resort that basked in the shadow in Camelback Mountain, deep in the heart of Paradise Valley. There at a sit-down dinner we would receive the cream of Old Phoenix; videlicet, every member of the large firm, every secretary, every clerk, every receptionist, and all their spouses. Plus her friends, my friends, the groom’s family and friends, and anyone else she could think of.

This, as you can imagine, quickly grew into something that looked very, very expensive.

My father’s financial habits made Scrooge McDuck look profligate. He viewed my mother’s plans with increasing alarm.

Shortly after he saw the printing bill for the invitations, he made his move: He called the fiancé and offered to give him $3,000 if he would please elope with me.

No joke.

My father paid my soon-to-be-husband to undercut my mother’s plan for an elaborate wedding. Naturally, the groom took him up on the offer.

Three grand was a lot of money in those days. It was still the time when a young college graduate figured he would have it made in the shade if he ever, during his lifetime, earned $12,000 a year. A $12,000 salary was about the equivalent of a six-figure income today.

It came back to bite my father, in a funny way. Funny odd, I mean.

We set the wedding day in early December of 1967. We would be wed in the groom’s church, a bland Methodist institution in the heart of North Central. I invited my best friend from high-school to fly over from Southern California to be the maid of honor. My mother invited her oldest and best friend to come over, also from Southern California.

My father was still going to sea, piloting tankers up and down the West Coast. He’d planned to get off the boat in San Francisco and fly over for the marrying; then turn around and meet the ship in Long Beach.

Well, along about the end of November, a gigantic storm bore down from the Arctic and barreled into Alaska, where the tanker was bound to put in at Anchorage. The ship headed out to sea and laid off the coast of Alaska, waiting for the storm to pass.

Pass, it did not.

He called ship-to-shore to say he couldn’t make it back to Arizona by the appointed wedding day.

Since it was now a very informal affair, we simply postponed the wedding day. New airline tickets were purchased for out-of-staters, and the groom called the resort where we planned to honeymoon and changed our reservations.

The new appointed wedding day drew nigh. The storm stayed parked over Alaska, and the boat stayed parked on the high seas off Alaska.

Another postponement. More changes in travel plans, another call to the honeymoon resort. My mother’s friend, drawing the wrong conclusion, remarked in what she must have thought was a between-confidantes intimacy, that “these things happen in the best of families.” My mother flew into a high rage and never spoke to her friend again.

Another week passed. The storm did not pass. My father’s boat stood out to sea. Still. The designated maid of honor had Christmas plans and had to demur from attending our wedding, should it ever occur.

After the third postponement, the groom announced that he could not ask the resort in Carmel to change our reservations again, and we would have to move forward with the wedding whether or not my father could get  here.

And that’s exactly what happened. We were wed while my father was stuck at sea. I had no maid of honor. The groom’s parents couldn’t make it in from Colorado, either. My parents’ next-door neighbor, whom I hardly knew, “gave me away” in the ceremony. As if I were an object that could be given away, for the price of $3,000.

We used the three grand to buy furniture for the apartment that looked out over the back lot of Sanderson Ford. Probably the young husband used part of it to defray the cost of the honeymoon.

Sometimes I wonder… If we had actually gone through with the elaborate wedding and the big formal ceremony in a church that had some meaning for me (not one I had never gone into before and never went into again), would we still be married?

Probably not.

But who knows?

A wedding ceremony at Christ Church Cathedral, New Orleans. Kris Arnold. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.