Last week, Gawker had an article about women who are desperate to get married and have a fairytale wedding. I never wanted to get married, but then a strange circumstance nudged my husband and I toward city hall.
My husband and I met when I was 24 and he was 22. I kind of think of 1994 as the halcyon year to date someone: we could still smoke in bars, Tom Robbins still released books on a regular basis, and there was a new pinball machine in our favorite bar every 2 months. We didn’t lack for conversation, motor skills or things to read each other in bed.
We also worked together, and in 1995 one of our best friends – also a co-worker – passed away. It was unbelievably sad and sudden and frightening. The people we worked with all took the death of our co-worker in different ways. Some people used it as an excuse to get drunk at work by noon, some people used it as an excuse to have sex at work, and more people than I care to mention just used his death as an excuse to be angrier than usual. Meanwhile my then boyfriend and I just mourned in our own ways. I wrote funny, dirty poetry and my boyfriend recorded songs like crazy with his band.
Then we had a Monday off together and we decided to elope. Sometimes I wonder if that was our rebellion against death.
Lake Champlain in January is cold, and I thought I was going to faint as we stood on the dock. There were huge pieces of ice that kept rumbling against the legs of the pier, and I’m sure that at some point in the ceremony I accidentally quoted Gregory Corso by yelling, “pie glue!”
But then we were pronounced “man and wife” by a very chilly justice of the peace, and we went to “our” bar to celebrate. I called my grandparents from the phone booth outside of the restroom to tell them the news – and then when I called my parents, my mother said something I will never forget.
“Make hay while the sun shines.”
That we did. And I will never forget walking upstairs from making those phone calls into a full bar of people who we had invited to our “reception.”
The most common phrase that we overheard was, “Well, I’ll give it “x” amount of weeks. Or months.” People were actually exchanging money on how little time we would be married at our reception.
On our first year anniversary we got together with some of our friends and asked for a piece of the action. People were embarrassed as well as stubbornly unwilling to cut us in.
We are coming up on our 16th anniversary and we’ve yet to make a dime off of our nuptials. But, it was my favorite day and it only cost us $60.00 including the wedding license and rings.
We were driven to the lake by my cousin who pulled double duty as our driver and my maid of honor. Once we settled into her little red Nissan sports car, she turned the radio on. Her tape deck had died and so we were at the mercy of the radio gods for our nuptial song. And as a fluke of fate, my husband and I have a pretty raucous, inappropriate and very cool wedding song. Because we drove to the lake listening to Led Zepplin.
“You need coolin’, baby, I’m not foolin’
I’m gonna send ya back to schoolin’
Way down inside, a-honey, you need it
I’m gonna give you my love
I’m gonna give you my love, oh…
Got a whole lot of love.”
I’m sure that it’s not Bride.com approved, but I don’t think anything about that day was.
