more wedding snaps
Hey, y’all. Sorry for the delay in getting these posted, but at last the wait is over. Feast your peepers on these.
So here’s how it all went down:
We’d planned a foot-tappin’, good-time wedding ceremony in March, and we’re still going to have it! In fact, we’ll be using these newfangled Web/e-mail/phone things to handle RSVPs and maps and stuff - stay tuned! But in the meantime, all three of us - Lynn, Av, and I—had been independently wondering whether or not there would be any way to tie the knot a little sooner.
“Well,” we reasoned, “Ian’s Dad is going to be in town for Christmas. We could actually put this together.” A quick phone call to the courts, and it turns out that the procedure is super-easy: fill out a license application, call a judge to make an appointment, wait three days, go see the judge, and voilà! (Interesting that the waiting period for a gun is seven days, but a wedding is only three. Which one is more dangerous, I ask you?)
My gals and I boarded the train to the court’s clerical offices for the first step. Our little stool pigeon nearly narc’ed us out to the fare inspector for having overlooked a crucial step to our ticket stamping in our haste to board the train, but we escaped and managed to put things right. Once we were back underway, we explained to Av the two crucial components of a wedding: the “paper part” and the “party part.” We assured her that the whole ceremony she had planned (whose wedding is this, anyway?), with our little flower girl accompanying Mommy grandly down the stairs, would still take place. What we were doing that day was simply taking care of the paper part for Christmastime, ‘cause we could.
As Lynn started to write “Homemaker” as her occupation on the application, I raised an eyebrow, surprised that she’d choose that word in particular—she’s not a big fan of it, ya see. She quickly ran through the alternatives: “Domestic Goddess,” and so on, before finally settling on “Queen.” Perfect.
A few days later, Dad was in town, and our local friends and family started to trickle into the house. The air buzzed with excited conversation and children’s laughter. We all caravaned to the nearby commuter rail station and headed westward. Fourteen minutes later, the blue train opened its doors at the last stop and disgorged an excited gaggle of Pagets, Deeses, and others.
We shuffled into the courthouse, paid our license fee, got our recepit, and waited in the courtroom. Lynn’s second-youngest brother Rick started to give me a little pep talk. I expected to hear, “Break her heart and I’ll kick your butt,” or, “You’d better be worthy of her,” or one of the other brotherly standbys. Instead, he offered an escape plan: “I can come up with something during the ‘Speak now, or forever hold your peace’ bit, if you want me to rescue you.” See the kind of stuff I missed out on by not having any siblings? Needless to say, I politely declined the offer. I don’t care what she did to your Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots twenty years ago, dude—she’s still awesome.
The judge checked the paperwork, donned his robes, and collared our witnesses to make sure everything was in order. We then got down to the ceremony proper. I had always imagined that a courtroom wedding would be a little antiseptic, but this one was anything but. We had kids crawling over adult knees, excited in-laws-to-be taking photographs, a beaming judge who loves this part of the job, and, of course, each other’s grinning faces.
So look out, world, for Mr. and Mrs. Me. Or Mrs. and Mr. Her, depending on whom you talk to.