Fairy Tale Wedding

Posted On May 1, 2011

I have to say I’m on the fence of this Royal Wedding that has been proliferating the media of late.  I’ve seen some of the coverage, as there was not much else on TV that morning.  I’ve looked at some of the videos and photos.  It’s nice.  I like that the newly wedded couple looks very happy. But I really don’t get how over the top some people are about the whole thing.  Parties and such to celebrate the whole event?  I know.  Every girl’s dream of marrying her prince.  Blah blah blah.  Guess I never really got into that whole princess thing like a lot of other girls.  Maybe because I have two boys?  Who knows?

I can remember way back when during the Diana and Charles courtship I could never figure out what she saw in him.  He looked like a goofy version of Alfred E. Neuman, the guy from MAD Magazine. I feel more sorry for these people than anything for the insane amount of scrutiny that they have to endure.  Certainly intense media coverage was at least a part of, if not the cause of Diana’s tragic early departure from life.

Watching all of this wedding hype, makes me think back to my own Fairy Tale Wedding.  I have to say, all things considered, I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect wedding day.  It really was spectacular, and I was over the moon happy with how smoothly everything took place.  Even the weather cooperated.  But there were a couple little snafus the day before and after that were cause for pause.

My husband and I had an apartment in the DC area, but our wedding was in Philadelphia, as both of our families and most of our guests were from that area.  Our ceremony was to take place in my childhood church. After all the planning and build up, the rehearsal at the church certainly put Tom and I on edge and were wondering how it might affect our wedding the next day.

Figures, but on the day of our wedding rehearsal, there was some ridiculous accident that caused many of our wedding party to arrive late to the church.  The priest was not very happy about that from the get go.  Even though I was familiar with the priest, he just was not all that nice to us.  Once everyone had finally trickled in, we tried to get things underway.  I was probably the anti-bridezilla type of bride.   We were pretty conservative, and wanted to gather our family and friends for a great celebration, and kept things pretty simple. I had casually asked the priest how brides normally arrange the wedding party and he snapped at me saying “How should I know, that’s your job.”, I knew we might be in for a long evening.  Not really putting much advance thought into it, I just lined everyone up by height and proceeded to try and muddle through.  I can’t remember all of the exact details, but for a priest, this guy was a little off. Don’t know if he was just pissy because of the delay, or if this was just his natural disposition shining through. I distinctly remember him shoving my dad at some point. Now my dad is one of the most good natured and sweet guys ever.  Now to shove him for no apparent reason?  I think one of my future brother in laws was about ready to deck him.  He had also positioned our chairs off of the altar and each on a separate side of the aisle at the church.  How bizarre is that?  I’m not allowed to sit next to my future husband during my own wedding ceremony?  I’m thinking, how did I get stuck with this cranky pants to officiate our wedding? I think this whole vibe just put Tom and I on edge.  The rest of the rehearsal was fine, but we were all feeling pretty awkward and unwelcome there.

The wedding day had finally arrived. It was a gorgeous, sunny day for August, luckily, not too warm.  I was very relieved to see once we got to the church that my hubby and future brother in law had ignored the priest’s choice for our seating, and our chairs were together on the altar where they should rightly be.  Ah.  Maybe things were going to turn out all right after all.  The priest ended up being just fine, said some nice comments.  Perhaps his evil twin brother had been there the night before. The only thing about the wedding that was a little bit off, was the kiss.  Unfortunately, we both went in a different direction, and ended up just pecking each other on the cheek.  Not sure how that happened.  Tom still gives me grief for it to this day. If that’s the worst thing that could have happened, I guess I’ll take it.  It’s funny, you can see the obvious change in our faces in the pictures before and after the ceremony.   We were both so relieved that everything went well, all we had to do was enjoy the reception.

We were greeted of the door of the church with a shower of bubbles from our guests. Our best man had surprised us with a Classic Rolls Royce waiting outside of the church.  The driver had chilled some champagne, and literally rolled out a red carpet for us.  It was really wild that my old neighborhood notorious for all of the chemical factories spewing gunk into the sky, was transformed into this little world of never never land for that brief moment. Now if that doesn’t make a girl feel like royalty, I don’t know what does.  We then went take the requisite pictures, then off to the reception.

I had never been so happy to find the restroom and take a couple of advil in my entire life.  The hair stylist had built what felt like a nest on my head to attach my veil, and I could not wait to rip the thing of off my now throbbing head.   Once I got a much needed glass of wine, and got to chow down on some grub–with three different kinds of potatoes and a slab of prime rib, who wouldn’t be content?–life was good.  After Tom and I Christened the dance floor, and I bawled my eyes out on the dance floor dancing to Daddy’s Little Girl with my pop, I don’t think we moved from the dance floor.  We danced and laughed and danced and laughed.  We had a great time, and I’m pretty sure most of our guests did as well.

We ended the evening very happy and content, and meandered to our hotel for the evening.  I’ll never forget that when we arrived at the hotel, we had just heard the news that Diana had just died.  It was really kind of surreal to hear that had happened on that day, as she had been the symbol of all things wedding in those days.  Finally the big moment had arrived, no, not what you think–it was to see how long it would take to get the nest off of my head.  My new husband was charged with taking out the 83, literally, bobby pins out of my head.  Three washings later, and out of the formal wear, the end had finally come to a wonderful, but very long day…

The next day, we still had to make it back to DC so that we could pack and get ready for our Monday departure for our honeymoon.  We had met my parents for brunch, and set off to begin our new lives as husband and wife.  I told Tom I’d take the first leg of the trip.  No sooner did we pull out of the parking lot and I hear this…papapapapapapapa noise.  I was like good lord, what is that noise?  Sounds like a helicopter is right over our heads.  I looked at Tom, and he was smiling.  I was like, what?  He said, I think we might have a flat…hmm, really I said?  He had a sports car at that time and it had really wide rims, so it didn’t feel that off to me, but, yup, that’s what it was.  4:50 on a holiday weekend, we had to find someone to fix a flat tire.  Luckily enough, there was an auto shop that was nearby. Tom had to beg and plead for them to fix it, but they weren’t very happy about it.

An hour and a half later, we were finally on our way home.  We were still basking in that newlywed glow, and were really overjoyed that all had gone so well. The trip home was pretty uneventful.  All we had to do was toss in a couple loads of laundry, do a little packing, get some much needed sleep and we were on our way to Hawaii.  Not so fast.  We had arrived home to find that our circuit had tripped and all of the food in our fridge had spoiled.  Pretty much the dead last thing we felt like doing was cleaning out the fridge.  So much for a quick bite at home, and off to bed for our our rise the next day.  So, we had to head out to dinner, not really what we planned, but we were so exhausted, and really, what else could happen?  Finally, we were packed and ready to crawl into bed for our pre-dawn flight.  Several hours later than we thinking, but better late than never. At least our patch of ill luck spared our actual wedding day. So, all things considered, it really was a fairy tale wedding, the bride and groom are still living happily ever after…