Worrier/Warrior

When faced with infertility, it's fret or fight.

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Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Wedding Day

Warning: very loooonng post

Like any other little girl, I had many fantasies about what my wedding day would be like when I grew up. What happened December 10 was nothing close to any of those childhood dreams. What happened December 10 was truly an outpouring of love and joy.

Flights of relatives and friends from the Midwest and East Coast were delayed or outright cancelled due to bad weather and that little incident of the plane skidding off the runway in Chicago. Yet, people stuck it out through the delays or wrangled with the airlines to change flights and made it to Southern California. By the day of the wedding, the tent where our ceremony was going to take place had not gone up yet. And our patio where tables were to be set up for the reception had not been swept or cleaned out. Not to mention there was still more cooking to do and most of the rooms of our house was still not ready to be a place to spend any enjoyable time in. We woke up that morning knowing we would be married that night, no matter what, but feared the ceremony would take place among piles of unused decorations and tangled Christmas lights. Eight of our friends and family volunteered to come over that morning for last minute preparations. Little did they know what they had gotten themselves into.

By the time I left for my hair appointment at 9:30AM, only my brother and his wife had arrived to help. I had just moved to this neighborhood and called up the closest stylist a few weeks before to make the appointment. I had read all the advice about testing out a stylist before the big day, but with our timetable, that was just not feasible. I just tried to keep the faith and focused on the fact that we were doing this solely as part of the process of starting a family. Whether I was the most beautiful or ugliest bride in the world did not matter. What would matter is that by the end of the day we would be married and one step closer to having a family.

I got to the salon right on time. I saw my stylist, an older woman, doing the hair of another older lady. She turned around to say good morning and I saw her unstyled hair, pushed back by a head band. Thick eyeliner outlined both her eyes. I have to admit, I got a little scared at this point. When you go to a hair stylist, you kind of want to have some confidence in the work that they do. The way she looked did not engender any kind of confidence. But what could I do? I had no hair styling ability myself and as I settled down in a chair to wait for her to finish, I took a deep breath and told myself that no matter what happens with my hair, it didn’t matter. The outcome of my hairdo was not going to affect the outcome of the day. I decided I would tell her in very general terms what I wanted (hair up, out of the way and in place for the whole day) and let her do her best. She was a very friendly woman but after about 45 minutes (!) and what I thought was an 80% completed updo, she decided to unravel the whole thing and start all over! Part of me wanted to scream NO! The other part just wondered silently what else I could do except wait it out. It was too late to find someone else so I took another deep breath and reminded myself again that no matter what I would be married by the end of the day. About 20 minutes into her next attempt, the phone rang. She went to go pick it up and ended up having a 10 minute conversation with a tenant of hers about complaints from another tenant of hers. After the phone call, she decided she could not have any more distractions and needed to focus on what she was doing. Her solution? To leave her phone off the hook! So, now the phone makes that annoying and loud signal to alert you that the phone is off the hook. After several minutes of this, the phone finally falls silent and by about 11AM, she was done. As suspected, it was not the best updo but not the worst. And it was quite suitable…for a housewife…in the 1940’s. But, what was done was done. I headed home and just tried to make the best of it. It was turning out to be a beautiful day. The sun was shining and there were a few clouds in the sky (just enough to make it pretty) and I swear, the temperature must have been about 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 degrees Celsius). By the time I got home, almost everyone who said they would come over to help had arrived. The patio was being cleared and the tent frame put together. There was a fun energy reverberating throughout. Everyone commented on my hair (positive but outright lies! But, very sweet and appreciated). About 20 minutes later, the tent was lifted up. Remember that scene in Witness where Harrison Ford participated in an Amish barn raising and the frames of the barn are pulled up and the music swells, then everyone sits down, happily eating lunch, talking and laughing (ok, so only the men sit down and eat happily and the women stay standing and serving the food, but imagine that with both men and women enjoying themselves)? That was exactly what it felt like when I saw the tent go up. People from different parts of our lives, family and friends, helping us build something beautiful and promising.

By lunchtime, the general look of the ceremony tent and patio was taking shape and we felt relieved that with the good weather (and rented console heater as backup) and tables and chairs available in the patio we were at least ready to handle everybody who would be showing up in a few hours, even if none of the rooms in our house was presentable. Everyone by this time would just pitch in and do anything and everything that needed to be done. No questioning, egos or bad feelings. Just a lot of joking around and running around getting things done. Several people even picked up the clothes they were going to wear to bring them back to our house so they could stay with us through the end and then just change into them right before the party. Table decorations were made up, candles put out and a million other little touches we didn’t even know about until days later when we started to put things away. About an hour before guests were going to arrive, I started to make the last of the food. The potato omelet. It was to be my downfall. The first omelet was burnt, the second spilled all over the stove and the third all over the sink. At this point, I decided I was too stressed out to cook and knew if I attempted anymore, I would just end up wasting all the eggs. We dropped many of the side dishes we were going to buy because we didn’t have anytime to run out and buy them, so it was kind of critical we had this dish. Mr. Warrior said he would try once he got a few more things done and in the meantime, my brother made an attempt, but it was just as disastrous. Pretty soon, people started to arrive and we realized, we had not yet changed into our wedding clothes yet. Half an hour later, still not changed. An hour later? Yep, still in our work clothes. Finally, we got our clothes and headed toward our master bath (quite a feat considering there were people now in every room of our house as well as the patio) and locked the door. We looked at each other, took a deep breath and realized…we had not yet cleaned our bathroom. There was no way we could only open up our one guest bathroom when there were 80 people milling around, so we proceeded to (silently) clean the floors, toilet, etc. We took turns going out and discretely grabbing cleaning supplies so to keep the bathroom occupied while it was still being cleaned. Intermittently, people would knock on our bathroom door and we would have to shout, “we’re still getting dressed!” As we finally started to get dressed (for real), we noticed how much more frequent the knocking became. Someone finally shouted through the door that the other bathroom had backed up and has been unusable. And could we maybe let one of my cousins in since it was an emergency? We were stunned!! We were really halfway through getting dressed at this point, so we quickly threw on the rest of our clothes and Mr. Worrier, in his suit, grabbed the plunger and headed to the other bathroom. (Now I wish I had a picture of that, but at the time it was a horrifying thought. What if the contents of the toilet backed out violently and onto Mr. Worrier and onto his suit?!?) Luckily, Mr. Warrior cleared up the situation (ahem) and all the bathrooms were now suitable for use. We decided to give people a few minutes to use the facilities and prepared to start the ceremony.

I knew one thing my father really wanted was to walk me down the aisle. Many, many years ago when I was about 11 or 12, my family and I were walking from the parking lot to the mall. He held my hand as we crossed over to the mall and said to me that this would probably be one of the last few times he would every hold my hand again since I was growing up. And that the next time would probably not be until I was getting married and he walked me down the aisle. So, even though we were planning a very low key and informal ceremony, I wanted to make sure that he could hold my hand one more time. I started to look for my father to start the ceremony and he was no where in sight. After several inquiries it turns out that the battery of my father’s video camera which one of my relatives was operating had died. And my father had gone back to the hotel to pick up his extra battery. Now, the second most important thing to my father for the wedding besides walking me down the aisle, would probably be to have pictures and video of the wedding. My dad has always been a picture and video freak when it comes to any occasion so it was no surprise he was so intent on getting a battery for his video camera (even though my brother also had his). We waited and waited for my father to get back. We checked to make sure he was the only person missing (he was) and waited some more. Crazy thoughts went through my head while we were waiting (what if he got into a horrible accident on the way back and was killed?) but he finally got back. We ushered everyone out to the patio and tent. Asked everyone aged 55+ and their companions to take a seat (we didn’t have enough room for everyone to sit down), then lowered the age limit to 50+ when some people didn’t want to own up to their ages and half the 25 or so seats we had available (remember we had 80 people) were still not taken. Then, added people with children. My brother started the music (Somewhere Over The Rainbow/What A Wonderful World by Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwo'ole) and my father and I walked down the aisle. Our friend who was marrying us said some words and Mr. Warrior said a few sentences (can’t remember exactly what, was too busy trying to figure what I was going to say), then I said a few sentences about how I was happy to see all the different people in our lives being with us. Then we took turns reading the selection “On Marriage” from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. Our friend asked us if we would take each other as husband and wife. We exchanged rings (Mr. Warrior placed mine on the wrong hand! I tried to discretely tell him to put it on the other hand, but he didn’t hear me. Oh well. I switched it after we walked into the house after the ceremony.)

Now, the dinner craziness starts. We planned to start people on the soups and salad while we finished the preparations for dinner. We didn’t have time to pick up the Thai soup, so we just had the one cream of corn and roasted pepper soup and our salad bar. We also had appetizers we started serving when guests were still arriving and those were still out, but people kept coming into the dining room where we had a buffet set up to “take a peek” at what we were going to have for dinner. People also started grabbing dinner plates to use those for salads when they came in to “peek” which became annoying and created a large traffic jam, because other people saw this and thought dinner was ready. There were other people who came in and actually provided help. Like a friend of ours who is an avid cook who jumped in to make those annoying omelets. And several times, as I would try to put out food, someone or another would see what I was doing and just take over and finish up, without me asking for help. And as the dining room became more crowded, my brother and another cousin of mine (male and very tall) started acting as buffet bouncers, stopping people from coming in and closing as many doors as possible to cut off the area. It was ingenious! Especially on the part of my cousin who probably figured that helping out in this way would also ensure he would be one of the first in line when dinner was ready!

After about another half hour or maybe 45 minutes (it was hard to tell and I didn’t really care how long it was taking as long as things were getting done), we were finally ready to open up the buffet area. When we had first moved into the house, I had noticed a good size bell that hung outside next to the patio. I had rung it once before to see if it worked and to see what it sounded like and new it had a nice, solid ring to it. As we got ready to announce that dinner was served, I yelled excitedly to Mr. Warrior that I was going to ring the bell. He got my brother posted at one glass door that opened to the patio and my bouncer cousin posted at the sliding door that opened to the living room. I went to stand next to the bell and Mr. Warrior signaled a countdown with one hand. At “zero,” I rang the bell once…the doors flew open and our guests were surprised (stunned?) into silence. I rang the bell twice, then three, four and five times. Mr. Warrior announced that dinner was ready and everyone applauded and half our guests jumped into line.

After everyone had a chance to eat dinner, we started our White Elephant gift exchange. Some of the older folk and others who didn’t bring a gift to participate left at this point. We had about 45 or so participants and so it went on for about two and half hours. By the end of the night, I was very tired but quite happy how things had turned out even though there were many things we didn’t get to do and many little crises that turned up along the way. It was not how I ever imagined my wedding to be, but it was wonderful, heartwarming and full of family and friends we really care about. Mr. Warrior’s cousin, his date and her two daughters stayed after (without being asked!) to help us put away the leftover food. We went to bed about 2AM…happily married.

2 Comments:

Blogger April said...

Congratulations on the wedding.

The part about holding your father's hand brought tears to my eyes.

12:14 PM  
Blogger Thalia said...

It sounds absolutely lovely, I hope you really really enjoyed yourselves.

10:33 AM  

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