Every so often we’re confronted with past versions of ourselves.

In this case, it was Mr. Pixel finding an old piece of writing from when we were getting married. I’d actually started a little blog about the insane process of someone who really thought they were beyond that kind of nonsense, but really had a bunch of fun in the end, even though – predictably- the little backyard gathering became a couple hundred friends at a very nice venue.

It’s breezy, easy. Casually speaking of a very different version of myself, one that was almost certainly nicer. Very definitely happier and less stressed. But most importantly, back then, I just…wrote. It came naturally, as it had all my life.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be that carefree creative person again, certainly not while juggling everything that’s in the air now…but someday? Or maybe I can find a way to just channel her once in awhile.

  I had not been looking forward to this. No particular reason, but I suppose it might’ve had to do with the idea that once I told somebody- once I said it out loud- it would be real.
           You see it played as a joke on sitcoms, rom coms, and anywhere it can be gotten away with- some hapless guy panicking over how to pop the question. Get down on one knee in traditional fashion? Find some funny way that’s sure to charm the pants off her? What can he possibly pull off that will convince his beloved that he’s not a total goober and is worth the effort of pulling together a wedding?
           Greg never had that scene, but here I was, feeling that same sort of fear when faced with the fact of telling someone that we’d pulled the trigger. Or rather were going to load the gun in preparation for trigger pulling in a couple of months.
           The fact that I was now, somehow, getting married had evolved. Greg hadn’t gotten down on one knee, there’d been no big production involved. Yes, he’d given me an engagement ring some years ago, but that wasn’t so much about getting married as it was an overall commitment to our lives.
           We’d been driving back to New Orleans, post Katrina. It’d been a hell of a year. I’d spent the summer in New York City helping to care for my Grandmother, diagnosed with cancer. She’d died one month to the day before Katrina and I hadn’t been home long before we evacuated, eventually driving back up to NYC to crash in her not- yet- emptied house. We stayed there for two months, not knowing what was going on with our house, our city, our lives. On the day we arrived back home he gave me a gorgeous yet typically atypical ring- a large blue / purple tanzanite stone in a custom setting he’d had made in the Diamond District while we were in exile.
            “Oh,” I’d laugh in reply to someone asking if we’d set a date,” we’re just going to be eternally engaged.”
            I even had a theory- a theory which even my therapist shook his head at- that it’s actually more noble to live together and not be married. Think about it: if you’re married, you’re obligated to stay, no matter how annoyed you are with the other person. Oh, sure, you could always get divorced, but that’s messy and time consuming. Expensive, too.
            But when he (TWO EXAMPLES OF SERIOUSLY ANNOYING BEHAVIOR), and you’re still there, then it’s because you really, truly want to be there. You could just pull up stakes and leave if you didn’t. Therefore, both members of the couple can rest assured that they’re doing okay. Also, it gives more of an incentive to work out the problems, rather than letting them fester, because… well, better safe than sorry, right?
           
           Things started small. A comment here, a wistful sigh there, and after about a year of ducking and dodging it became clear that Greg now actually wanted to get married. It was never really clear what changed, why it was now important to him, but the comments started with the generic (“wouldn’t it be nice if…”) and when they were ignored moved into the more specific and practical (“you really need to get on a good medical plan.”).
           After a while it was impossible to come up with reasonable replies, other than the usual “I don’t see why we need some piece of paper,” blah blah blah. Even I realized how lame it was starting to sound. And worse, clearly Greg could tell I was starting to weaken, because he’d stepped up the comments.
            Finally, a few nights before, I’d broken. But I had a condition. We hadn’t had a vacation in five years- not since before the storm. If he wanted me to put in the work to pull off a wedding, I wanted a honeymoon.
            “A serious one,” I warned. “International. A REAL vacation. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but it has to be substantial- a minimum of a week.”
            He didn’t even pretend to think it over. I was almost surprised  he didn’t make me sign some sort of binding contract on the spot. 
            And now, here I was, about to tell the first person about this change. It happened to be my friend and boss, and I was wondering if an alcoholic beverage with lunch would be inappropriate.
            “So, I have something to tell you,” I said.
            “Oh God, are you quitting? You’re quitting. Dammit, I knew something was wrong!”
           “What? No, no! Nothing like that! Oh, no, Gina, really!” I laughed, “I gave in. I told Greg we could get married!”
            The look on her face said she thought maybe quitting was the better idea. “Really. A wedding? How…nice.”
            Slowly it dawned on me; I’d forgotten about an assistant she had two assistants ago, and the flip comment she’d made when I asked why she’d left: “She was far more interested in planning her wedding than doing any work.”
            “Well, when I say wedding,” I blurted, “I don’t mean fancy. Not at all. Very, very simple. Small. Minimum work, minimum stress. This will not take over my life, period. I will absolutely require time off for a honeymoon, though.”
           Gina had a look that said she suspected that I was perhaps protesting too much. “How small?”
           “Minuscule. Next spring, while Alison’s on break, Greg’s going to fly his daughters in. My brother and sister will come, I hope, and we’ll do it in City Park, for free, then go out to dinner someplace nice. That’s it. But I thought you’d want to know.”
            “City Park?”
            “Yep. It’s public property, so it’s free, and with all of those gorgeous live oaks? Natural beauty at its finest…and cheapest. I figure we do it at sunset, and it’ll be done and done.”
            She started to look a little more relaxed. “Well, I’ll be there too, of course.”
            It’s funny, isn’t it, how you don’t recognize the slippery slope until you’re halfway to the bottom?
           
           Gina took it pretty well, I thought, especially with her PTSD from previous betrothed employees. And like an alcoholic admitting his addiction, the first time the words “I’m getting married” passed my lips were the hardest.
            In fact, I went from somewhat sheepish to annoyed in short order as I discovered the worried conversations that had been going on behind my back for years, apparently. The wind generated from the collective signs of relief caused gale warnings.
            There were many, it seems, who were worried about me and the security of my future. It had been quite the topic, particularly with the slightly older ladies of the neighborhood who liked me well enough but had certain…concerns.
           
            We had never been a conventional couple, and I found it amusing to keep people guessing. When we moved to New Orleans, we bought a house style called, in local parlance, a “double shotgun camelback-” basically a duplex with a big hump of an upstairs. Shotgun style houses were so named because you could open the front door and fire a shot that would go straight through the house and out the back door without hitting each other because there are no hallways or breaks. Shotguns are long and narrow, with each room opening on to the next and the kitchen traditionally at the very back.
            It’s a style that was inexpensive to build and great for air circulation, but it meant that everyone would traipse through your bedroom to get to the room with the food in it. I was willing- eager, even- to throw myself into the New Orleans lifestyle, but there were limits. So we bought a house with three units, divided the upstairs apartment in half and dropped stairs in so I could have my messy bedroom kept private.
           And then we each took a half and happily had lived next door to each other for a decade, believing in the Katherine Hepburn adage that men and women should live separately and visit often. Our house has a huge yard with a perfect New Orleans courtyard in back, so our back doors are always open, and since we both worked from home most of the time we were in and out of each side all the time, but ultimately we both needed our office and our space, and I had a teenager to raise, so it worked out well. Meals are taken together, and- oh heaven- cooked by Greg.  Plus I had my dogs, and despite his many wonderful qualities, “dog lover” is not among them. “Dog tolerator” perhaps.
            There was just too much noise and commotion in my life for a full time writer to function, and after all that chaos I needed a place to escape to as well. Heaven. 
            The reaction when we explained the situation to someone was always, always the same: the husband would look confused, offended,even. The wife would look blissful as she imagined what life would be like if she could pull it off. “That’s brilliant” was something I heard more than once.
           
            Then there was/ is our age difference, not significant enough to be an issue, but we’d met online in the dawn of the internet age, when only geeks were navigating the web, so the average intelligence of anyone you’d bump into was significantly higher than the mean. There were no webcams, no online dating services, just a big, weird community. We started a writing project together and by the time we met in person nearly a year later, age was the least important thing involved. 
            We’d written all sorts of things, going back and forth, knew the other to be smart, funny and very very sharp. We were both recently divorced, and not looking for anything serious, but discovered that we had too much in common to let it pass.
            But when we met I realized I might be in over my head.
            You see, once upon a time, before he met me, Greg was a power player at a magazine you’d know immediately if I named it. And having learned that name, you’d look me up and down with an eyebrow cocked and wonder what the hell someone like that was doing with someone like me.
 
You might have guessed that I am not that sort of girl. I am not anyone’s idea of a trophy wife. Essentially I am, and I say this with some amount of pride, jumped up white trash. Smart white trash. Self motivated white trash. Presentable and articulate, but still WT.
 
He grew up an only child with cooks and English boarding schools, hearing classical music tinkling through his house. I grew up the oldest of three squabbling kids in the sticks, eating Rice-a-Roni with heavy metal rattling the windows.
 
We met somewhere in the middle- he’d burnt out on his high stress life and was writing & editing from home. I’d bootstrapped it out of the small town and improved myself. We met because I wrote silly fun things and he desperately wanted to work on something that wasn’t a dull, dry, business story. And so, slowly, he began pulling me up further while I dragged him down and got him to relax.
 
It’s worked really well when we’re on our own and with the friends we’ve made while together, though friends and family from the past tend to look at us sidelong. My family tends to be amused by the whole thing. His friends and family are much more split, and several of them feel their beloved Gregory has gotten the short end of the stick. They have made it plain that they were hoping he’d grow out of it, but now, alas, it seems they’re going to be stuck with me. So sad.
           
           The looks on their faces when they found out was almost enough to make it worth all the bother of getting married and it occurred to me for the first time that this might just be fun.

TheBrideConfides.com, 2010