Midaregami

It is finished—as smoothly as a major life event can be, I imagine. Given the fact that it was, at its core, a traditional wedding, we kept things very simple—and reminders of this fact were abundant, especially when I dared to show signs of stress or aggravation. “You’re really getting off easy, you know,” they’d say. I’d smile and say, “Yeah, I know.”

And it was true. But there are scales of “easy”—in comparison to a couple of signatures down at the county courthouse, anything involving things like a church or a dress start to look herculean. But I knew better than to remind people that they were lucky, god-damned lucky to be at a wedding in the first place.

That mild irritation aside, it was lovely. The Deacon (“Deacon Charlie”) who presided was a genial old man with a fairly thick Spanish accent; this made me grin for reasons I don’t clearly understand. He was relentlessly positive in the days leading up to the wedding, and helped to alleviate the panicky feeling that J and I felt during those particularly trying few days.

We exchanged rings, although mine was a mere placeholder hand-me-down and Julia’s was her engagement ring. Neither of us have wedding bands and until we have more free income, that’s going to be the way things stay for the forseeable future.

There was no ceremony-final kiss. I didn’t even notice at the time, but some of Julia’s relatives were irritated, which—let’s just get it right out in the open—caused me a certain vague satisfaction.

Predictably, there was a lot of cooing over how beautiful J was and how handsome I was, and I think we were pretty gracious in avoiding getting too irritated by the constant, obligatory adulation. This was made somewhat easier by the fact that we did look damn good, and there will be photos up eventually. Julia’s friend Jessica kindly deigned to take pictures. Based on her previous work, they should be excellent.

The “reception,” such as it was, was a low-key affair at my parents’ house, and involved lots of good Mexican food. It was good to see those friends of mine that were able to come. I should mention Gabe in particular, as he attended to his duties as Best Man admirably, what with the broken leg and resulting surgery that kept him confined to crutches and a wheelchair. Thanks for helping out with my lame wedding, Gabe.

Jessica was heroic in an entirely different way—really, her efforts deserve their own essay, entitled “Bossy by Proxy: The Importance of the Maid of Honor as Logistical Bludgeon in Pre-Wedding Planning.” I think the marked lack of squabbling and/or crippling nervous breakdowns was due in large part to Jessica. Or should I say… Jessicat!

Ultimately, it was a nice, if disgustingly wholesome affair. Julia, Jessica, and I all agreed that the unpleasant earnestness of it all was the most tiring aspect, and the sooner we could all go back to being ironic, disaffected twentysomething hipsters, the better. At the moment, we’re enjoying a kind of inverse honeymoon (the rest of my family is out of town, so we have the run of my ancestral home) and basking in the fact that the people who said that things would be somehow different after the wedding were wrong, wrong, wrong.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 6th, 2005 at 7:57 am and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.