A Romantic, Almost-10th-Anniversary Post

...or not...

Tomorrow is our Tenth Wedding Anniversary. Hooray.

The traditional gift for a tenth Anniversary is tin or aluminum. Hmmmm…

I don’t think you should send us a tin or aluminum gift but I do think you should rejoice with us in a wedding that seemed doomed from day one.

Oh, I don’t say this lightly. Heaven knows we were in love. It would be so much nicer to say “young” and in love but I was 40-something, he was 50-something and we’d both been around the block a few times.

The marriage came after a funny, super-long-distance courtship. He was an ex-pat living in Mexico City and still had his apartment there when we got married. I was a certifiably insane single Mom living in Phoenix.

But that is another story for another time.

This story is about the wedding.

When he had been up we had planned a great wedding at a neat hotel pretty close to us and since we had both enjoyed a lot of great times in Mexico City we had arranged for a Mariachi Band, tequila toasts, cuban cigars (ssssshhh) and lots of great food.
We had also arranged for all our combined kids to be present. Two nineteen year olds, two eighteen year old and a sixteen year old.

That alone should have warned us there would be trouble.

But we had no idea exactly what would happen in that final week before the actual ceremony.

Now the youngest of this group of kids had been giving me some rebellion problems for a few years and she decided that particular week would be a great time to get arrested. So she did. Yea. It was not good. It was got even more stressful when I found out her sentencing was set for the Monday following the actual wedding ceremony. OK, there went the honeymoon.

AND my youngest sister who had been quite ill for a lot of years had decided that might be a good week to die. And she whole-heartedly attempted it ending up in the hospital in critical care.

AND my husband-to-be got detained in Mexico City with a business crisis so I was valiantly trying to manage all the crisis PLUS the final wedding plans all on my own.

AND the company I was working for had filed bankrupcy earlier in the year. I had arranged for the week off but another round of lay-offs occured that week. As HR Director (and the only employee left in the HR department) it was my job to tell people they were being laid off less then two months before Christmas. No vacation time. Just a lot of tears and anger from shocked employees.

And in between all this there were kids to pick up at the airport. Visits with caseworkers for my little juvenile delinquent. A houseful of kids who seemed to delight in encouraging new levels of noise and commotion. AND there were nights spent in the hospital spelling my poor Mother so she could get some rest which also meant I had no family to help me with the whole wedding mess.

I was supposed to be relaxing, getting my hair done, getting a mani-pedi, finding my dress. Yes, I had procrastinated on the whole dress issue. First of all I hate shopping for clothes. Period. Second of all I hate wearing dresses. Period.

On Thursday I found a few minutes and rushed into a department store only to find absolutely nothing I liked. Or should I say only to find absolutely nothing that dimished my haggard appearance. I ended up buying some purple dress that I detested.

During the nightly long phone calls (trust me, you do not want to know how much those phone bills were!) my soon-to-be-husband and I had I cried, he listened. I said we need to postpone this thing, he said “there may never be a better time. Let's just do it.”

It was soooooo romantic.

Or not.

My sister got out of the hospital fairly stable on Thursday.

I refrained from killing all the rest of the noisy kids in the house with great difficulty. I refrained from killing the juvenile delinquent with even greater difficulty.

The groom got to Phoenix on Friday.

And by this time I couldn't care less if we got married or not.

All I really wanted to do was lay down and sleep for about a month.

On Saturday morning I was a wreck.

My fiance was all giddy and happy and la-la-la we're getting married.

I was all exhausted and sick and I think I really disliked all five kids. And I came down with a huge case of cold feet. The absolute most freezing feet ever.


I had sworn after my first marriage of 19 years failed that I would never, ever, ever get married again. What was I thinking?

Sure I loved this guy but what did that matter?

The big day continues tomorrow….