Wedding Day #1!

Paladin and I were married last Friday evening.  Sort of. 

 

Where to start?  Ahhh…the day before the wedding.  At 9:30am, Will called me.  Mom was throwing up cupfuls of blood.  They rushed her to the ER, and it took until 6pm to get Tina on the phone to tell us that Mom was being admitted to ICU.  They gave her several pints of blood and plasma and stopped her vomiting.  She was stable and out of pain, but it’s several days later and the doctors are just today taking her in to get a scope of her stomach.  

 

At about 10am, Paladin got his papers from the lawyer.  Oh wait.  Nope.  They weren’t the final papers because the d**k lawyer hadn’t bothered to file a damn thing.  He hadn’t even bothered to type anything up until Monday when Paladin had called him to ask where the papers were.  That’s right.  We had a ceremony that was not legal on Friday.  If you’re in Leesville looking for a lawyer, DO NOT pick the first one in the alphabetical list.  Trust me.  He may have done a great job for someone else, but he has f**ked Paladin at every turn.  Paladin is now paying for Mull’s van because it’s cheaper than paying another retainer.  This is after he walked into court with an affidavit signed by Mull proving that she left the marriage of her own accord and was in fact pregnant by another man when she filed.  The F**KING lawyer STILL turned around and gave her everything she wanted, and poor defeated Paladin just gave in to shut them up and because he wanted so desperately for us to be legally married on Friday.  It makes me sick to my stomach.  Bring on the apocalypse.  It can’t be any worse than the world we’re living in where all sense of justice and honor are obsolete. 

 

At about 2:30, our officiant called.  The poor lady was outside.  When I came out, she was almost crying.  She’d found out that since we didn’t have a license, she’d be risking her credentials to marry us.  Near as I can figure, it had something to do with the state’s battle against gay marriage.  Apparently, if she married us and then gay marriage was made legal, all of the civil ceremonies that were performed *could* be considered legal too making Paladin a bigamist.  So, here I stood at my front gate covered in food (NEVER CATER YOUR OWN WEDDING EVER!) and comforting this poor woman while my own world was falling apart.  As I told her, at that point, if Hitler had come back to life right there in the middle of the ceremony, I’d have told him to pull up a chair because this wedding was happening come hell or high water!

 

Are you keeping up?  It’s about 24 hours until the wedding.  I haven’t even made a hair appointment.  My mother is in ICU.  The officiant has dropped out.  And it was just me and Paladin doing EVERYTHING.

 

The day of the wedding wasn’t much better.  We had promises of help from my girlfriends and Tina.  Everybody swore they’d be there that morning.  Tina wandered in come 1pm.  Rachel and Rebecca finally showed up at about 2.  I had made most of the food.  We had done all of the decorating outside.  But, finally, I could hand over some of this work and relax and find someone to do my hair, right?  Wrong.  Half of them wandered off to get ice and didn’t come back for over an hour.  When they did get back, they filled some Chinese mini-takeout boxes with mints (Mom insisted I have mints) and folded one basket of laundry (which I was grateful for, but I was hoping they’d at least do the other 2).  Then they left to get ready.  I still didn’t have a hair appointment.  Tina and Paladin finished heating up the food (I had premade almost everything and the rest just had to be popped into the oven for the most part).  About 4pm, I gave up on trying to find someone to do my hair and drove down to the Walmart and let the girls there do it.  It was the first minute I’d sat still in a week.  I almost cried.

 

When I got home at nearly 6pm (the wedding was scheduled for 7:20pm), Savvy and Blondie were playing out front in their dresses.  Tina was trying to get the crown to stay in Indies hair (mega-FAIL, but I had a back-up flower).  Dave & Will had shown up, and I started directing people again (leaving a list behind was not effective…the next time Paladin suggests that I don’t know how to delegate, I have all the ammo I need to argue it).  Rachel should have been back by then.  She was nowhere to be found.  That’s right the speakers hadn’t been set up, only half of the food was put out, and the matron-of-honor was MIA.  At this point, Tina and I were the only ones not dressed though, and finally, for the FIRST TIME, since this whole damned thing began, people were acting like they gave a damn about it (and not just concerned with what they got to wear) and actually pitched in to help. 

 

About 6:30pm, I got to stop working on preparing everything (ok, I freakin’ gave up and called it a day), and went into my room to get ready.  I helped Tina get dressed.  Then I tried to keep people out of the bathroom while I stood topless putting my make-up on. 

 

I have come to the conclusion that I hate weddings.  Period.  Through all of this, I wanted one thing only:  I wanted to get ready alone and come out all by myself to a few gasps.  It’s that moment that most women who do the big wedding dream of when they pick out their dress.  On no less than FOUR occasions over the last 3 months, I asked to call this wedding off.  Each and every time, Paladin talked me out of it.  It was for his sake, for Savvy’s sake, for Blondie’s sake, for Bell’s sake.  It may have been my vision, but I knew the truth all along was that it could end in nothing but disappointment for me.  Still, each time everything was looming over me, I held on to those gasps.  In the end, I couldn’t keep people out of my bathroom much less the bedroom where I was trying to get dressed.  I love my friends.  I love the children, theirs and ours.  And, I know that I’m going to look back and find the charm and beauty in everyone piling into those rooms around me, wanting to help and to watch me get ready.  I do love that they wanted to be there.  I swear I do.  It probably wouldn’t have mattered to me if more than 5 people besides them had shown up to the wedding to gasp.  That’s right.  Five people.  Actually, that might be generous.  The neighbor down the road came with his son, and Brian’s brother Jon brought a couple of skanks (I think he’s currently sleeping with the one with the 4 or 5 lip rings…I’ll have to count them the next time I see her).  Of course, that’s not counting my girlfriends.  Even though they weren’t in the actual wedding party, Rebecca S. and Rebecca A., felt like bridesmaids.  Rebecca A. and her husband Glen played photogs and did all of the filming using Rachel’s fancy SLR camera and my ancient camcorder.  And, both ladies were right there in my bathroom helping.  I do love my friends, but I wanted those gasps too.  They’re supposed to be the pay-off for months of torture.

 

In the end, I had to shove people down the aisle.  Everyone went the wrong way.  When I asked why they didn’t go down the aisle and went up Brian’s ramp instead, Paladin complained that we should have practiced because he didn’t know what was going on.  After all, how could he when all I’d done was give him a written copy of the ceremony complete with directions for the action in italics a week before?  It’s not like it was complicated.  Wait in garage until everyone is welcomed to the wedding and then walk up the aisle; stop when you hit the altar.  After the men go, send the little girls, then the maids, then the bride.  I spent the entire night herding people and telling them what to do DURING the ceremony.  It broke my heart a little.  Instead of getting to smile and be grateful to be marrying this man, I had to fuss to get everyone to stand on the damned porch. 

 

The only way it could have been more beautiful was for me to have draped the entire house walls and to have had that big fog machine I wanted.  It would have been nice if my own family had called to say they weren’t coming instead of telling me, “I can’t wait!  I’ll have to dress up!” and then never RSVPing. 

 

Like most weddings, it was a thing of beauty for everyone except for the person in charge of making it all work.    But it was beautiful.  I’m very grateful for that.  I just wish I could have had a few moments of happy during it.

 

I painted the sheets hanging behind the altar and the top of the altar was one of the boards that used to be on the outside of my parents house (we sawed them on our sawmill over 30 yrs. ago). 

Bustle view of Bell.

Rebecca S.'s son Alex & Martian

Jon & skank #?

Indie & Rachel's son Tristan

We made Jon read the ceremony.

Blondie was dying to turn on that flower.

Martian took this one of Bell pre-wedding.

The little girls fussing with their veils.

Waiting for Paladin to say his line & take my hand.

Paladin reading his 2 sentences off his glove.

Indie carried a book with Paladin's ring inside.

Kiss. I wish I'd told him no frenching.

I promise we were happy but chainmail is oiled. Ick.

Rachel's girl Naudia and Indie wanted into the icing.

I cut the first slice after Paladin hacked it with his sword.

See told ya we were happy.

I was happier with it all in the end.  I wish I could load the video for you right now, but I’m trying to figure that out still.  There are more formal pictures coming from Rachel’s fancy SLR camera including pictures of the rest of the guests.  It really was beautiful.  The music from www.freeplaymusic.com was perfect (Brooding, Harpy Cries, Holst’s Neptune, and Tristeza were a few of the selections).  The flowers would have made a gay man proud.    The cakes were from Bailey’s Bakery in Leesville and cost only $50 for both (it was a great deal and they worked very hard on them…I didn’t have the heart to tell them they weren’t at all what I’d wanted when I told them a fancy chocolate cake…I should have never said “wedding” it makes people’s brains go to the twee place…all I wanted was dark ganache with some chocolate shavings).  There are more pictures to come for sure!  Oh, and the next time I get married, I do it alone!    lol 

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I hope this is the first of many blog posts.  I have lost months of your lives and mine.  I want it all back. 

*hugs*

Anna