We were getting married in the Catholic church where I'd essentially grown up, a beautiful edifice in a blue-collar neighborhood. Friends and relatives were coming from all over. Torrential downpour that morning, flooded roads, and about half the people couldn't show up.
It seems odd to use "Grandma" for this, because my still-fresh memories of her are as a gorgeous young thing, and she sure was. For this story, she's the Lovely. She was 19, I was 20, and we'd been going out for three years, more or less. Yeah, started out as high school sweethearts.
It was 1974, and you would giggle so hard at the tuxes that the wedding party and the fathers had, at my insistence - powder blue pattern with decidedly non-standard lapels. They were definitely not traditional, and yeah, they're worthy of ridicule now, but heck with it - I liked them then and I liked them now. And my hair wasn't shoulder-length, but it was down a ways. Ah, I remember hair.
The Lovely had fairly long blonde hair, but some of it was in banana curls that day. It was a great look. My mom insisted on making the dresses, and she did a great job. She was a talented seamstress. She insisted, though, on making the Lovely's wedding dress an ivory rather than a pure white. She said pure white wasn't good. I think there was something else afoot in her mind, but I didn't, and don't, care - the dresses did come out nice. I don't remember the color of the girls' dresses, but they were nice too.
A friend of ours did the keyboard and sang a couple songs we'd requested. I don't remember all of them, but Mussorgsky's "Promenade" and Elton John's "Your Song" were two of them. For the main song - the Lovely had been in choir with two of her "twins," girls who were actually twins and born on the same day as the Lovely (and I dated one of them for a while), so they were all tight, all had beautiful voices, and they killed (in a great way) the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun." Killed it. I can still hear it.
I had my best friend still surviving from childhood as best man. I need to write about him sometime. The others were college friends. The Lovely's group were a couple of her roommates, my cousin, and maid of honor was Laura, Curt's sister from the Curt stories that a couple of you may remember from writings past.
The Lovely's stepdad brought her up the aisle, and I still remember how radiant - and scared and young - she looked. Really, except for the reduced attendance and pouring rain outside, it all went off without a hitch. Well, it was a hitch, but you know what I mean.
Our reception was lame. We paid for our own wedding, and we were 20 and 19, so what could we do? It was at the church reception hall, no alcohol allowed, and we did the cake thing, the tossing garter thing, the tossing bouquet thing in there. The real party was going on at my parents' house, because they had stocked up on the liquor, and my mom was in Theme Party Frenzy, and it really was a good, rollicking time when the party moved there.
However, the Lovely and I had kind of a sparing time of it, because we were taking off that afternoon/evening for our honeymoon, a camping trip in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and I was determined to drive as far as possible that night, maybe even get to a town close to the park.
Well, we stayed too long because we were having a great time, and then we hit the road, and my grand driving plans came to naught, because about 60 miles out of town, Honeymoon Fever hit, and we checked in to a Great Western by the highway for our first night as wife and husband. We did hit the camping for the next evening, and we had a great honeymoon.
That was 42 years ago next month. She's as lovely as ever.
It seems odd to use "Grandma" for this, because my still-fresh memories of her are as a gorgeous young thing, and she sure was. For this story, she's the Lovely. She was 19, I was 20, and we'd been going out for three years, more or less. Yeah, started out as high school sweethearts.
It was 1974, and you would giggle so hard at the tuxes that the wedding party and the fathers had, at my insistence - powder blue pattern with decidedly non-standard lapels. They were definitely not traditional, and yeah, they're worthy of ridicule now, but heck with it - I liked them then and I liked them now. And my hair wasn't shoulder-length, but it was down a ways. Ah, I remember hair.
The Lovely had fairly long blonde hair, but some of it was in banana curls that day. It was a great look. My mom insisted on making the dresses, and she did a great job. She was a talented seamstress. She insisted, though, on making the Lovely's wedding dress an ivory rather than a pure white. She said pure white wasn't good. I think there was something else afoot in her mind, but I didn't, and don't, care - the dresses did come out nice. I don't remember the color of the girls' dresses, but they were nice too.
A friend of ours did the keyboard and sang a couple songs we'd requested. I don't remember all of them, but Mussorgsky's "Promenade" and Elton John's "Your Song" were two of them. For the main song - the Lovely had been in choir with two of her "twins," girls who were actually twins and born on the same day as the Lovely (and I dated one of them for a while), so they were all tight, all had beautiful voices, and they killed (in a great way) the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun." Killed it. I can still hear it.
I had my best friend still surviving from childhood as best man. I need to write about him sometime. The others were college friends. The Lovely's group were a couple of her roommates, my cousin, and maid of honor was Laura, Curt's sister from the Curt stories that a couple of you may remember from writings past.
The Lovely's stepdad brought her up the aisle, and I still remember how radiant - and scared and young - she looked. Really, except for the reduced attendance and pouring rain outside, it all went off without a hitch. Well, it was a hitch, but you know what I mean.
Our reception was lame. We paid for our own wedding, and we were 20 and 19, so what could we do? It was at the church reception hall, no alcohol allowed, and we did the cake thing, the tossing garter thing, the tossing bouquet thing in there. The real party was going on at my parents' house, because they had stocked up on the liquor, and my mom was in Theme Party Frenzy, and it really was a good, rollicking time when the party moved there.
However, the Lovely and I had kind of a sparing time of it, because we were taking off that afternoon/evening for our honeymoon, a camping trip in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and I was determined to drive as far as possible that night, maybe even get to a town close to the park.
Well, we stayed too long because we were having a great time, and then we hit the road, and my grand driving plans came to naught, because about 60 miles out of town, Honeymoon Fever hit, and we checked in to a Great Western by the highway for our first night as wife and husband. We did hit the camping for the next evening, and we had a great honeymoon.
That was 42 years ago next month. She's as lovely as ever.
Last edited:
