I started making wedding plans right after Grant proposed. I didn't know what kind of wedding I wanted, but I did know what I didn't want. My first marriage was all about the dress, the flowers, the cake, anything and everything except the groom. The reality that I forgot that detail slapped me upside my head when my new groom went downstairs to the bar instead of spending our wedding night together. This time, the wedding would be all about the groom and the life we would share starting after the wedding. The first item on my list was location. You would think this would be the easiest choice, but not for us. Option 1 was one of our churches. That one was quickly nixed because my home church was where I married the first time. His church was the one my ex's family attended. Our current church didn't marry divorcees, so onto option 2. Smoky Mountains seemed an obvious choice for a quick and easy wedding until Grant vetoed that because his first honeymoon was there. It was all downhill from there. Vegas, Hawaii, Florida, the list went on and on because we couldn't find a place that one of us hadn't been with some ex (or skank, in Grant's case). I finally surrendered and told Grant I guess we would just have to go to the courthouse. I guess he felt bad for staining most of the United States with memories of his conquests, so he offered to take over the wedding plans. All I had to get was my dress and he would do the rest.
I came home from work the next day and he had made all the plans (For a female it takes a year to plan a wedding. For a male, it takes 3 hours tops.) He said all the arrangements were made and we needed to decide on a date within the month. Yep, within the month. I don't know if he thought I might back out if we waited longer than that or if he got a discount for last minute plans, but nonetheless, we picked a date. We settled on Friday, October 13, 2000. Now, to most people 13 is an unlucky number and Friday 13 is a day for hiding in the house under the covers until Saturday comes, but to us it was the logical choice. In our warped logic, we figured the other days of the year had been unlucky for us, so this time we would tell superstition to kiss it and pick the day that no one else would want to get married. We booked a flight for California and I ran to my friend Terri's house for a dress. Terri's mom had a clothing store for years and her unsold stock was in a room at her house. I figured she would have something that would work (Can you tell, wedding number 2 is soooo much different from wedding number 1). All of the dresses she had were wedding 1 looking and I wasn't about to be like the Real Housewives and pretend this was wedding 1 in virginal white with a long train and all that mess. Luckily, Terri's mom had a beautiful suit that she had worn to a wedding that she offered to give me. It was perfect. Simple, classy, would pack well, my wedding planning was over.
The day before the big day came and we headed to Memphis for our flight. In typical Grant fashion, he was running over an hour behind leaving. Then he realized that he didn't have much cash so he headed for the ATM. I was in a nervous jerk by this time because now we were an hour and a half behind schedule. We turned into the airport on 2 wheels and sprinted like OJ (airport OJ, not freeway chase OJ) through the airport just in time to see our plane heading down the runway. OMG!!!! Seriously??!!!? If I ever needed a sign that this marriage was a mistake, this was it. For the next 5 hours I sat seethingly in silence while Grant looked for every reason in the world to make me forget this bad omen. "Maybe we missed the plane because it's going to crash (He wished 200 people dead just to prove missing the plane wasn't a sign not to marry.)" "Maybe there's a virus on the plane that would've made us so sick we would've been in the hospital instead of on our honeymoon." "Maybe all the luggage will be missing when that plane arrives, so it's a good thing that we get to go on the next one so we will have our wedding clothes." He went on and on until I finally lost it. There we were, yelling, crying, and pleading in the airport food court. Boy, I bet everybody there was wishing they were the happy couple going to get married!
When we finally landed in Reno, Grant and I had made up. I would like to think that I was sure missing our flight wasn't an omen and that this marriage would be the fairy tale I hoped for, but at that moment, I was thinking, at the very least, Grant believed in 'til death do us part' like I did and for better or worse, by golly, we would stick it out no matter what. We drove into California to a beautiful Inn with a view of Lake Tahoe and a chapel for our nuptials. We stayed in a fabulous suite with champagne chilling by the fireplace. In that chapel, we said our vows and this time I knew we both meant every word. Looking at my Husband, I knew that for better or worse, in sickness and health, through the good and the bad (despite Grant's pleading, we did leave out the obey part), he would be by my side every step of the way. Now, 13 years later, my marriage couldn't be better. Standing in that chapel, I never imagined all the trials our relationship would have to endure. Court battles for our children, estrangement from my children for a period of time, the sickness and death of our family members, job changes, infertility, the list is long for reasons we could have called it quits years ago, but instead, with every ordeal, we circled the wagons and met the challenges head-on. Not once have either of us even thought to do anything else.
For all those who think the white dress, bank-breaking, perfect day is the first step toward a perfect marriage, I say this- Until you have your wedding in the one place your fiancee hasn't taken a hoochie, borrow a suit from a little old lady, and miss your flight to your wedding destination, you haven't really even started to test the waters of your future marriage. All those things weren't omens that my marriage was a mistake, but tests to make sure we were able to push through the stuff that didn't matter to get to the stuff that did.
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