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Honestly, it's been really difficult for me to sit down
and write this article because nothing went wrong with the
wedding or the honeymoon. Writing about things that go well
makes me feel like some sort of arrogant prick who has to
brag about everything great in his life, and I hate to do
that. It's so much easier when horrible things happen. Funny
things, which are ultimately humiliating to me, make for a
good story as far as I'm concerned, and the wedding and
honeymoon had none of this, despite all the potential.
Let me back up a little.
Mary and I have known each other for about eleven years,
and we've been living together for almost two. We have known
for quite some time that we were eventually going to get
married. On Valentine's day, we finally went to pick out an
engagement ring and started planning the wedding. At first,
we didn't want a reception, just a wedding at the courthouse
and a dinner to celebrate, but eventually we decided that it
was best to let everyone see the ceremony take place. Then
we picked a place-- a beautiful little restaurant on the
banks of the Delaware River in the town of New Hope.
The thing that hung over the wedding was the threat of
rain. When you plan to have a wedding outside, you pretty
much have to plan for the eventuality that it might rain,
especially in this climate in the middle of summer. The
restaurant people had shown us a nice room for the ceremony
in the event of rain, but we really wanted to have it
outside, next to the river.
We spoke little of the weather until a week before the
wedding, and I anxiously listened to the 7-day forecast.
"Cloudy, 70 degrees." Not bad. Then the rain started. It
rained for almost the entire week before the wedding, with
us listening to the weather forecast every hour. The
forecast for June 13th slowly changed to "Cloudy with a
passing thunder storm, 80 degrees," and eventually the
dreaded "Showers with a chance of thunderstorm, 83
degrees."
The Wedding Day
We woke up on the morning of the thirteenth to find rain.
"We'll just have it inside the restaurant. It will be better
because if it was outside it would be really hot and what
with the bugs and all, I think it would be generally
unpleasant. We didn't even want to have anyone at our
wedding anyway-- this is completely for their benefit," I
reasoned.
"But it would be so nice to have it outside."
Anxiously we drove to my parent's house to get dressed
for the wedding, and something amazing happened on the way
there-- the rain slowed and then eventually stopped! We
arrived to find it cloudy, but not raining. Perhaps a slim
chance? It rained on the way to the hair salon, but while we
were there, it cleared up and the sun actually came out.
We went back to my parents' house and changed into our
wedding clothes, myself in my tux and Mary in her stunning
dress. We had to make sure we got to the restaurant early in
case we could still get some pictures while the rain had
stopped, so we rushed everyone out the door.
We arrived at the restaurant over an hour early, and it
was still not raining. The clouds looked ominous, however,
and we were still not sure if we should have the wedding in
the gazebo because we had hired a string quartet and it
would take them quite a while to set up. We looked up at the
sky.
Finally we decided to hope for the best and have it
outside. People started arriving quite early-- the people
who were supposed to park the cars came after most of them.
Mary and I were busy posing for pictures and shaking hands
and kissing everyone. The best man and maid of honor both
showed up and were ready. Finally the moment came.
The crowd kind of stood around in a confused semi-circle
as the procession started. At this point, time seemed to
slow down and I was terribly moved by the song the musicians
were playing, Pachelbel's Canon. The actual ceremony seemed
to take two hours when in reality it only lasted fifteen
minutes. Mary and I held hands the entire time. I was
sweating like a hog because of the many layers of tuxedo,
and I had to concentrate hard to keep from openly weeping at
the sight of my beautiful bride. Finally, after what seemed
like forever, it was over and my new wife and I stood around
kissing people again. It was really quite strange. I got
really tired of people asking me if I felt any
different.
The Reception
We went inside the restaurant to cool off because some of
the guests were concerned with my perspiration, and we stood
around and looked at the pile of gifts for us and admired
the cake. Finally the guests started filtering in, the
quartet relocated from the gazebo and we ate our first meal
together as husband and wife.
The reception was amazingly free of problems. Several
people got a bit tipsy and loud, but overall everyone had a
really good time. There were surprisingly few comments about
this being Mary's second marriage, aside from Mary's aunt
warning her that "This is the last wedding gift I'm ever
going to give you." Also, several potential personal
conflicts never erupted, for instance, Mary's divorced
parents joked around like old friends when they had to walk
her down the aisle. Also, by an amazing coincidence, the
maid of honor and the best man had a brief fling at the same
time Mary and I had met back in 1986. Over the years, each
of them said things about the other, but that day they acted
as if nothing had happened.
Our friends and family really enjoyed the string quartet,
which made us feel good. Both of us were violently opposed
to having a wedding band or, God forbid, a DJ. Despite my
mother's objections, we told them only to play classical
music, even going as far as to put a "no Andrew Lloyd Weber"
clause into the contract.
Before we knew it, the reception was over. Or at least,
we were supposed to leave the room, but people were having
such a good time talking to each other that we had to walk
around and literally tell people that we needed to get out
of the restaurant. We packed up all the presents into the
car and headed back to my parents' house, and then back to
our house. On the way home, a torrential downpour started
and we were amazed that we had been so lucky.
We got home and opened our presents, and got a
much-needed night's sleep.
The Honeymoon
The next day, we prepared to leave for our honeymoon in
Paris. Now, I was positive that there would be some really
funny bad things that would happen to us in Paris which
would make for an amusing article. When we decided to go to
Paris back in March, we didn't know anything about the
Soccer World Cup which was to be in ten different cities of
France for a whole month beginning about a week before our
wedding. I booked the flight and then tried to find a room
in a somewhat inexpensive hotel, only to find that all the
cheap ones were all booked up. After much searching, my
travel agent located one that was a little more than we
wanted to spend, but it was a great hotel in a great
location, so we decided to book it since it was our
honeymoon.
About a week before the wedding, there was an article in
the Philadelphia Inquirer about how, on the eve of the World
Cup, strikes were bringing Paris to the brink of disaster.
This made us really nervous. According to the article, not
only were Air France pilots on strike (we were flying
British Air, so we weren't worried about that) but the
baggage handlers and maintenance people at the airport were
on strike as well. It also made a big deal about train
strikes, a Metro strike, truck strikes and police strikes.
It quoted all these people who were having the most horrible
problems getting into the city from the airport, noting that
the taxis were charging $75 for the ride (if they didn't
decide to strike too).
We were also quite worried about the possibility of
soccer-related violence. During the opening ceremonies for
the World Cup (before any games had even been played), a mob
of drunken soccer fans rioted and scores were arrested by
police. It was shaping up to be quite a trip!
The flight from Philadelphia to London was uneventful and
pleasant. We had both ordered vegetarian meals for the
flight, and the cool thing about that is that they bring you
your food before everyone else gets theirs. We landed in
Heathrow airport, found the terminal where our flight was to
depart from, and wandered through the stores that make
Heathrow resemble a shopping mall rather than an airport.
Our flight to Paris was delayed a bit, but we finally
arrived in the city at around 11:00 AM.
Paris
I didn't get any sleep on any of the flights, so I
arrived in Paris exhausted and disoriented. We took the
express train into town and Mary told me which way to
walk.
We finally arrived in the room and I crashed on the bed
and slept for a few hours. After being awake for about 28
hours, my body was ready for some serious sleep, but since
it was only two in the afternoon, my mind had other plans.
Mary woke me up a few hours later and I found myself in a
thick fog that made me feel like I was suspended in maple
syrup. Ah, jet lag.
We ate dinner at an Italian restaurant. We hadn't planned
to eat Italian food, but it was the only place open for
dinner at five in the evening. It's hard to eat vegetarian
in French restaurants because some sort of meat always seems
to be a main course, so we ended up having Italian food
three nights, Indian food two nights and Chinese food the
other night. I was surprised to find that Paris is loaded
with Chinese and Thai restaurants, along with a lot of
Greek/Turkish places. We did eat French food for lunch
several times (pastries, crepes and omelettes, and, of
course, french fries.)
Perhaps the strangest thing for me about the dining
experiences was having to speak French to Italian, Indian
and Chinese people in restaurants. That was really odd. Mary
speaks French fluently after taking it in high school and
college. I took Spanish in high school and German in
college, so learning a new language for the trip was pretty
difficult with all the other languages in my head. I did
manage to pick up a passing "restaurant vocabulary" so that
I had little trouble ordering in French. French waiters,
though notoriously rude, are somewhat less rude if you order
in their language. Who can blame them? If some French people
came into a restaurant in New York and tried to order in
French, do you think the waiters would be polite?
While we were eating, it started raining, but we still
went to see the Arc de Triomphe and headed down the Champs
Élysées. It was here that we saw all the World
Cup fans in action. The very wide sidewalk was packed with
people wearing identical soccer jerseys and brightly colored
wigs. For the most part, they seemed well behaved, but I
could see how a lot of beer and a few national insults could
result in mayhem. I certainly wasn't about to brag about
being American considering how pathetically the American
team performed in the tournament, scoring a grand total of
one goal and losing to both Iran and Yugoslavia.
 When
the rain stopped, we headed to the river for a boat ride.
Then in short order over the next few days it was Eiffel
Tower, Notre Dame, Sacré-Coeur, Père Lachaise,
Museé D'Orsay... Sightseeing is really pretty boring
to read about so I'll just skip that part (especally because
everyone goes to Paris and you've seen the pictures a
million times).
My feet were killing me. A few weeks before the trip, I
had dropped a large piece of furniture on the big toe of my
right foot and I was unable to wear shoes on that foot for a
long time. When we arrived in Paris, I had to wear sandals,
which turned out to be a big mistake because after a day of
walking with sandals, both Mary and I had bigger problems
than my black toenail. Each night, we slunk back to our
hotel at about 8 PM because we were no longer able to walk
on our blistered and bleeding feet. I was forced to wear the
dreaded fashion faux pas of socks with sandals, which,
although somewhat embarrassing, was almost comfortable.
The soccer fans pretty much only hung out along the
Champs Élysées and we didn't really see them
anywhere else in Paris. Fortunately for us, they also stayed
away from the museums. We literally walked right into the
Louvre and Versailles (partially because we bought museum
passes).
On Friday, we met up with mail artist Bruno Gheerbrant at
a cozy bar near his apartment where we heard a singer sing
some wonderful French songs. Bruno later showed us his
family photos from the 1890's and played some French records
for us. We had a great time with him, discussing mail art
and many other less boring things. He regaled us with tales
of working for the French post office and he revealed to us
that according to the gardener of Père Lachaise (the
cemetery in Paris where Jim Morrison's grave is), Jim's body
is not there.
The next day, I woke up with a bad sore throat which got
worse and worse as the day wore on. That night, we packed up
our things and prepared to say goodbye to Paris. I slept
about one hour or so that night as the pain in my throat
kept me awake. When I did get some sleep it was some
horrible nightmare about being lost in an airport.
The Return
Finally, our 3:30 AM wake up call came and we got ready
to go to the airport. The long flight from London to
Philadelphia was sheer agony for me as I had a full-blown
flu by this time. I was blowing my nose every few minutes,
and on the way down, my ears didn't pop. I couldn't hear
anything for two days. At last, something went wrong!
Unfortunately, the honeymoon was already over so it hadn't
ruined anything. I even had a day off to recover. Oh well,
you can't have everything.
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