(...) I'm getting married in 2 weeks. And if I were a normal bride, I'm sure I'd be freaking out. But given that we're having our wedding in the middle of the woods in, as Den puts it, "North-of-Everything, Maine"- which, by the way, has enabled us to successfully achieve our strategy of making it as logistically inconvenient as possible in an effort to keep the guest list small - there's really no need to freak out. 30 people. A lobster boil. I plan events for a living...big deal.
I am doing everything in my power to make sure that mine is not the typical wedding. For some unexplicable reason I'm kind of a scrooge about weddings - I'm the only person I know that does not like them. Which is why I am forcing family and friends to go camping instead.
Well, not really camping - we're having the wedding up in Forest City, which is where my family's summer camp is. But the wedding won't actually be on the island. It will be at Wheaton's Lodge, on the mainland. Think camping out in a tent in the woods, I'm telling guests, and the accommodations will seem plush (hot showers! wood stoves!) The Wheaton's have ten cozy little cabins that we're renting out for the weekend. So long as the sun shines, guests will have a weekend worth of lakeside recreation at their disposal. If it rains... Scrabble anyone?
It's a special place, and it happens to be our camp's 100th anniversary this year (the island was bought in 1903 by my great-grandfather and his friend, and the house was completed in 1906). And in a way the camp even played a certain pivotal role in my and Den's relationship... because always in the back of my mind when selecting a potential mate was the question of whether they would adapt to the camp. And in that, Dennis perfectly fit the mold. Which pleases my dad to no end. He now has an assistant for his many projects (dock-building, roof-repairing, outhouse-turning).
Sean Cole will be presiding as officiant extrodinaire, a friend of Dennis' from the bad old days of WBUR. Having a wedding "produced by Sean Cole" will, in my opinion, be the highlight of the entire event. That and my lovely white silk eyelet Ellie Tahari skirt. (So glad that getting married in the woods precluded the necessity of a stupid fluffy wedding dress.) Though my father only just made the connection of who Sean is while listening to him report his story on prostitutes in Nashville on Marketplace last week. (He reports on other stuff too.)
I've been very flippant about this whole wedding thing. I want to use The Penguin Cafe Orchestra for the processional and suggested the annoying telephone song specifically. I asked Sean to address the guests "dearly departed" instead of "dearly beloved." I was told: Penguin Cafe, yes; dearly departed, no.
Last weekend we went to NY to pick up my ring. I designed it myself based on a deco/art nuveau ring of my grandmother's, and, after much questing, found a very cool jeweler in the East Village that was willing and able to make it. Even though I wasn't supposed to, I wore it home to aquaint myself with the look and feel of it on my finger. Bonding with my ring, Dennis said. My new tattoo.
The weekend before we went up to Burlington, VT to pick up Dennis' suit from Michael Kehoe. "Bespoke," it's called, I tell him, pleased that I know this word (meaning hand-tailored). He's not impressed with my haute coture vocab. But more to the point is that for $1000 he now has a suit that he can get married in, interview for jobs in, go to funerals in and be buried in. A good value if you think of it that way. Though before we left MK, I accidentally bullied him into buying a $250 shirt to wear with it. Actually the bullying was quite intentional - I just didn't know it was $250.
This weekend we will buy the rest of the wine and beer. And the makings for white sangria and pomegranate martinis. And we will print programs and paste on pretty little borders from Paper Source. And Dennis will pick out a poem to read. And I will write my vows. Actually, that's what I'm meant to be doing now. I'm procrastinating. Because this is the part that kind of spooks me.
I have to be honest, I'm still not sold on the concept of marriage. Lying on the carpet in Dennis' office last Thursday night, I hashed through the whole thing all over again. What is the point of marriage? It doesn't change our current relationship (does it?), nor does it promise to hold a relationship together. It gives us a few rights, but it doesn't get us lower taxes (we can expect to pay more taxes next year, I'm told). It feels dishonest to me. As the day draws closer (2 weeks!!), I feel split in two - one half is playing a long, curious to see what's around the corner, keeping an open mind, knees bent, ready for whatever; the other half feels as though it's being dragged kicking and fighting, not wanting to conform, not wanting to do something that doesn't feel authentic to her being. I know which half will win. I don't have a solid enough belief against marriage to outright reject something that is such an inbred social norm. I just wish I didn't have this nagging feeling of being untrue to myself. Or, more to the point, untrue to us.
Lying on the carpet in Dennis' office, smelling dust and cat hair in my nose as I roll to the side and crack my back, thinking that I really need to vacuum, Dennis and I talked about all this. And arrived at nothing really. Except that, if there's any consolation, at least I've found that one other kindred soul, the one who, like me, is battling for freedom of the individual while tenuously trying not to completely disrupt the balance of life around him.