So, we got married by a Justice of the Peace in Irving, Texas. It was a Friday afternoon at 3pm because that was as close as we could get to our honeymoon with a flight leaving out at 6am the next Monday. Let me back up. I wanted to be married to this man. I wanted all the commitment and “marriage-y” things like having his name and him as my life partner and the knowing that we had sworn this to one another. I also like the idea of being engaged… just not as much as I wanted to be actually married! Also, TO HIM, not just anyone! My long time plan, you know, before I fell way deep in love, was to finish my BS, then my MS and work a few years in my field while traveling and being independent. 27 was the age I thought might just be ideal. I don’t even know why, but “27” seemed right. And, then *BAM* the Universe caught wind of my plan and laughed and threw Daniel at me. Like hard. I was not expecting to fall so deeply in love and develop such a need for him in my life. Anyway, that is what happened and when he finally proposed just 30 minutes before midnight of my 22nd birthday (that’s another story!) I did not require a long engagement at all! He was in chiropractic college on a trimester system and I was in college on semesters so we checked our calendars and found we had a common break for a week near the end of August. So, we started planning our honeymoon and worked backwards from there. This was back before the Internet so we went to a travel agent and got travel brochures! From those pages we studied little postage stamp-sized pictures of beach locations and tried to pick one out. I was good at picking out which picture I liked but the all-too short descriptions of “sugar sand beach”, “picturesque sunsets” and “intimate resort” seemed too vague to base a real decision on. Prices for “typical packages” were super helpful as even the shortest stay at lush destinations like Aruba and Turks & Caicos were way out of our reach. Finally, we narrowed it down to Jamaica or Mexico which seemed the most reasonable for our little honeymoon fund. Then, he found these cute little beach bungalows on perfect white sand AND we could afford 5 days there! Big Win! We jumped all over it. We had it booked for probably 2 months and we told no one. At all. When I approached my boss to request the days off, she guessed if it was for our honeymoon. Well, I’m a terrible liar and I really (REALLY!) wanted to tell *someone* so I admitted it was. She was great. She never told anyone else and she was so excited to print up my new business cards with my married name on them. In the meantime, I had planned a trip to go visit my parents in Colorado. I didn’t tell them. I went and had a wonderful visit but, years later, my Mom asked me if I had it planned when I came to visit and she couldn’t get over that I did not tell her! Anyway, the time between my birthday in April and our upcoming August honeymoon was passing and it never did quite seem real. I think women, in general, do most of our emotional processing verbally. Well… in not telling anyone, I just never did that groundwork. Fast forward to August 23, 1991. I went to work and got off around noon. I came to our apartment and realized I needed to have/be/do SOMETHING! Old, new, borrowed, blue! And — pennies! I needed pennies… aren’t you supposed to wear pennies in your shoe, too? I dumped out my piggy bank and when he comes in from morning classes, I’m in the floor surrounded by all these coins. “umm, Dee. What are you doing?” I was frantically searching for pennies minted in our common birth year, 1969. He sees how urgent it is and begins helping me. Amazingly, we find not 1 but 2! I located a thin blue ribbon and tied it on my ankle. Classy, right? Old – well, this didn’t seem terrible to me at the time, but, my dress was “old”. I had worn it to a Spring formal that I went to with another guy back in high school. It was white and lace and I loved it. Why not use it? We weren’t swimming in fortune, so it seemed practical. New was my engagement ring. Four months since my engagement was still “new” to me. Whatever I decided to deem “borrowed” for the life of me I can’t remember. But, I had my good luck tokens “Old, new, borrowed, blue and a penny in her shoe”. Ok, we can go. Get married. Today. At 3pm.

We get to the courthouse. We go to the window and tell the person “We have an appointment with a Justice of the Peace”. We sit. Someone says “go to this office”. We do. The JP is an enormously tall man. Seriously. Daniel is 6 feet 4 inches tall. He is dwarfed by this guy. He looms over us and all I can think is “I’m fixing to be married by Herman Munster!” He sits us down at his huge desk and begins to ask us questions. “Is there anyone you need to call before we do this?” “Have you thought about what sort of future you will have together?” “Are you both 100% sure this is the right thing to do?” Well, no. Yes. Yes. But, I was not anticipating pre-marital counseling – I was expecting him to do legal part and not much else. I guess he took his job of joining a couple legally more seriously than I expected him to. So… that was making me nervous. And, anxious. And a whole bunch of other BIG emotions that I hadn’t really prepared myself for. Anyway, I guess we answered them more satisfactorily than a couple who might have met the night before at bar and he told us to stand. We did. He placed us in front of a Texas flag but instead of red, white and blue, it was cream, light blue and dark blue. It was pretty but it was different than any I had ever seen. Then, he did the ceremony. I remember I couldn’t quite look all the way into Daniel’s eyes so I was focusing on the knot of his tie. Herman Munster said his words and I was attempting to repeat them but I couldn’t make more than a whisper of sound. Finally, “I do” and then the whole verbiage for Daniel and Herman says “You may kiss your bride”. And Daniel bent down and kissed me and then wrapped his arms around me and I breathed in a giant whoosh of air for the first time since the vows began. I guess I had been holding my breath… whooopsie. What fun then followed makes me flush with embarrasment to this day. As I gasped for air, it was choppy inhales like a kid who is crying real hard. The exhales were like some staccato-crazy-person-hyena laughter. It didn’t improve. This mish-mash of emotional stew was like a combination of extreme sport laughing while crying with some hiccupping thrown in for extra cray cray. Yeah. And, it went on for a longer than any of us were comfortable. So, my poor new husband is standing there with his bride and I know he had to have been thinking “No, seriously, she was FINE until I married her!” I think it was an example of “hysteria” in it’s real and raw form. Well, maybe that plus a bit of hyperventilation, too. Anyway, not my finest moment, by far. Never before or since have I experienced such a confused visceral reaction to anything. Pure joy? Yes. Pure grief? Yep. Sadness-relief-compassion-anger? Yes, again. But, this. This was it’s own thing. I am not sure what all was going on but, you know what? He didn’t even care. By the time we got to the car we were both laughing about it. And, he never threw it back on me. I have told this story at my own expense dozens of times, but, he has not. He would never tell it because it might make me look bad and he wouldn’t do that. He laughs when I do recount it but WITH me, not AT me. And, that, friends is just one of the ways you know you chose well in your spouse. I often say I was luckier at 22 than I was smart. I knew I was making a good choice but you don’t know just how good until years later. Thank you for the last 32 years, Daniel. Let’s keep on doing this marriage thing for a while. ♥