Memories Monday -- Down Memory Aisle

Naturally Nikki and Karen and their families will be at the wedding.  Janet says they are her third and fourth daughters and we remind her of Allison and her friends in junior high and high school.  I think that’s a compliment.  I believe Allison was occasionally nice then.

We were at Karen’s for our usual Friday night in.  Ben and Jerry have put out some new flavors.  We started talking about our own weddings.

Mine was in the Episcopal Church where I went to at college, a month after graduation.  My mother, who believed in letting me “learn from my mistakes” pitched in bravely, although none of my grandparents knew where the service would be until they got the invitation.  She kept saying, “Now you can always go back to school.” My father mostly snorted and growled.

Ed graduated a year before I did and got a job in the town we live in now.  He didn’t get an apartment right away to save money and lived with Janet.  “Where did you go?”  Karen asked. 

 “We went to the movies a lot."      

 “No, I mean . . . you know.  Or was your roommate nice about it?”

 “About what?”

 Nikki sighed.  “Your needs.  Not to mention Ed’s.”  Then she giggled. 

“Oh.”  I got it.  “Well, we didn’t do it until our wedding night.”

 "You’re kidding.”

“No.  We’d met at the Episcopal Campus Group.  So of course, we couldn’t . . . you know, till we were married.  “

“Well, you could have."

Karen must have sensed that Nikki was about to ask for details, because she said, “What was your dress like?”              

"Victorian.  It had long lace sleeves and a high collar.  And a veil, of course.  It was my mother’s.  We decided to go completely retro and the bridesmaids wore long dresses with flower prints.”

Nikki had been married in Germany, “In the cutest little church.   I wouldn’t have been surprised if Heidi had walked through the door with the goats.”  Her whole family had flown over as a favor to her husband’s family, so his grandparents, who really couldn’t have made the trip, could see him married.  “My parents didn’t really care, since we didn’t have a church and Helmut’s family paid for the wedding.  I didn’t care either, since I got to go to Germany.”

 Then, of course, Karen dug out her wedding album.  She got married in December in a candlelight service.  It was only about ten years ago, but we couldn’t believe how dowdy everyone looked, when they weren’t trying to be retro.  Karen had worn a strapless gown and her mother had worried all through the service that it would fall down.  She’d made Karen’s father hold her coat in his lap so he could run up and throw it over her. 

“What about the reception?  Did he follow you around?”

 “No, I think she figured everyone would be too drunk to notice.”

 It turned out that right after the wedding (Just before Christmas!) the minister who had performed the ceremony left his wife for another woman, who was married too.  What had really made Karen’s mother mad was that she wasn’t even a member of the congregation.  “My mother said, it wasn’t as if they had fallen in love working together.  The time he spent with her, he should have been doing stuff for the church.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “The assistant pastor took over.”

  “No, I mean with them?”

 “They got married and he became a Unitarian minister.”

   I was a little embarrassed for the Unitarians, but not surprised.