I was just watching an episode of We TV’s Bridezillas, where they find the most evil, self-centered, pushy broads who happened to be getting married, and then following the brides around the week before the wedding and encourage their rakish behavior. “You look too good to be my bridesmaid!” a portly bride-to-be whines to her not so portly bridesmaid. “You’ll look better than meeemmeeeeeeeee!” Which is a running thread throughout the show that the bride will get the wedding she wants, when she wants, where she wants, and will invite who she wants (who cares about the groom’s wealthy elderly grandparents). “They’ll embarrass me! They’ll look better than me!” Good lord, I don’t know where they find these women and the men daring enough to marry them. I’ve never been in a wedding, nor at a wedding of a Bridezilla.
My husband and I got married July 26, 1997. We started dating only six months before, and I know a lot of people thought we’d never make it to the altar, even less until twelve years gone. Since Tim had gone through an ugly divorce the year before, and I was struggling financially with prior debt, we decided to go to Gatlinburg, Tennessee and elope. Just the two of us, my best friend and her then fiancée, and a couple from western North Carolina, Pat and Ron, who I met on a package trip to Russia eleven years prior. But then my mother-in-law got wind of the idea and within a week, all of my husband’s siblings, kids and all, were invited and told at the same time that they were going to attend the wedding. They all showed up, as ordered. My parents had passed away, but my brother and sister-in-law were vacationing in North Carolina that week and agreed to come, with my brother giving me away, and my niece being my flower girl. My father-in-law was my husband’s best man, and my best friend Marie was my maid-of-honor.
I did have a wedding gown, straight out of Bridal magazine. Nothing like the Vera Wang “Princess Diana” wedding gown I always dreamed of. I was thirty-seven when I got married, not nineteen, and the Princess Di look just didn’t do it for me anymore. I can’t say I loved my gown—it was simple, sleeveless, with a beaded bodice and taffeta skirt. I wore a simple veil, made by one of the unit secretaries with whom I worked at the hospital, who also did our silk flower arrangements. I had a veil made for my niece, which disappeared before we left Florida and was never seen from again. My maid-of-honor dusted off a dress she had worn in another wedding. My husband and father-in-law were renting their tuxedos in Gatlinburg. We were all set.
Then we realized that we were having twenty-six guests at our wedding with no reception planned. We called a few restaurants in Gatlinburg and all were too expensive for our budget. So, we decided, if the family wants to come along without being invited, so be it. We’ll book a room at a local restaurant and they can pay for their own meals, and we’ll have our wedding cake (ordered from the local supermarket) back at the cabin afterward.
So, we left Florida with our wedding togs in the trunk of my husbands old but reliable Honda. It made it up the mountain to our beautiful cabin. We didn’t know what to expect from the cabin. I pictured rustic, with an old claw-footed bathtub and 1920s kitchen decor. We were really overwhelmed by the beauty of our cabin. It (we’d find out later) was built just a year or two earlier. It had a king-sized sleigh bed in the master bedroom, with it’s own bathroom. There were two more bedrooms upstairs and a loft, with a sofabed and another full bathroom. We had two days to ourselves before the in-laws arrived. My mother-in-law phoned us constantly. I wished for more rustic of a cabin, one which didn’t have a phone.
The day of the wedding, my friends Marie and Pat and I went out to lunch and shopping in downtown Gatlinburg, while my fiancé, Marie’s fiancé, and Pat’s husband went out on their own to maybe play golf and have a couple beers. My husband promised to be home by 3:00 so we’d have plenty of time to prepare for the 6 p.m. service. The girls and I were happily chatting away as we drove down the highway towards the cabin when suddenly, the car sounded funny and I couldn’t get it in gear.
