Once upon a time -

[kyburg]

When I married the second time, I wore red. No, really. I did. The dress was also bought the day before at a Wal-Mart in Kona, HI when my original idea blew up spectacularly with no fall back position.

I'd bought too many of the wrong kind of thing, and was short one of the right kind of thing.

I got married wearing a white uchikake I'd bought from a cosplayer in Canada when she realized there was no cosplaying opportunity for her to use it and she just needed to get rid of it. So, it was silk, gorgeous and CHEAP.

And I wore a red hawaiian print dress with a mermaid skirt under it. (You want to see, go to http://www.bellstapfer.com and have a ball.)

We bought everything worn that day on eBay. Our rings, we found there as well. (They're wonderful matching white gold carved bands that have never given us a single worry.)

Did it entirely in secret, told nobody (except the people who needed to be there, and two of the generation after mine, swearing them to silence until it was over). In short, we had planned a trip to Hawaii - and simply decided that was a great time to just finish things up and get married.

Asked nobody's opinion, advice or permission. Invited only two people.

There's a reason for that.

You may have had weddings that were stress-free, drama-free and completely enjoyable. Even the one I did myself without anyone's input? Nope.

But at least I had controlled how the damage was done, to whom and why. And I understood it from the get-go. I knew what they were upset about. And for the cherry on top - yes, I'd actually DONE it. My fault! It made taking the lumps a reasonable trade-off.

My Mom didn't speak to me for two weeks. Sis hit me. But everyone got mad for the same reason, was 'wronged' the same way, no special treatment or singling out. If it was unfair and wrong, it was unfair and wrong to everyone. We figured that was the best we could do.

I'd looked, briefly, at doing another conventional wedding. Saw the $$$ involved. And then my memory took over.

No way would I do that to Jim. Not a chance.



You'd like to think otherwise - that this is the ultimate statement of commitment, love and all that? Sure, I grew up thinking that, just like everyone else.

And that this was two grown people making decisions for their own lives? That part? That this was also THEIR wedding, THEIR day and they were INVITING other people to witness it? That part?

I grew up with that idea, too. Until I was about 21. I'd been through both of my older brother's weddings (both of them full-blown conventional ceremonies we all pitched in to help mount for them, no quibbling, no complaining, yes I wore yellow seersucker for him), a few friends and so forth - and yes, weddings were very firmly placed in my mind as what they're intended to be.

Even when he had married someone who hated my mother. Mom wasn't coy about SIL's manipulative behavior or her tendency to ignore everyone around her when she wanted things her way - but all that had earned her was a lot of tension. How dare she, mind you. I'm pointier than my mother, but just as motivated to point out poop on the floor when it lands there. I mean, you can clean up poop, who couldn't figure that out? Anyway.

Keep in mind, I was eighteen or so when they married? SIL was pregnant when they married (she'd been on Clomid to 'straighten her out' after all those years of the pill in her previous marriage) and they had twins less than seven months after the wedding (and they spent two months in the NICU, significantly premature). You want to know how I learned to put babies to sleep, look no further. I spent a lot of time over there, rocking babies to sleep.

I think they were a year old when she fell pregnant again. By then, I had moved out of the house in Hemet to San Bernardino where I finished my AA in the loneliest year of my life, away from everyone and everything and barely able to keep my phone turned on. Before then, I could act as a sounding board and defuse some of the tension, going back and forth beween my SIL and Mom (if that's arrogance, it worked) with all those babies. Then I left, and even the phone got shut off at their house. She then had to deal with Mom, directly. And without anyone to buffer the zone? Poop on the floor. Why is there poop on the floor? Again? I told you she doesn't see the poop on the floor...and there was indeed, poop on the floor.

Then my sister announced her engagement and there was a wedding to plan. The rules are considerably different, you understand. My sister is marrying someone my mother *adores* and everything they do is wonderful. Well, to be honest? My BIL is the best thing my sister ever did for me, and he was that terrific back then too. He would take my mother shopping for crying out loud, while Sis was overseas in school. That's 24K, folks.

I'm sure the comparisons between the two people her children had taken to marry mounted up quickly. And really, they had very definite ideas of what they wanted to do for their wedding and reception, and didn't really involve anyone but Mom in them.

I was considerably out of the loop for all of that, I was a camp counselor for a Girl Scout camp in a facility that had one phone line and it was on solar power. No cell phones, and mail was at the post office where someone had to go and fetch it. If nobody was going to town? No contact with the outside world. I was still using CB radio back then, and I had used it to report my loss of brakes getting to the main highway from camp that one day - that's a post for another day. NO PHONES. NO KIDDING.

So I was told where to go, what to wear and when to show up. That was my exposure to the planning of Sis' wedding. I was asked to put the reception music together and that was my contribution.

My SIL had other expectations. To this day, I know of a cake she wasn't asked to bake and decorate. Her children and husband had places in the wedding party, but she didn't. I know of a wedding announcement that was sent to brother's ex-wife (it was an 'eh-eh' moment on both Mom and Sis' part - I mean, they told EVERYONE, no holds barred, I think even my ex step-father's family members got them, and that should say something). She was not consulted, involved or asked. She also had three small children to look after, in addition to a step daughter with her own dynamics. People had made allowances for that - she had resented that NO end.

Three days before the wedding, my brother called from his new position in Fresno to inform them he wasn't going to be in the wedding. No warning, no complaints, no nothing. He just took the new job, moved everyone up - and decided he didn't want anything more to do with any of us.

That's directed at Sis - but he wrapped up me and younger brother in the bargain. (You may ask WTF did we do. Nothing. We didn't WTF anything. We were collateral damage by dint of being alive, same as always.)

I wasn't in on the conversations. But I can still hear my mother and sister crying - you know, the kind of crying that's shrieking in absolute 'chew my leg off' pain? That kind.

Yup, it sent Mom to the ER. My best friends came by, put me in a car and drove me up and down the mountain roads of home while I sobbed my heart out. When I got back, people were asking ME if I was okay. My face hurt, to be blunt. Two hours of hysterics will do that to you.

There had been tension. There had been issues. There definitely had been some VERY hard feelings - and my brother, who had been divorced once before (and it had nearly broke him) had likely gotten an ultimatum from his wife. Write the script any way you like. There was no hope of resolving this ever again.

He attacked my sister to get to my mother, because his wife needed him to. And he tossed my brother and me out just because. There were also four children of his own involved - you can imagine what that must have been like on your own, heaven knows that what I got to do.

If I had done anything like this to Mom before this?

I would have been bounced so hard I would have needed traction. But because it was him? Oh well.

Next year, it'll be thirty years. My original predictions have been dead in the black, damn my oily hide - there was some detente - but the moment he thought Sis or I was pointing out poop on the floor again?

He shot nasty grams (at least, they had his name on them - I typed some of his doctorate papers, I think not) and refused to speak to us again. THAT'S over five years ago now. (BTW, no - nobody was saying anything about anyone. But I'm not going to embarass him in public space, and I'm not going to run behind him and beg for an explanation. People have already done that. No.) Here's the last, in real time. I am nice, no?

It was an opportunity to do a lot of damage. Not someone's happiest moment, their day, their future - none of that. Just a chance to hurt someone. She took it.

And I noticed one pertinent fact. Mom is considerably higher on the food chain with my older brother than I will *ever* be. If he was willing to do THIS to her?

Oh man. What he would do to me, if she only asked.

Nope. Not waiting around for that. If that's holding a grudge, then grudges are very useful things for self-preservation.

When my time came to marry, Mom was more than a little put off by Cliff. And frankly, Cliff didn't really have a lot of use for her. His mother had been a drug-addicted train wreck who attacked him with a knife if he didn't clearly identify himself coming in the door at night. If he really didn't know what to do with a over-protective Danish mother, I can't blame him.

When he went blind two months before the wedding though - things shifted considerably. Suddenly, I wasn't going to get married to this man. (Oh yes, I was.)

We had planned a conventional church wedding. Two months before we do the deed? Mom pulls out of it, leaving us holding the deposits and everything. I'm supposed to give in and drop the matter, of course. Any reasonable person would, right? A good, obedient daugher would, right?

Guess what.

We got married in the chapel of his elementary school, by the Episcopalian father who would later bury him - one of two couples he actually got marry. I was very firm. I've made the commitment, I know what I'm up for - and I am going to do this. No insults. No threats.

And three days before, Mom capitulated and showed up.

Just as married.

No, I didn't invite everyone. Just who I could call and get over there, to be blunt. No time to redo the invitations - and no money to make them, either.

My wedding flowers were white poinsettias with a pink blush down the center of the petals - one of the first designer poinsettias released to the general market. And we were married on Pearl Harbor Day, and I always thought that MOST appropriate.

I've heard the stories. Heck, someone made a huge killing in the reality TV market making television shows on how awful people can be to each other over a wedding. They've made BUNCHES of them.

And not much has changed since. People are still using their wedding - or a wedding somebody wants them to be a part of - to smack other people around. Because you can.

I've made the comparison to doing well in school or some other expectation - because it's the last one before you're *really* done with being someone's child. It's your last opportunity to be a trophy for your parents, guys.

So I tell people to elope, with a clear conscience. You're just as married. Trust me on this.

Jim wants to redo vows next year - I'm thinking Washington DC. Can you get married on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial? Maybe the Smithsonian.

I'll let you know. You can come. You can stay home.

It *will* be the same to me. And no, nobody could do me (or my family) harm is going to be entrusted with the planning of any of it.

Now you know why. There's a reason.