The Most Unlikely Couple ~ The Aftermath Pt. I

Every day is a beach day for TW now that she's married!

The Wife abhors a pure happy ending.

You know the kind. It's the movies where everything ties up nicely with a little bow on it at the end of a love story (preferably starring Hugh Grant).

"Life isn't like that," she grumbles. "They make it seem like life is just perfect after they get together. I bet the first time they have sex is terrible!"

I have strong feelings about restaurants and beers; The Wife has strong feelings about movie endings. We are a petty bunch.

As a result of a blog series I wrote a few years ago, perhaps you remember, she has prodded me to write a second series about what happened after the romance died when we had dirty toilets. Well, we have a dirty toilet, so this seems like an appropriate time for an update.

We were married on a fantastic day in June of 2005. The sun alone was spectacular because there were almost no clouds. It wasn't humid. Temperatures were in the upper 70s. It could have been so much worse in Minnesota in the early days of summer.

I would invade various countries for these girls.
Except they are now women.
We had 113 people at our wedding, which was at Panola Valley Gardens, one of the prettier places I have ever visited in the Middle of Nowhere. It was $800 to rent Panola for three hours on a Saturday morning. They now charge $1,350.

My cousin Ryan dressed up in a suit and greeted guests with me as they entered the outdoor pavilion. My other four cousins wore the cutest matching dresses ever for their roles as flower girls. Three of those four cousins are now in college; the other would TOTALLY DIE IF I POSTED A PICTURE OF HER ON THIS BLOG.

The cousins walked up the aisle in front of Soon To Be TW; a goat famously bayed at TW as she hugged my Soon-To-Be Mother In-Law. Everybody laughed.

We had the reception at her parents' house, with a dozen different cheesecakes from The Cheesecake Factory. I changed out of my wedding suit almost instantly when we got to her parents' house. TW wore her dress all day. "You only get to wear it once, so I'm getting the most out of it," she'd say.

After she changed and goodbyes were said, she cried as we drove away. We were leaving Minnesota the next day and she would no longer be a Minnesota resident. That was one of many details we hadn't really thought about.

We travelled to Utah the next morning and spent the rest of the day sleeping. We spent the next week in Cabo San Lucas. It was all good.

And then a funny thing happened. My vacation time ran out and I had to go back to work. That's a funny little detail they leave out of all the wedding planning. It turns out you still have to go to work after the wedding.

I arrived to my desk and found some sort of erection stimulant that SOMEBODY bought at a gas station. That was the only reference to the wedding. Then I had to put out a paper.

All the time I was at work, TW was at home on the couch with Dukakis. They watched every episode of Felicity that summer. When Felicity was over, she moved on to Gilmore Girls.

True, we were in love. And true, we had a great time getting married. And in TW's words, "we were just married." Now what were we supposed to do?

We've spent the next nine years figuring out that answer.

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