The Politics of Planning a Wedding

Dave collected funny Valentines — but getting married was Serious.

Call me naive, if you like. Inexperienced for sure. When I married D, the grad student from the lab flourished his “minister of life” certificate and offered to seal the deal; I wore my mother’s wedding dress (she was still re-explaining that it was a bridesmaid dress because in 1950 she couldn’t afford more than that), carried a tiny bouquet, went barefoot because I didn’t have dress shoes and my sneakers were ratty, and we did the ceremony (“in the name of the Universe”) in the campus rose garden, with my parents and siblings and D’s grandmother, who’d baked and brought a tiered cake.

Then when I married R, since we were making official a union that already included our baby, the local justice of the peace came happily to the house on Christmas eve, toting two chilled bottles of Cold Duck (an inexpensive wine of the time) and ready to enjoy our carrot cake from the local bakery, which had decorated its creation with an entire bunch of grapes perched on top. Same dress, where I’d quickly let out at the zipper to allow for my nursing bustline, and I held our toddler on my hip.

In 2002, the dress (still traveling with me) wasn’t going to fit. I ordered a pale lilac skirt and a sleeveless white shell from a catalogue, and thought I’d done enough.