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…