Happily Ever After?

We got engaged in front of a washing machine because I lost my temper and told him to “Shut up or do something about it.” We had been the closest of friends for a year. We had been dating for eleven months. I was done with college and moved back to Sedona. I worked at a restaurant and was getting hit on all the time. I knew he and I had talked about marriage, but he was still just a boyfriend and he lived far away now. And it was confusing to me. So I told him in regards to getting married to, “Shut up or do something about it.”

He did something. He went inside and got the engagement ring and proposed. I spent the rest of the night throwing up because I had a heat stroke.

Apparently he had planned something more romantic and I screwed that up, too. He came up on Memorial Day weekend to Sedona. I love Schnebly Hill. You can go up there and see all of the area and it seems like you can see every single star in the universe up there. I had told him about it and he wanted to go. I was surprised because my husband is not fond of outdoor stuff. He is into sports and whatnot, but hiking, camping, fishing, etc is not his cup of tea. I didn’t think sitting on a hill you have to drive 5 miles of dirt road to get to was of any interest to him.

So when he came to visit the first night, my sister was in the car with us. We were close to Schnebly Hill and I asked if he wanted to go then. He said no. So I just figured he didn’t really want to go, and it didn’t dawn on me that he didn’t want to go at that moment because my sister was with us. How romantic is it to propose in front of your girlfriend’s sister? About as romantic as in front of a washing machine, I suppose.

So two or three other times throughout the weekend he would casually ask if I wanted to go to the Hill. I thought I was being polite by not making him do something he didn’t want to do so I kept saying, “No. That’s okay.” He didn’t want me to get suspicious so he didn’t push the issue.

And about three weeks later we were having the, “Do something about it” conversation.

Of course I said yes. And the proposal story just fits us anyway.

So we had a long distance relationship for almost a year. And we fought incessantly. I think mostly because when I would get to see him, there was always a built up expectation of something great. It was always the same as it was. He hated talking on the phone for more than five minutes. I wanted to stay on the phone just to hear him breathe.

He was in a band, playing basketball and going to school full time. I was waitressing to pay for our wedding.

The arguments got so stupid and common that I had to ask myself a few months before the wedding, “Do I want to marry this guy?”

I thought about it for a long, long time. My conclusion wasn’t the most cheery, romantic conclusion ever. I decided I would rather be miserable with him than without him.

I moved back to Phoenix a month or two before the wedding. Once we were back to seeing each other almost daily, we were (as Forrest Gump says) like peas and carrots again. Everything was fine.

I was not a stressed out bride, freaking out about everything. And he was a smart groom and let me do whatever I wanted. He had no preferences on anything. I ordered my wedding. He showed up. (Insert groom “HERE”)

We decided to throw a wedding like a big freakin’ party. We had about 250 people. The ceremony lasted about 10 minutes and that was with the original song J wrote for me and sung as a surprise. (How he got through it, I don’t know. The whole ceremony sounded like it was spoken in Yiddish to me.)

The party lasted hours and hours. Our cake cutting song was…well…a Cake song. I have a picture of the bridal party song with all the people lined up in a row doing the can-can. I think we did, “We are Family” on that one. It was a great time.