crowbelle's Diaryland Diary

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By Way of Explanation

By Way of Explanation

Since some of you expressed an interest in the little wooden figures on top of our wedding cake,

by crowbelle

I don't much care for tradition myself, but Paul's side of the family does. So we compromised.

I scheduled the wedding ceremony to take place at 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning. I didn't realize this was too early for a lot of the guests until after it was all over! Oh well! Up and at 'em, is our motto here.. Can't be wasting the whole day!

I wore a wedding dress that I got off the rack at Talbot's, a local dress shop in Marblehead. White with flowers on it - after all, it wasn't my first wedding, but hopefully my last!...

We also had the ceremony and reception at Paul's parents' home in Marblehead.

by crowbelle

In the end, however, things worked out differently than we had planned, and we had to scrap plans to buy their house, and we went out and found our current house, Crow Cottage, which really ended up suiting our needs better in the long run.

In the months leading up to our wedding, we were friends with Bob Sinclair, a Marbleheader, who used to do all kinds of creative things. In fact, he took our wedding photos for us. He also was well known for his wood carvings. His wedding present to us, along with the photographs, were the little carved wooden figures that sat atop our cake. At the time we got married, I was much, much slimmer and trimmer than I am now - weighing about 125 pounds, and Paul was his usual tall thin self. But Mr. Sinclair had a twinkle in his eye when he presented us with those little figures for the cake... because the male figure was a tall lean fisherman-looking guy, and the female was a short, chubby, frumpy looking gal. We laughed, and hoped that I wouldn't come to look like that, but guesswhat? Those figures aren't too far off the mark now, 20 years later. Mr. Sinclair recently passed away, but he must have been psychic about our future!

I keep those little figures sitting over the fireplace in the dining room. Funny how things turn out, huh?

Another oddity about our wedding was that we had no music, no dancing, and no alcohol. We are both T-totallers, and we didn't want any alcohol to mess up our special day. Paul's folks hired a catering couple (who also took a video of the wedding day for us) and we had a buffet of various brunch-related foods to eat after the ceremony at around 11 a.m.

For about three weeks straight, before our wedding day, it had been cold and rainy here. I can't remember worrying over it, though, because I was just so excited to be

1) marrying my high school love after all those years and

2) leaving shortly thereafter for our long-awaited vacation/honeymoon in England and Scotland.

Neither of us had ever been abroad before, and I had to pinch myself regularly to believe it was all actually happening to me.

After the ceremony, and the food, a couple of hours had gone by. Since there was no dancing and no music, we just milled around, mostly out in Paul's folks' garden which was completely bursting with blooms - their magnificent magnolia tree was in full bloom, and they had flowering crabtrees, and azaleas, and flowering quince, and more all over their lovely garden. You can see in the pictures I linked to yesterday how perfect the weather was that day.

Three weeks of lousy weather turned into blue skies, perfect temperature, and a fabulous day, right out of the blue, for us. I think Paul was thinking that he was missing a day of lobstering since he'd had to miss some days in the weeks before that, but on the other hand, the prospect of our visiting "Herriot Country" in Yorkshire soon was foremost in his mind, as well as mine.

Around 1 p.m., we'd done everything we came to do. We were married. Our stomachs were replete, our guests were thinking about leaving, and so were we. We thanked everyone for coming, and moseyed on over to Salem, where we were staying in my old apartment until his folks cleared out while we were in England.

Three weeks later and back from the best honeymoon anyone could imagine, we moved all my stuff from my Salem apartment over into his parent's large mostly empty house (which, by the way, his Dad and his Grandfather built with their own hands back in the 1960's). We lived there thru the end of that year, and found Crow Cottage and moved here in January of 1987. And that's when all the fun began that would take us 20 years down the road to this point.

One other thing I meant to mention was the cake at our wedding.

by crowbelle

I had worked in a Chronic Disease Rehabilitation Hosital in Salem before we were married and I knew a woman there (a nurse actually) who used to make the most delicious cakes on the side for people. I asked her if she'd make us a carrot cake since that is Paul's favourite cake, with cream cheese frosting, and she did. She even delivered it to the house that morning. It was so good, too... chock full of good ingredients and moist! Not like your typical white wedding cake that makes you gasp for water...

So that's our story of the wedding. It seemed like it was meant to be, and we were both feeling very enchanted at that time, as if our angels had come down and tapped us with their wands and said "Now you both are going to have some really good luck here."

It wasn't big (about 50 guests), it wasn't loud (no music), it wasn't long (only 2-3 hours), but it was one of the nicest weddings we have ever been to, and a lot of the guests told us the same thing later. So I'm glad we did it low-key like that, and those little wooden figures remind me every day when I see them of that special day in our lives 20 years ago.

And now off we go, into our 21st year of married bliss! (ha!)

Oh, the septic tank man was supposed to come and pump us out yesterday (what a romantic way to celebrate 20 years of marriage!) and after waiting ALL day for him to show up (he was supposed to be here between 8-11 a.m.) he never came so we called him, and he apologized and said he'd do it later today sometime... figures!

Cheers,

Bex

10:08 am - 11 May 2006

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