Monday, July 26, 2010

Destination Nowhere

The wedding I'm having is not the wedding I wanted.

I always pictured getting married on a beach, in a country where I would need a passport to get there, by a wedding officiant with an accent so thick I wouldn't be able to understand him. Some place like Jamaica, Bermuda, the Dominican Republic, Mexico. A place where the people are brown and the water is blue. This was my plan -- for a long, long time -- for 10 years exactly. I've wanted to have a destination wedding ever since me and my friend Sarah went to the Bahamas, and I saw a couple get married on the beach. We had hung out with the couple all week and had no idea they were there to get married. They seemed so chill and relaxed. Not an ounce of stress on their faces at all. One day, Sarah and I were in the pool and we saw the couple walk by in their wedding dress and suit.

Sarah: What's going on? Did you just get married?
The Bride: Yup.
Me: Man, you should have told us. We could have come down and watched. We could have taken pictures.
The Bride: (shrugs shoulders) Eh, don't worry about it. Keeping it simple.

With that, I knew I wanted a destination wedding. I wanted to be in a light, flowy wedding dress, by a pool, shrugging my shoulders...not a care in the world. I wanted to feel like I was on a great vacation with my friends and family, and I just happened to be getting married too. I wanted to be at an all-inclusive resort, where you didn't have to worry about tipping or arranging plans for people. Hey Family Drunk, you wanna get wasted and pass out on the beach face-first? Go ahead, the swim-up bar is waiting for you. Hey Old Person, you wanna take a nap in the middle of my wedding reception? Go ahead, you're hotel room is right over there. Hey Adventurous Relative, you wanna go para-sailing and swim with the dolphins? Go ahead, I'll be hanging here by the pool. You can tell me all about it at dinner later.

That was my plan -- for a long, long time -- 10 years exactly. This was the plan before I met my fiance Steven. This was the plan when I got engaged. This was the plan a year and a half into my engagement. And then...something changed. Something changed, and I got ganged up on. Suddenly, my parents didn't think it was a good idea that I had a destination wedding. They had "travel concerns." My mom became very worried about leaving the dogs, Brooklyn and Doofer, in a puppy prison (a boarding facility), and my dad was nervous about flying. My dad has always had an airplane phobia. He says that it's because, as a child, he saw two planes collide mid-flight, and then the sky rained down with burning shrapnel. I tried to convince him that that was simply the opening scene to the movie La Bamba, starring Lou Diamond Phillips, but he didn't believe me. Then Steven's family turned against me. Even with a two-and-half year warning before the nuptials, it was doubtful that anyone would be able to save enough money to actually attend our destination wedding. Which basically means that only his parents and one set of grandparents would be able to attend. Then Steven himself turned against me. I don't know exactly what happened to Steven, but he flipped the switch on me. At first, he was down with the plan, and then he wasn't. Just like that.

So the old plan was out, and a new plan was needed. But I wasn't willing to give up the old plan. Not yet. I can't tell you how many times I cried about this. Not like silent, deep in my heart tears. No. Real actual tears. I would cry! I would sob! Nobody cared. They were all still against me. Now, at some point, the people I mentioned in the paragraph above are going to claim innocence. They are going to say that I'm exaggerating. That they were on my side. But they weren't. I had something I wanted so bad, something that I had already saved up for, had all planned out, and the people I cared about most took it away from me. And when I say, I had it planned out, I mean it. A location was picked out, a resort, a date. I even had the invitations picked out. Here they are right here. They look like pirate treasure maps. Cool, huh?

So my parents weren't on my side. His family wasn't on my side. Steven wasn't even on my side. You know what those three things make? The Perfect Storm. But I still didn't want to give up. I'm stubborn. I'm like that dumb ass newscaster that is out in a hurricane, wearing a flimsy plastic parka and telling viewers that they "should just stay home tonight, the roads aren't looking so good." I knew that if I just stayed strong, I could get the destination wedding that I wanted. But obviously, I did change my mind and the plan. One day, I just decided to change the plan and have the wedding here. I know that my mom asked Steven what had happened to make me change my mind, and he said he didn't know.

But you want to know what it was? The bitching. Ultimately, I would be able to get what I wanted, but I didn't want to live with the bitching my whole life. Not my parents bitching. Not his family's bitching. Not Steven's bitching. Not even Brooklyn and Doofer's bitching. Having a "relaxed and chill" destination wedding that lasted a week, wouldn't be worth it, if I had to put up with a lifetime of bitching.

So it was the bitching that made me just relax, and give up on the idea of my "relaxing" wedding.
That...and all those crazy Mexican drug dealers that started kidnapping tourists and cutting their heads off! If my Uncle Kevin got kidnapped by drug smugglers during my wedding reception, my parents would never let me forget that one. No bueno!


2 comments:

  1. Do you need a big hug??? I'll go to Jamaica with ya'll if you want to see an old person take a nap. love ya

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  2. If you have a chance to get what you want, don't ever let your kin get in the way of it. I'm a prime example of that. I love my family, as is biologically appropriate, but I keep them at arms length pretty much at all times. Sometimes I keep them at further than arms length... ;)

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