The day of my wedding was one of the best days of my life. It started out with a steak and eggs breakfast with some of my best friends. After breakfast, some of us went to the beach. It was an extremely low tide which exposed rocks and shells that had been underwater for decades. I still have a jar of smooth pebbles I picked from the floor of the newly exposed sea bottom. I remember the day being very relaxed and slow-paced. I woke up late, had a leisurely breakfast, visited my folks at their motel room for a moment, and then spent the day on the beach. The wedding wasn’t until 7:00 PM, so I felt I had a lot of time, and few responsibilities. Several of my friends from Ashland and my best friend from high school were all there to have fun with.
All of this was happening in Newport, Oregon, which is six miles from Toledo, Oregon, which is where the wedding was held. I stayed the previous night at the hotel where the wedding reception was to be in Newport. I stayed away from Toledo, until I needed to be there, which was just before the ceremony. After all, I wasn’t supposed to see the bride before the wedding. I was surprised when people were so relieved when I showed up at the church. Of course they had good reason to worry, as I had arrived from Ashland an hour late for the rehearsal and dinner the previous night.
I first saw Mary Lou that day when she walked down the aisle with her dad. She was beautiful! Things had been perfect, for me, up to that point. During the ceremony, the first cracks started to appear in the “perfect day.”
We were pretty young and naive, even though we thought we were quite grown up and had things figured out at 21 years old. We were married in the United Methodist Church where Mary Lou and her family attended. We were married by the current minister. We met with him before-hand to plan the ceremony. We wanted him to read a passage from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. We gave him a copy for him to read. We should have known that this conservative Methodist minister would have a problem with reading something from Kahlil Gibran. Mary Lou was aghast when he read instead “How Do I Love Thee?” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She really doesn’t like that poem, and she especially didn’t want it read at her wedding! That was the first hiccup of the day for me. It was just another thing gone wrong for Mary Lou on her wedding day. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the last.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but Mary Lou was having a horrible bad day, where everything was going wrong! Her wedding day was nothing like what she thought it would be like. Of course, I was clueless and no help! I just added to it. We had the wedding reception in a conference room at a resort hotel in Newport. I really didn’t know what weddings were like, but of course, I thought I knew what they were supposed to be like. At every wedding I remember going to, which wasn’t very many, the groom did certain things. He was to take the garter off the bride’s leg and throw it into a crowd of eligible bachelors. He was to greet all of the guests in a reception line. He was to pay the minister after the ceremony. And, when the bride and groom exchanged bites from the cake, the groom was to smoosh the piece of cake into the bride’s face. This is what I thought. My best man, Rick, also thought this was tradition, so it must be true. Well, I didn’t know that Mary Lou thought the cake exchange was one of the most romantic moments in life you can have. The bride feeding the groom, the groom feeding the bride. It represented a new trust and a new relationship. I was clueless. I was relieved that she hadn’t smooshed her cake into my face. I was now open to do the deed. It was the crowning blow to Mary Lou’s awful day! I still cannot live this event down to this day. She had never seen or heard of such a thing before, and whenever she is reminded of this event, I am doomed to the dog house for a good period of time. I wish we had talked about some of our expectations beforehand. It is amazing that we are still married after more than fifty years.
I have suggested to Mary Lou, over the years, that we get married again. I thought it would be fun to redo our ceremony at our twenty-fifth or fiftieth wedding anniversary. It would be nice to have a ceremony that we both wanted, and it would help to erase the memory of what actually occurred that day. However, Mary Lou won’t have it. I don’t think she wants to relive that day. I don’t blame her, and I guess it is best to let it rest.
Swagerty-Aldrich Family Web Site 