“A wedding begins a new world as two hearts pledge one love and two lives join in one dream.”
I found our wedding guest book. Our wedding took place on August 20, 1994, in Lincoln, Nebraska. About 250 friends and relatives attended including my best man and his fiance from Paris, France.
When Anita and I dreams of getting married, we had fantasized eloping to Jamaica. But when Anita mentioned it to her parents, the wedding plans sprang instantly from the ground fully developed. Ha ha. Actually my mother-in-law and my mother put in a ton of hard work to make a great wedding and not bankrupt both families. My mom found the photographer (she worked for one) and cake designer. Anita’s mom made all the silk flowers and all the dresses. She also recruited all the people to bring and serve food. Anita and I found the church (the Presbyterian one next to our apartment), reception hall (only six months notice is hard to find a good place – we loved the location above the Rock N Roll Runza but would have waited another year to get in) and DJ (Complete Music, the same place I DJed for a year later).
I remember the wedding as exciting but exhausting. I smiled until my face hurt and the rental shoes killed my feet. We left the church in a limo and took a drive around Lincoln to get away from the craziness. By the time we got to the reception, everyone was there! So everyone could have a chance to dance, we had the DJ play hip hop, R&B, country, head banger music – something for everyone. I did the Tootsie Roll with my sister in law and nieces. A huge group of Delta Gammas were there and sang us a song. And the guy I worked with, Whit, did his amazing Elvis impersonation.
I remember some of the people at the wedding, but a lot of the names I can’t remember them being there. A lot of it is a blur, I guess.
One things sticks out in my mind among all the names. Not including Anita, seven of the attendees of our wedding have died. They were older relatives of mine (my grandfather for one) and friends of my parents. But it is weird to see the name that that person signed who is now gone. It reminds me that death is a natural progression. It reminds me that we tend to gather around weddings, births and deaths.
I pray we gather more.
