How far back should I go?

Well, I last blogged in early June (except for my quickie entry of a week and a half ago). So maybe I'll start with my trip to Mexico. One of my aunts is a nun. She's been a nun for 50 years and celebrated her jubilee. I wanted to do something with my mom as a single daughter before getting married and given the rest of my mom's commitments this past summer, she suggested I come along for this.

What a privilege, let me tell you. My aunt rocks. She just rocks. She lived here in St. Louis for a while, back in the day when buses still were separated front and back. She would always go sit in the back, and kind-hearted white folks would signal to her and wave her back toward the front (probably have noticed her olive-toned skin and thinking she didn't know any better). Well, they would say, "Ma'am, you don't have to sit back there" but she always answered, "Yes, I do." And she would sit in the back every time she got on the bus. She's only told me that story once and she didn't say it with a great deal of fuss or anything; she was making a point about something else in our discussion. But I always thought that's one of the coolest things any of my relatives have ever done, at least that I've heard of. She's gone on to do lots of things - missionary work, tending to the sick, and the like. You know, nun-like things.

So after that, back to St. Louis for a few quick days at work and then - on the road again la la la la la la la... This time, with my big sister, who happened to be working in California and who asked if I wanted to catch up with her using some of her Southwest miles. Hellooo? Is the sky blue? The pope catholic? The ocean big? Well, yes, I wanted to go. So we rented a car in Sacramento, stopped off for dim-sum in San Fran, and hit the Big Sur. We had intended to take the scenic drive down Highway 1 which would take a couple extra hours but probably hit LA some time that day, Saturday. Ha. We barely made it to Monterey. At one point, we clocked four hours to go 30 miles. Part of it is the switchbacks with gut-wrenching precipices on the one side (and yes, we were heading south, so we were on the outside) and a wall of rock - meaning no where to go - on the other side.

Ultimately, we didn't hit Venice Beach until late Monday, just in time for the sunset. But what a trip. Man o man, what a trip. I had the second most beautiful experience of my life watching the full moon rise over a beautiful ocean, sipping some red wine and eating chocolate. Intriguingly, my most beautiful experience in life also involves traveling with my sister, mountains, and the ocean. Hmm. That bears some reflection, but later. For now, suffice to say that we quickly started calling it my bachelorette trip and it could not have been better. We got along (sometimes, traveling with siblings can be tricky, but everything was great), that part of the world is beautiful (the pictures here do it no justice). Perfect.

Next, my combined shower/bachelorette party. Couldn't ask for a better time. Good people, good food, good fun. We started out at my mom's for the "shower" portion of the evening, then on to the Third Degree Glass Factory (actually, my lady-of-honor and I had been planning my party for months around a glass-blowing demo that they do every third Friday of the month). From there, to a tapas restaurant on the Loop called Mirasol. Mmm-mm! Honestly, if I had to do it over, I wouldn't change a thing - not the friends and family that were there, not what we did, not where we went. Absolutely perfect.

Ooof! Well, on to the next thing: A shower thrown by Brian's family for both of us. It was great - we all got together (I thought the purpose was a Labor Day get-together) and were just hanging out when they started bringing out this massive amount of swag. Serious giftage. Very warm, very welcoming, very kind. Really a nice time, with or without the gifts. It was really sweet that they all got together just for us - some of them even drove a certain amount of time to "come in to St. Louis" for us. I like Brian's family.

That brings us to: The civil ceremony in the park. My mother-in-law had this stone made for us, commemorating that day. She's one of those rare finds - a person who is very Catholic yet not judgmental at all. At least, if she is, she hides it well. She's been very supportive of Brian and me from the beginning. I really lucked out. Not having had a chance to blog while a lot of this is going on, I thought I'd pluck out some text from a couple of emails I sent on the subject of our civil ceremony.

This first is actually almost the entire email that I sent to my then-future mother- and sisters-in-law, sent on August 10th.

Ladies,

By now, you've heard of our decision to have two
separate ceremonies.  I hope this hasn't caused a
great deal of confusion.  As one or more of you may
know, weddings are two-fold in countries where there
is separation of the church and state? Including
Mexico? Since my family is familiar with this practice, it
hasn't been of any great significance to them to hear
that we're doing this, just an added event if you
will, but I am not sure how familiar you all are with
these traditions so I wanted to double-check with you.

Well, the wedding plans had gotten to the point that I
was pretty upset that I was not getting a wedding that
was at all my concept - I wanted a small wedding in a
park, and it's going to be a big wedding in a church.
So upset, in fact, that I was crying and losing sleep.
I just didn't want to look back at my wedding and not
have any memories that felt like I got to do more than
pick the matches and vote on the color of the ribbons,
you know?  Once, a couple of months ago when we were
talking about the flowers, M. told me that since
it was my wedding it should be what I wanted, and I
just smiled to myself because the plans are so
different from what I had conceived in terms of my
wedding day. 

That is not to say that I am unhappy with our
arrangements - had I wanted a big wedding in a church,
these are exactly the choices that I would have made.
Brian and I have worked very hard to come up with a
ceremony and event that would please us both, and
hopefully our guests, too.

So we're going to have a judge wedding, just like in
Mexico, France, and other countries - very small and
intimate. An example of someone famous doing this
recently is Eva Longoria - I'm not very familiar with
her, but when I was explaining this to a friend, he
mentioned that Eva Longoria had just had two wedding
ceremonies in France, I believe, due to the separation
of church and state.

We're shooting for the weekend of September 22nd. I've
stopped by several times to ask a judge friend of
mine, but I've just missed him and then he's been out
of the office in a conference this week, so I haven't
been able to confirm it. There are other judge friends
or also general weddings at the courthouse offered on
specific dates, but he is my first choice.  I expect
him to be back from the conference on Monday and so
will try to stop by then. The actual date will depend
on the judge's schedule.

This will not change the events of October 13th in any
way (Catholic wedding + reception), it just adds the
element of a civil ceremony a couple of weeks before.
Then, I get what I want out of a wedding, Brian gets
his big family event, my mom is happier that there is
a Catholic wedding, the groom's family gets the
rehearsal dinner, and it all works out - just like a
big family event should. 

Of course, both days will be significant to us (the
September judge date and the Catholic wedding date) -
but, hey, we already celebrate each monthiversary, so
it's not like having more dates to celebrate is
something we don't relish.

J., Brian said you'd ordered something. The gift
that you ordered with the October date is absolutely
fine - we will, I'm sure, celebrate both dates.

I hope this helps you understand what's going on;
email nuance can be tricky, so I hope nothing came
across poorly in the email. And I hope that if you all
still have questions, that you'll let me know and
we'll try to clarify it further. 

The schedule would be this:

1) Judge ceremony (they tend to be very short)
2) Meal at my mom's (an at-home wedding, just like my
sisters'!). She's fine with this, but at most, it
would be a meal at a nice restaurant.

We'd like it to be at around 4:30 p.m. or so, so that
it's dinner, but if the judge prefers it, it'll be in
the morning and then a brunch or a lunch...

Lastly, it would be a small event, perhaps 30 people.
Really, just my mom, my sister, Brian's mom and
sisters, and then our immediate circle of friends.

Having made this decision makes me feel soooo much
better. Brian and I found a way to work out what he
needs/wants, and what I need/want.  Otherwise, one of
us was always going to be unhappy - either he wasn't
going to get the big family event that he wanted or I
wasn't going to get the small, intimate event that I
wanted, and there's no way to really mesh the two
(either it's big OR it's small). He was upset that I
wasn't happy, and I wasn't willing to force him to
have something that HE didn't envision (whenever he
had thought of getting married, the whole family was
there).  So this works for us and that means
everything.

That's it, in a nutshell. Well, it's not much of a
nutshell, since this is a pretty long email. But as I
said, let me know if this doesn't clarify anything or
you just need more info or whatever.

Regards,

Alex

And here, a long excerpt from an email sent to friends just on September 19th:

Hmmm... I paused our conversation (at least, my side
of it) to reflect on what I next wanted to say.

I would imagine that every thinking couple's process
to the day of the wedding is unique. For us, it was a
faith journey.  Having decided to get married, the
very first step we took was to reserve the church
(Pius). As cradle Catholics, we both assumed a
Catholic wedding. Over the next few weeks, we started
talking about that and wondering if we had been
correct to assume that - Brian was agnostic and I was
essentially non-practicing since the priest at my
former parish was removed due to past sexual abuse
history (nothing from that experience increased my
faith or trust of the institution). We hadn't started
pre-cana or anything, but met with a priest to discuss
this. We visited a number of parishes , including
Pius, and an episcopalian parish.

By a clerical fluke, we were registered at Pius (it's
something Catholics do - you sign up at your parish)
and we could have stayed there; our process goes on
for longer than this but suffice to say we developed a
relationship with my former parish - all that had
attracted me previously was still there and the yucky
priest was gone, replaced by a great one who handled
our Catholic marriage prep (Gerry Kleba).  I, frankly,
would also have been happy at Pius, maybe a little
happier because it didn't have the negative history of
the other parish, but Brian was more comfortable at
Cronan's, and I wanted us to build a relationship
somewhere together, as a couple. [I am happy at Cronan's];
formally withdrawing from Pius and
registering at Cronan's means paying $500 vs. $100 for
the church fee, but the other option would have been
to take advantage of the parish secretary's clerical
mistake in registering us and pretending to be Pius
parishioners, and that's just not the kind of thing I
do.

As we were going through our Catholic marriage prep,
we saw the emphasis was on the sacrament and not the
marriage - an interesting split. Meaning, the prep
focused on how the Church defines marriage but it
wasn't doing anything to answer real-life questions as
much. So we met 2-3 times with a guy that does
marriage counseling. He was impressed; most couples
(whether engaged or married) only see him once there's
a problem, so he thought it was pretty nifty that we
wanted to get a better handle on what it's actually
going to take.  We benefited greatly from his 27 years
of what sounds like a pretty happy marriage.  That's
the other thing - Brian and I don't want to just log
years, we want them to be HAPPY years. But hey, who
doesn't, right??    ;-)

It was a lot more time and a lot more money, but
having talked about it, thought about the topics given
to us by the priest, the Catholic class, and this
counselor, we're sure that we're on the same page
about the commitment we're making to each other.

The other big thing for us was the size of the event -
because my dad died, I've never wanted a big, formal
wedding; never really wanted to walk down the aisle,
etc. It just highlights in my mind that my dad is
missing. But Brian's family is really big, so a small,
intimate gathering was out of the question.

I thought I could live with it and there were several
steps here that I'll spare you of, but suffice to say
here that, as time wore on, I became increasingly
unhappy. I was surprised at how unhappy I was, but it
felt like I was planning a wedding for someone else,
not me. I had no desire to look back on my wedding and
think, "I don't know whose this wedding was, but it
wasn't mine."

BTW, Brian offered several times to make it a small
wedding (meaning, not invite most of his extended
family) because he knew how unhappy I was but that
would have meant just shifting the unhappiness to him.
I didn't want him to be unhappy any more than he
wanted me unhappy.

One day, Brian and I were talking about how family had
gotten involved and I told him that if our marriage
was like our wedding, that there was no space for me
beyond the matches and ribbon color, that I was
concerned for our relationship.  Something every new
couple has to do is figure out how they are going to
interact with their family and friends, and we had
managed to keep everyone happy but me, and I'm one
half of this equation. But it's an either/or
proposition: Either you have 30-40 people OR you have
140.

Then a light went on, and I remember that in countries
that have true separation of church and state, two
weddings are required because one entity will not
recognize the other's legal authority to act on its
citizens/parishioners. This means, one has a civil
ceremony as well as a church ceremony, wholly
independent of each other. I don't know how it is in
France and other such countries, but in Mexico the
emphasis is on the church wedding. The civil wedding
is small, has your witnesses, maybe your parents,
maybe your siblings, maybe your absolute immediate
circle of friends. Maybe a nice dinner afterward,
nothing big or flashy - that's for the church
ceremony.

I don't know that I've ever been so grateful for being
a child of blended heritage. Over the years, having a
germanic and hispanic blend in me has at times been
uplifting, at times a hindrance.  But here, it
presented an option that would make BOTH of us happy.

Importantly, Brian rolled with it. Not being familiar
with hispanic culture, he could have balked, asked
questions in a doubting or derisive way (as opposed to
with genuine interest, for example), or whatever.
Nope. Not my guy. He was just happy we were taking the
road less traveled (at least, less traveled here in
the US), and let me tell you, it has made all the
difference...

So I think that brings us all the way up to the civil ceremony a couple of days ago, which will be the subject of a separate blog entry. Of course, all of these events have been intermingled with ribbons, installments to the wedding vendors, decisions, contract negotiations, fittings for the dress, replacing IDs and stuff from my stolen purse (see previous entry), etc., etc., etc. Good. Crazy, but good.