The wedding

A wedding pulled off in two weeks notice would prove to be challenging enough, but when you are only 17 years old, it comes with an additional collection of complications.  If you are under that age of 18 you are required to have parental consent, and a traditional church wedding was not going to be a slam dunk either.

With the decision to be married, I talked with my mom, and she had to go with us to the county court house and sign the consent forms. In spite of the excitement of the prospects of getting married, it's a weird twist to take your mother with you to the court house to get your marriage license. There was no resistance from my family that I chose to do this; I think they were beyond trying to control me at that point.

With that out of the way the location and pastor were the next to be picked...well that didn't go so well.  I wanted to return to the church I had been attending before everything broke loose, so we paid a visit to the pastor, assuming it was just a matter of making the arrangements. Pastor George was the only one who seemed to notice that I was still a girl looking to marry a 30 year old man. His instructions were for me to move out and wait six months. Well, that was not going to fit into “our” plans, so we headed for the next best thing the local wedding chapel with a justice of the peace.

He had a hand me down vintage 1920's swallow tail tux that required us to pick up a few missing parts at a antique store, and I found a Gunne Sax vintage style dress and hand made my veil, with all the details in place, off to the chapel we went. The chapel was a converted living room in the justice’s home.  We dressed in a spare bedroom, and everyone crammed in.  It was a small civil service, with bouquet in hand my Dad gave me away, family from both sides managed to attend (including my grandmothers), with a small reception back at our apartment, with a home made wedding cake. My maid of honor was a good friend from high school, but she wasn't 18 either, so I had to have my cousin sign the marriage certificate as my witness. It was far from the wedding of my dreams, but thinking about it now, it was a pretty bright spot in those difficult years, and some of those pictures are still worth a good laugh.

So now being married, it somehow made things right again in my world. I'm sure some of you are wondering what happened to that 17 year old girl, married at such a young age, how did the story turn out?  Well strangely enough, by the grace of God, 30 years later we are still married. I'm sure it's to the surprise of that pastor who all those years ago was not willing to marry us, and I'm sure to the surprise of my family at times too.

So regardless of how difficult this road has been for me, he as been beside me all the way, he has kept his promise to make it right. It has been far from easy, with many bumps and hills along the way.  But I feel fortunate to have things where they are now. I know I didn't understand what it meant to love or be loved back then, but I think we have figured that out after all these years. I could say that it would have been great if it could have happened differently, but all these experiences have made me who I am, and has given me the family I dearly love.