How to plan a first wedding

and then a second

How To Have a First Wedding.

Find someone to marry. They can be any height, gender, upbringing, shape-of-earth-believing. The single criteria is their willingness to marry you. They must be willing. Tell your parents. Pretend they seem happy. Tell your betrothed’s parents. Pretend you are happy. Pick a date far enough away to allow for lots of angst but close enough to diminish the likelihood of a break-up before the date. It helps to have a clock, like an impending move or a dying dad or both. This keeps people on task. Figure out the most expensive wedding ever staged. Divide it by ten. Aim for this shocking figure. Determine which fleeting element is the most important to you. Do the same for the least. Argue that all are vitally important. Show your reasonableness by decreasing the cost of the thing you care least about. Might I suggest the photographer? You won’t need those photos in eight months. Fight to make sure you get the white porta potties. Determine the small items that will fit in the pretty baskets to make people forget they are using porta potties. Nail polish remover? booby pins (typo too funny to correct)? chapstick? don’t use generic brands, you will be taking them home tomorrow morning when no one has touched them. The booby pins (go with it) should be packed and moved to all future homes. They are much more useful than your marriage-mate. Fight to make sure the table centerpieces have never been designed for anyone other than you before. Use the word bespoke because you don’t yet hate it. Include acid green and orange…but not in a fall way, in a fresh vibrant, aren’t we youthful and edgy and flower fashion forward way. Insist on live music. DJs are tacky. If the band you want is from another state that is better. Bring them in. Spend more time with them than your guests. Make sure the dance floor is too small. It seems more festive and also less noticeable that you don’t dance. Get the sides for the tent. And heaters. And coolers because you might not be able to control the weather but you can control how your guests perceive the weather. This is a magical fucking night. And yes. It should be night. Because the candles won’t look as good if they aren't. You can choose between pillar and taper candles. So choose. As long as they are white. Make the ceremony short, like 15 minutes or less. Wait. That brings up a second necessary quality for your wedding partner. They can’t practice any tedious religion. The ceremony needs to be snappy. Don’t let people choose their own readings. Or don’t have people read. Don’t write your own vows. Or do but make them short. Or funny. Or short and funny. Skip the posed photos between the ceremony and the eating. Then you won’t have to awkwardly argue with the photographer you already cheaped out on about whether skipping all prints and books decreases the bill. You won’t want prints or books. Make sure the food is great. Seek the same characteristics as the flowers. But less floral. Unless they are edible flowers. Taste as much lemon lavender rhubarb custard cake as you want. But pick the vanilla and the chocolate. It’s OK if it takes two cakes. Or a cake and cupcakes. Make sure it has buttercream. Do that thing where you smash the cake into each other’s faces. Forget that top tier of the cake that the caterers cut for your first anniversary, you won’t have had time to eat the cake at the wedding and you won’t need that slice anyways. This is how to have a wedding, not how to have a marriage. Maybe next time.

How to plan a second wedding.

Find someone you love who loves you. Make sure you both believe the earth is round. Pick a date in early November because it is soon. Budget below four figures. Buy each other sweaters for the ceremony. Have a friend take photos. Have another friend make your bouquet. Rent chairs for your living room. Dig out the booby pins for that basket in the bathroom. Write your own vows. Make them funny and short. He will cry with happiness anyways. Plan for mid-morning so the 18 or your 20 guests who flew in for your wedding can catch a flight home. Play music from an iPod. Serve the best bagels in town with a choice of toppings. Start your marriage.

Yes the wedding was hastily thrown together. No that belly bump does not hold a baby.

An epistolary moment twenty years in to a second marriage.

Me: Could you order me the blue pillow to fix my neck hump. And women’s Rogaine. So so sexy.

Steve: Tell me more.

Me: Also incontinence pads and the fungal cream for that rash under my left boob.

Steve: Mmmmmhmmmm.