We'll get a table near the street, In our old familiar place*

Thirteen years ago today, on a scorchingly hot day, Husband and I got married in a small United Methodist Church, that had no air conditioning.

We had a formal tea in the Church's fellowship hall immediately afterwards, with a gorgeous wedding cake, and hors d'oeuvres and canapes, and pianist for ambiance...and it was very, very, very hot. And later that evening, we had our wedding reception at a small reception hall, with dinner and dancing and a groom's cake and another small wedding cake, and the air conditioning broke halfway through the reception, and it was - well, it was hot.

That's mostly what people remember. The cloying, dizzying heat of that day. ( I am guessing that if you were to ask Family4Peace or JDEgirl or Mommy of One, if they remember anything about our wedding day, they would say, "It was hot.")

We should have known better. My younger sister had gotten married the same weekend, the year before (her anniversary is therefore one day after mine), and it had been just as hot the day SHE got married. (Our youngest sister learned from this, and when she got married, two years later, she could have gotten married on the 15th of June - but she said, "and get hit with the heat that YOU TWO had? No way." And she got married in October. Smart girl.)

And while I do remember the weather, I also remember standing at the back of the church, in my 1920's-vintage-style wedding gown, with my floor length veil, and looking at Husband-to-be, and thinking that I had never been more sure of anything, ever, in my life, than the fact that I wanted to marry him.

Our wedding was far from perfect. There was an unwanted guest at our wedding, who is now serving 25 years in prison for a crime he committed the week after we got married. My wedding pictures of our immediate family would soon become outdated when there were two divorces within a year of the photos being taken. (My father actually went so far as to have his second wife airbrushed from his copies of my wedding photos!) And the weather, well, I think we've covered that.

But, I also remember my grandfather's sweet voice, singing O Promise Me, and that all of the people who meant the most to us in the world, were there with us. And at the end of the day (at which time we filled our honeymoon suite's jacuzzi with VERY COLD WATER and crawled in to keep from melting), he was my Husband and I was his Wife, and that was all that really mattered. The cake was delicious (pistachio-chocolate with dark chocolate ganache filling, it was sinful, really), and the groomsmen were handsome, and the bridesmaids were lovely, and it was my Wedding Day, and I will never forget it.

(This has been a rough week for Husband. And me. He was in the hospital over the weekend, and I was very, very worried. And we still don't know what made him sick, but we are hopeful that he is one the mend, because I would surely be lost without him, because he is my everything.)

LM

*Scenes From An Italian Restaurant, Billy Joel. (This is the song that brought Husband and I together, and a crisp, chilly November night, in 1992, when we were both 20-years-old.)