April 21, 1973, Columbus, Ohio

By J.M. Cornwell

Mom fixed my veil, or at least had her hands up pretending to fix my veil, as the photographer snapped pictures and posed us like action figures.

“Look this way. Don’t smile quite so big. Move your hand down. Take a step back. Take two steps forward. Now smile. Make it natural.”

There was nothing natural about this situation, this whirlwind wedding juggernaut plunging at breakneck speed down a steep hill at escape velocity. I hadn’t had a moment’s peace since Dave’s boss called our parents to tell them I was pregnant.

There are five stages of wedding grief.

Denial: I missed my period. I never missed my period. Every 28 days, no matter where I was, usually wearing white or some other light color, my period came. It never happened when I wore a nightmare-spawned paisley or acid trip swirl of eye searing colors in a nausea-inducing pattern my mother insisted on buying.

At the end of the usual 28 days, just a few days after my 18th birthday, when Dave and I became engaged, and I lost my virginity in just under 90 painful and messy seconds, I failed to hit the mark. My feet and ankles swelled, my stomach heaved every morning, and I waited for Aunt Flo to arrive. I was sure she was coming. She always came.

She didn’t come. I convinced myself that it was the stress and excitement of getting engaged and graduating high school in a few weeks. It was just stress, and Flo was delayed. Everything was fine. I wasn’t pregnant. At least I wasn’t pregnant until Dave’s boss overheard us talking and called my parents and Dave’s. Denial turned to anger.

Anger: My anger was a pale thing next to my parents’ fury, especially my mother’s. She had a Ph.D. and a black belt in fury. It was nothing compared to the anger to come when Dave stood up to my mother’s fury. That was anger, an anger to put my mother’s well-honed rages to shame.

Dave’s was a quiet anger, a carefully banked bed of coals with the promise of an all-devouring conflagration that stalled Mom before she got to ramming speed and stirred my normally calm and even-tempered father to spitting wrath in defense of his wife.

Dave’s parents were calmer, together forming a virtual eye in a hurricane of anger that left streaked mascara and bitten lips and drying spittle in the corner of his mother’s lips, as well as a thick, 2-inch burnt-steak tension in the room not even a diamond blade could cut. The consensus: we’d have to move the wedding up, getting it all done in two weeks.

Bargaining: I always thought my father would pay for my dream wedding. I was wrong. A year down the road was one thing, but an impromptu wedding in fewer than two weeks was something else entirely. He’d provide food for the wedding rehearsal dinner and the reception, but the rest was up to me. I wondered if I could sneak off, use my hard-earned savings for an abortion, and tell everyone it was just a bad joke. It was near April Fools’ Day, after all.

Flowers for the bride, groom, five bridesmaids, five ushers, best man, and maid of honor (I wanted my best friend, but I was all bargained out and got my sister instead); a three-tiered wedding cake to feed 100 instead of the four-tiered cake to feed 200; a wedding gown and veil (mustn’t be white or have a cathedral train because I was no longer a virgin); gifts for the bridesmaids; renting the hall for the reception; announcements; invitations; photographer; napkins; toasting glasses; cake knife with ribbon; wedding album; mini albums for parents of the bride and groom - those, costs, along with those for a host of other details, turned me into a veritable camel trader with a string of scabby, bad-tempered, mangy camels and a limited budget.

Since we couldn’t find an off-white dress that suited my mother’s moral sensibilities, she and I agreed on white-dotted Swiss with a white veil, to which she would sew dark purple ribbon at neck, wrists, and waistline to make sure everyone who didn’t already know, via the family and friends network, could see that I was no longer a virgin who deserved to wear white.

Depression: Mom was happy. Dave’s mother was in hog heaven, having her say in every decision without having to spend a dime. Dave was happy because he was going to be a father. Dad was cooking up a storm and planning menus. Dave’s father was on the road. The bridesmaids were excited about their pastel-colored polyester finery, and my grandfather would live to see me married.

I was miserable.

My best friend’s mother died, and I wanted to go to the funeral in Daytona Beach. I wanted to be there for Bobby. I wanted to see Bobby and hold his hand and - OK, I wanted to chuck the whole wedding thing, go to Florida, and never come back. My backstabbing sister, Carol, and her best friend went in my place. I was devastated.

Through a haze of grief and regret, I stayed on top of the wedding arrangements, attended school every day, quit eating, and cried myself to sleep every night. I wanted out. I wanted the wedding and the baby to be a bad dream, but every morning, I woke up with more details to check and Mom telling me I didn’t have to get married.

My parents would adopt and raise my child as their own, and I could go on with my life, she said. That thought scared me more than getting married.

Carol called every night to tell me many times Bobby asked about me and how he went out and got drunk when he found out I was getting married. The black cloud hovering over me covered me. The pictures of her and her best friend pedaling down the beach on a tandem bicycle and the waxy look in Bobby’s eyes after the funeral didn’t help my mood. I had bargained with biology, and I was getting married.

Acceptance: The last few days flew by. Everything fell into place. On the wedding day, I picked up bouquets and boutonnieres, helped the bridesmaids with their hair and makeup, and got to the church on time, dressing in the basement and accepting my mother’s last-minute help to fix my veil while the photographer snapped pictures.

Smiling like a veteran actress, she offered a few words of wisdom. “If your husband wants sex, whether you do or not, it’s your duty.” The photographer posed us again. “You can pet it; you can play with it, but, for God’s sake, don’t put it on your mouth.” Another pose. “You don’t have to get married. We can still call it off.”

It was hot for April, and the knee-high pantyhose cut off my circulation. A tendril of hair slipped down. Mom fingered the veil around my face. The photographer snapped the picture. The pianist played the first few notes of the wedding march, and my father, handsome in his tuxedo, held out his arm.

Dave turned and looked at us as we walked down the aisle. Beneath my veil, I smiled, tears in my eyes. I was getting married.

J.M. Cornwell is a nationally syndicated freelance journalist and award-winning author who lives in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, far from the scene of wedding grief. Her essays have been included in Haunted Encounters: Departed Family and Friends and Life’s Spices from Seasoned Sistahs, and in upcoming Chicken Soup for the Soul books due out in 2008.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 | Email This Post

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