Wedding Day

I was thinking back this morning to our wedding day so many years ago. We were both in graduate school and couldn't afford much. We decided to get married at my parents home in Virginia. There were just a few people, mostly family, who came to the wedding. My grandmother was there which was special as she was well up in her 90's at the time. We were married in the parlor in front of the fireplace.

The minister was going through the vows, and the biscuit timer went off in the kitchen. I chuckle at remembering that. The biscuits were for the little ham sandwiches that were made for the dinner after the wedding. It was a cold day and there was a fire going in the fireplace. We all trouped out to the front yard for photos. I look at those photos now and realize how young we were and in some ways naive.

We didn't go on a honeymoon. After the wedding, we went back to the little cinderblock house where we lived. It was near the laboratory where we worked as graduate students. The house had very little heat. We had to wrap blankets around ourselves to keep warm in the winter. And later that evening, we went out to dinner with my wife's parents and their relatives. There were a lot of cocktails drunk by my wife and the relatives. For some reason, it all seems a bit sad to write about this now.

Just after Christmas which was about a month after we were married, my wife left to take a position at a lab down south, and I stayed on in that little house to finish up my dissertation. I missed her terribly. That was a tough time.

My father gave us money for a down payment on our first house as a wedding gift. It helped get us started. About 5 months after we were married, I moved everything that we owned to join my wife. I got a job at the same lab where she worked. We at last had completed our doctorates, moved, gotten jobs, and were newly weds. I think that's a list of some of the most stressful things that people do.

Over these years, we've been battered around a bit. We've had our share of ups and downs. But we've got a lot of memories stored up as well. And I don't think that either of us really doubted that we'd still be together after the biscuit timer went off all those years ago.