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March 17th, 2007 at 1:58 pm

Civil Ceremony

(click on thumbnail to view album)

For those of you who don’t know the story, Brian and I were married four years ago because my student health insurance was about to run out and I was scheduled for surgery in the near future. Plus, because of the bipolar, I couldn’t go without insurance for very long because then it would become a pre-existing condition. Ironically, all of this happened in March, so we were married on the Ides of March, as we were English majors, after all.

At the time, I was applying for tenure-track positions at universities all over the country. While I did that, I worked as an adjunct (part-time) professor at maybe six different community colleges and universities? But that’s a story for another time.

Anyway, we already knew we would get married some day, but we didn’t expect it to be when it happened; we only had about a week to decide, which is why the rest of our families weren’t there. You can see my sister, who actually made my bouquet Kopete Rose and her now-husband in the background. My mother was the photographer, and part of why I so hated this occasion was because when she would take pictures, she would actually tell me how to hold the bouquet! There’s one picture that I can’t find — she took us out to lunch afterwards and asked the waitress to take our picture. However, the way we were seated looked like it was either Mother’s Day or my mom’s birthday. Thumbs Down

Needless to say, it wasn’t the type of wedding I imagined we would have — that’s why I call it a civil ceremony because to me, it was not a wedding. Not that I knew what we would have planned, but certainly not this. Well, obviously I would have wanted a dress and I would have really liked to have a traditional Filipino wedding with the men wearing Barong Tagalogs instead of tuxes.

I have to admit that this whole thing has made me “not do weddings.” That is, I avoid them like the plague, no matter whose it is. I didn’t even go to my own sister’s (Filipino) wedding, but she understood. Anyway, it was in Las Vegas, where our family lives, and we couldn’t afford to go. Plus, I was in the hospital.

After she and her husband came back from their honeymoon, Brian and I took them out to dinner. I asked something, can’t remember what now, but they both agreed that they would have preferred something much simpler — maybe even something like our civil ceremony. And if I thought my mom was bad when we got married. Heh. She was way worse at my sister’s.