Right after asking (aka telling but with a question mark :/ ) my betrothed to fill in the blank with a task, I experience a frenetic energy signaling that I also need to fill in the blank with a different task so that I don’t feel guilty for telling him to do something when I’m not doing anything myself. I never want to out myself as human, so I immediately start doing something so I can be like, See? Look how much I’m doing! Canonize me!
We’d just had a conversation around wedding plans that was terse and heated, like when you go straight for the middle of the fire when roasting a marshmallow. No lightly golden convo for us - let’s BURN it. He was off to do…(I don’t remember at all, lol) so I was also going to DO A THING! This is how I found myself, mind spiraling, furiously designing labels for homemade strawberry jam at 7:45 in the morning. Are you there God? It’s me, Molly.
6 MONTHS EARLIER…
It was a Saturday and Hall asked if I wanted to go on a hike. Noticing that he was putting new shoelaces in and had combed his hair, I put on some blush as I knew I’d be getting proposed to*.
(*”Will you marry me?” = “I love you. Will you plan our wedding for us?”)
Us <3 Yes, I’m taller :)
BACK TO PRESENT DAY…
Depending on when you read this, I either have a fiancé or a husband. When it comes to terms for a romantic partner, there are no good options. (There were very few good options for the romantic partner himself but I got lucky.)
Boyfriend - Too kiddish. Am I in 6th grade? The word boyfriend only feels okay before 30 and after 55.
Fiancé - Too self-obsessed. I can’t say it without expecting “*~*~*~OMG CONGRATS WHEN?!*~*~*~” Fiancé belongs with the three other f’s often found on those wooden signs in the homes of women obsessed with Chrissy Teigen:
Husband - Too old. Sometimes I still can’t believe I’m old enough to know what a bill is and how to pay it so husband still feels old to me. Like....my Mom has a husband (who is my Dad).
Partner - Too mysterious. I can’t say it without feeling like I’m appropriating gay culture or like I’m talking about a person I started a coffee roasting business with.
Betrothed - Too Emily Dickinson. Also no one says this.
So what does Goldilocks do in this situation? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
We are getting married at the end of May. Next year we’ll go pro in the church and do the whole Uptown Funk and gin and tonic thing, but for now we’re keeping it small (“intimate”) with just immediate family. Looking at wedding venues was like apartment hunting in that we went long stretches without eating and came home demoralized. I hate that word - venue. Are we going to a Coldplay concert?
The first place we looked at was a hotel
so you know it was real old school, like the type of place that Allie’s Mom in The Notebook would have wanted Allie to marry Lon (Lon - why? Also - Davanee, what? Why did we never talk about this?) You know what I mean - lots of maroons and golds and complicated ways to access wifi. It’s not like I got near it, but I knew the gift shop would have clunky but expensive jewelry and little dusty boxes of bad chocolates by the register. The woman working there would have her glasses so far to the end of her nose that you’d wonder if her children had evolved long noses for that same purpose. There’d be a little waterfall thing behind the counter next to a big calculator and some papers and it would make a steady tinkling sound like tinkle tinkle tinkle.
There were a number of different ceremony spots to choose from and all were
They’d be great for people who got engaged on a Jumbotron. You basically say your vows to the backdrop of rolling luggage and daylight heels going to the bar. A wedding on the grounds of a hotel is like a car accident in that everyone going by stares and wonders, “I hope they’ll be okay.” One of the locations was feet from the pool. I closed my eyes and imagined standing there in what was to be the most important moment of my life while a mother screamed, “Logan! Logan, NO!” to the unmistakable sound of a pool noodle repeatedly hitting concrete. So OF COURSE I was like, “Oh wow, such a nice spot! And the smell of cheese fries is really fun!”
The second place we saw was small and bad but I was already so world-weary that I was trying to convince Hall and my sisters that I liked it. “Yep, this is good. Love it. Let’s buy it.” Not unlike some of my experiences with men when I was single. (Don’t just buy it!) The ceremony spot was the size of a lily pad and the restaurant was from 2002, in the time before restaurants knew how to make vegetables taste good and balsamic vinegar was still used as plate decoration. There was a gaggle of maskless Karens getting high on sauv blanc at the bar, staring.
A few days later, after we regained our strength, we went to check out this cute B&B in a yellow Victorian House. It was cute in that it kind of sucks way. We were about to pull away as soon as we pulled in, but saw the owner coming over towards us, smiling, gardening shears in hand. Oh no. He looked nice and was clearly doing the work himself which meant I was ready to drop down on my knees and worship him. The place was stuffy and creaky and immaculately clean, which hinted at its extensive collection of Marilyn Monroe themed art in the bathroom. And those thick single use cotton napkins that make you feel like you’re drying your hands on diaper. We spent half an hour touring the place like it was actually a possibility, while I wished I had the confidence of an asshole on Next, the MTV show that put low rise jeans on the map. (A guy walks out of the Next bus and the girl across the parking lot immediately screams “NEXT!” while he defeatedly goes back inside and pretends to laugh for the millions of viewers. Why did he get nexted? He was, disgustingly, her height.) Anyway, it was a decent place but I got the feeling it attracted the kind of bride who’d have a Day of the Dead sleeve tattoo. The groom has red hair and really old parents.
There was another place I wanted to visit but I never got a call back. It’s probably for the best - below is a screenshot from their website.
The worst place we saw felt like the setting of a TLC show called “Gettin’ Hitched.” When the title flashes at the end of the show’s intro, the final g of “Getting” wobbles back and forth and crashes on a hay bale so it ends up as just “Gettin’.” A cartoon pig runs across the screen during “Executive Producer Mark Burnett.” The star of the show is “Momma”, a wedding coordinator who knows a thing or two about weddings because she’s been married 4 times. The officiant, Jimmy, was her second husband. They are now dating.
As soon as we turned down the gravel road at the Marathon Gas and saw the hoopless basketball hoop on the side of a sad barn, we knew we had wasted our whole Sunday. I’m not one to hate on the rustic life (jk I am, see here) but this was like if a farm had woken up one day and thought I am going to build my personal brand. We walked over to a picnic table in a dirt patch, where a woman in cowboy boots (Momma) was waiting for us with a clipboard. I can’t be sure, but she may have said howdy. She was clearly from the south but it seemed like she was purposely doing a more southern accent on top of her already southern accent. Like twice baked potatoes. There was a skinny little man (Jimmy) in Carhartt (I saw many a skinny little man in Carhartt when I lived in Brooklyn but comparing the two is real apples to oranges, and actually more like apples to roller skates). I’m not sure what purpose Jimmy served. Probably the tool guy. A woman my age got off a ladder to hand me her card, which had dirt on it. “I’ll do your makeup!” Momma walked us through an old grain silo to the area where the bridal party would get ready. It had 75 outlets for hair dryers, THANK GOD. The groomsmen didn’t have an area to get ready in because who cares. We wandered around the dusty ceremony area and skimmed through a sheet of what was included in the pricing.
As we drove away, Momma ran after us saying she could knock $50 off the total price. I screamed thank you and we headed to what would thankfully be the last place we saw, as it was pleasant and charming and “Ahhh, this venue is just right.” So here’s hoping that the day will be free of stress and Logans, full of family and frien-oh wait (soon), and that it will be infinitely more beautiful than the clip art I chose for the strawberry jam label, when I was mad and in love.
Thank you for naming all of the reasons I eloped! I couldn’t do it! 16 years and 2 kids... just sayin! Love your writing!❤️