Bethel, Maine – December 11, 2015

Yes, I know it’s been two months since my wedding.

I’ve been working on this post for awhile.

It started as a story – because I love stories – and that just got long and boring.  I wanted to write something that my handful of readers found interesting.  So I tried and tried to make it interesting for someone else . . . and I finally gave up.

I deleted everything.

And I wrote this post for me.

So forgive me if this isn’t interesting – I promise this is the last post I’m planning on writing about my wedding.  Next week I’ll write about aliens or something.

 

 

Details I want to remember surrounding our wedding . . .

 

• • Standing in front of a full-length mirror at the seamstress’s shop five days before we were leaving and (surprisingly calmly) asking: “You don’t want to tell me this, but you’ve tried everything you can to fix this dress, and it’s impossible, isn’t it?”

 

• • Trying on every white dress in a ten-mile radius and NOT FREAKING OUT.

 

• • Walking through a fancy wedding dress shop in no makeup and sweats, and the sales girl casually motioning towards the most beautiful dress I’ve ever seen in my life on a mannequin – telling me it’s on clearance.

 

• • Frantically playing “Can We Get Every Suitcase Under 50 pounds So We Don’t Have To Pay Extra At Check In” by switching items from suitcase to suitcase while my future husband is literally standing at the door at two in the morning with his arms out begging me to give him something to carry to the car.

 

• • Arriving a half hour before the parking garage even opened because of my future husband’s enthusiasm to get to the airport.

 

• • Wandering through an empty airport at three hours before the buttcrack of dawn, trying to find our gate because the computer screens were down.

 

• • Carting an enormous amount of luggage because we packed decorations too.

 

• Learning my future husband is slightly scared to fly and cheerfully accepting the window seat.

• Learning Bernard loves to fly and having him hog the window the whole time.

• • On the second flight after the delay – we’ve been up for nine hours and it’s not even noon yet.
    Chad:  WHY ON EARTH did we fly out this early?!?!?
    Me: (refraining from performing a choking maneuver on the man I’m going to marry in a few days) Because it was YOUR BRIGHT IDEA to get to Boston early so we’d have plenty of time to look at whatever we wanted on the drive up the coast.

 

• • Having plenty of time to look at whatever we wanted on the drive up the coast.

 

• • Discovering that driving in the city of Boston is absolutely insane, and there’s no way in hell either one of us want to try it ever again.

 

• • Google Maps acts like it’s on crack in Boston.

 

• • Apple Maps keeps its shit together in Boston.  Sort of.

 

• Old North Church is very cool.

• • Salem, MA is very cool – even at night just driving around without much open.

 

• • My future husband purchasing a little stuffed red dragon for me at a Salem gift shop.  (I collect stuffed animals.  This was the first of three he bought for me on this trip.)  I named him – Salem.  Original.  I know.  He’s my dragon, leave me alone.

 

• • Introducing Salem to Bernard and worrying Salem was going to burn down the car because of all the fire he’s breathing at Bernard.  They didn’t get along at first.

 

• • Opting for a random oyster bar to eat at because Chad wanted seafood and having THE MOST AMAZING MEAL OF MY LIFE.

 

• • Seeing Chad elbow-deep in lobster and loving it.

 

• • Walking in the Bed and Breakfast at 11:00 at night and my friends hanging in the living room.

 

• • Charlotte and I racing towards each other, crying before ending in a huge hug.

 

• • Ghostly activity the first night.  Charlotte heard banging on the wall behind the bed.  They were on the second floor.

 

• • All of the warm and friendly breakfasts at the B&B.  We are never staying in a hotel again.

 

• • Calling Sootheze in a panic because they only sent me one bear and we ordered two.

 

• The rest of the crew arriving, and the fantastic music jam we had in the living room that night.

• • Staying up very late, hanging with Julia, and seeing a little girl ghost walk in front of the window in the dining room – right in the middle of a table – before she disappeared.

 

• • Friday – How much stuff we had to get accomplished for a simple wedding that night.

 

• • Walking down Main Street with Chad buying fudge and our handmade-in-Bethel mugs for the reception.

 

• • Bernard the ring bear throwing a fit at putting on his little tiny tuxedo.

• • Putting Bernard’s pin through his boutonniere straight into his chest.  When Eli (the ring bearer of the ring bear) asked how he was going to get the boutonnieres on his tux, I told him the same way I pinned it to Bernard.  I waited five whole seconds for Eli’s eyes to get really big before telling him I was kidding.

 

• • Our amazing photographer randomly grabbing things around the room to get cool photographs before the wedding.

 

• • Our amazing photographer getting at least one picture of me topless when Charlotte opened the bathroom door.

 

• • EVERYONE wanting my attention and asking questions while I’m trying to get ready and create the perfect hairdo and perfect winged eyeliner with a shaky hand.

 

• • Creating the perfect hairdo and perfect winged eyeliner with a shaky hand.

 

• • Hugging and crying with Charlotte like a million times.

 

• • Walking out the door of the B&B, heading over to the reception site . . . perfectly calm and knowing I was doing the most amazing and right thing.

 

• • Explaining another detail to Suzie about the music, while she coolly reassured me she would not screw up the music.

 

• • Suzie later screwing up the music.

 

• • Lining up outside the historical society to walk across the street.
    Me: (Arranging everyone in the order they walk across in) You go here, and you go here, and you go here . . .
    Mike: How do we know our cue to walk?
    Me: When I shove you.
    Madison: (the flower girl) Do you want me to walk with Eli or are we walking separately?
    Me: Together.
    Eli: Wait.  (pointing at each couple) So they’re walking together, they’re walking together, and we’re walking together . . . who’s walking with you?
    Madison: She doesn’t NEED anyone to walk with her.  She’s independent.
    Me: (high-fives Madison)

 

• • Shoving everyone at their musical cue.  Waiting three extra beats before shoving the kids because a car is coming.

 

• • Walking across the street and hitting my mark at exactly the right moment when the music swelled.

 

• • As I’m walking across the common, music swelling, someone at the B&B parking lot behind the bandstand yelled, “OH MY GOD, CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!”

 

• • I waited a beat as I processed this occurrence, and decided to laugh and shout back, “THANK YOU!!!!”

 

• • Continuing to walk towards the imaginary alter and getting the nerve to look at my future husband to see if he was nervous or scared or having second thoughts.  He had a tremendous smile on his face.

 

• • Realizing I was the luckiest girl in the whole world.

 

• • Mike being surprisingly nervous.

 

• • Chad reading the vows I wrote for him and shedding a tear.

 

• • Me reading the vows he wrote for me and crying so much I could barely get through them.

 

• • Charlotte handing Mike the rings and dropping one.  Chad and I leaned over, arms outstretched, yelling, “WE GOT IT!  WE GOT IT!!  IT’S OK!!!”

 

• • Bernard’s rope coming loose from the ring box and it falling, while Eli yelled, “BERNARD!!!” like Chad and I always jokingly do when Bernard “misbehaves.”

 

• • Wiping a tear out of the corner of my almost-husband’s eye with the thumb of my glove during the blessing.

 

• • Sneaking a look at my friends standing up with us on this amazing night, and seeing how genuinely happy they are for us.

 

• • Suzie getting the music timed perfectly for the kiss.

 

• • Everyone enjoying the Christmas music playlist and sugar coma food at the reception.

 

• • Chad telling the kids to go grab Bernard’s Superman suit so he could change for the reception.

 

• • Giving the kids their presents – two Sootheze Teddy Bears like Bernard, but different colors.  One that had been overnighted that morning.

 

• • Everyone enjoying the British Christmas Crackers.

 

• • Drinking hot chocolate out of the handmade mugs we’d bought hours before.

 

• • Our “wedding crasher” from the B&B hanging out at the reception and enjoying himself.

 

• • Learning later the owner of the B&B had also accepted our invite and was out at the wedding with her dog.

 

• • Dancing with Chad.  Dancing with Eli.  Dancing with Bernard.

 

• • Listening to Tori Amos’s Christmas song rotate through the playlist and pausing to reflect for a moment all the times I listed to Tori in times of torment and here I was listening to her in a time to treasure.

 

• • Staying after to help pack up the decorations.  Getting all the decor in two suitcases and celebrating with Greg, only to find another box of decorations ten minutes later.

 

• • Enjoying another musical jam in the living room after we all returned across the street to the B&B.

 

• • Seeing a ghost cat hop from the floor to the top of the couch (knocking my cape off onto the cushions) and leap through the wall.

 

• • Harley Quinn.  Nuff said.

 

• • Falling asleep next to the love of my life.

 

• • Waking up four hours later, giddy from the evening and emailing my parents a detailed retelling of the wedding.

 

• • Giving up on going back to bed and heading upstairs to spend an hour with Charlotte and Greg before they had to leave for the airport.

 

• • Charlotte opening the door, looking confused – and then looking even more confused when she saw it was me.  “I had a bad dream, can I come sleep with you?” I quipped.

 

• • My new husband stumbling around the dining area sleepily – the coffee hadn’t kicked in yet.

 

• • A ghost stealing Suzie’s nose ring.  (She never got it back.)

 

• • A ghost stealing Chad’s WEDDING RING.  It came back an hour later, after I quietly sat in the room and politely asked whoever took it to please put it back – and described what it meant to us and that we’d been married only a day.  I left the room and when Chad came back in, the ring was laying on my pillow.

 

• • Climbing up the side of a covered bridge in my wedding dress for an amazingly cool photo.

 

• • Fireworks shooting off the final boat in the boat parade in Portland.

 

• • Main Street in Bethel – lovely little shops.

 

• • Friendly dogs everywhere.

 

• • Friendly people everywhere.

 

• • No snow, but still amazingly beautiful.

 

• • Chatting with my husband on the flight home and talking about how cool it was that everyone who came to the wedding got something special out of the trip for themselves: connections with old friends, connections with past lives, romantic time with their spouse, building and strengthening the relationship between a parent and child. . . . and all the ghost experiences!

 

• • The lingering feeling of amazement and gratitude at our wonderful friends who came to Maine for a ten minute wedding, and my virtual-turned-real-life friend Cathy who not only made the entire thing possible, but planted the idea in our heads by sending a box of pamphlets and pictures with a sachet stuffed with pine needles on top.

 

 

Thank you for allowing me to ramble about the most beautiful, amazing, wonderful, romantic, experience of my life.  🙂

 

More photos of our trip here: Media Psych Marti on Instagram
and of our wedding here: Yeah Bud Photography on Facebook