… which, if you know the movie, makes no sense when used to refer to a surprise wedding: but that’s why it was the perfect code name so far as Sean and I were concerned: It was an event, on the horizon … but yeah, neither one of us had picked up any weird alien creatures from our travels in the outer reaches of the galaxy. At least, not that I am aware of …. though we both have this darn itchy rash that just won’t go away … ugh … uhnhh … urrrph …
REEAAARHHHHHGGGGCHHHHPPTHHHP *bloot*
…. skitter, skitter skitter …..
Sorry, a weird creature just erupted from my spleen. I will do my best to type up the exciting details of our wonderful stealth wedding before I bleed out.
Anyway.
* * * * * * * *
Here’s the story. As most of you know, Sean and I are planning on moving to New York soon: as Sean is going to be attending the New York Film Academy there to study screen-writing. We’re both very excited, and more than a little nervous …. but mostly excited.
The more we thought about it, however, the more we realized how far we would be from family and friends who we could lean upon in an emergency. What’s more, we worried what might happen if either one of us got hurt and the other was unable to make medical decisions for the other …. lots of horrific scenarios came up. So, practical decisions were a part of it. We also realized that if we decided to get married in New York, it’d be kind of a pain in the butt for a lot of our friends and family to make it, or for us to fly back to AK just to get married. It seemed like sooner would be better.
As for what love had to do, had to do with it: as of September, we’ll have been together four years. We are both pretty cautious in our own ways, and while I felt ready to get hitched sooner than Sean felt ready, I still understood why he felt so strongly the need to be cautious about making such a huge life-decision. Neither one of us really relishes the idea of divorce, so a good long waiting period to test our true compatibility in a variety of situations was a good idea. Sean has other philosophical beliefs about the institute of marriage that I will not go into explaining here: he can if he wants to, but I don’t want to run the risk of mis-representing his opinions. I’ll leave that to him … ;) But what it also comes down to is this: that our relationship *works* and it works well. We genuinely enjoy each other’s company; we care about each other’s welfare; we find each other hott-n-sexxeh; we also communicate really well, and we strive to keep that communication open and to be attentive and to be truthful to one another, while at the same time trying to understand the other’s wants and wishes. We really have the best damn relationship … better than anything I ever could have romanticized-up on my own. Plus, we figured it was about time we legitimized our poor little bastard cats … ;).
But the final part of why we decided to finally tie-the-knot was this: I somehow came up with the devious idea that it would be a blast to surprise our friends with the whole stealth-wedding idea. They’ve been teasing us long enough, asking when we were ever planning on getting married, so the idea of capitalizing on that was just too much to resist. We’re also both stubborn, quirky, and just a little bit selfish, and we wanted to have complete control over how this whole thing went down. We wanted the wedding to be fun and very informal, and comparatively low-pressure on friends and family, and we certainly didn’t want to accumulate a whole bunch of gifts while we were trying to move!! So I came up with the idea that Sean would throw me a “surprise graduation party,” that would also act as a sort of going-away party for us, too. He created a private invitation for our friends, and left me off the list. The idea that the party was celebrating my graduation was part of the plot to explain why my family and his family were there, and why he found it “necessary” to rent a largish local facility by the name of Kincaid Chalet. Our families, incidentally, were in on the surprise. It just wouldn’t have been practical to keep them in the dark: especially since some of them had to travel.
So. Here’s how the surprise played out. On the day of the party, Sean had folks show up and help spread out table-cloths and stuff, set up some neutral-ish decorations like flowers (the cake Sean’s mom had ordered was hidden in the back, as well as most of the wine and beer). I was wearing a long (and too warm for the season) gray coat over my dress, and I walked into the room lugging a crock-pot full of meatballs and an enormous purse, etc., like I knew I was coming to an “event” —- but that I was unaware of the role I’d be playing. So everyone yelled, “Surprise!!” and “Happy Graduation!” and stuff like that … and I acted all surprised …. but then (as planned) Sean grabbed a microphone, got down on bended knee, and offered me a ring. And of course, everyone was excited and happy, and many of our friends exchanged knowing looks: they had suspected some sort of engagement was going to be happening. But then, the knowing looks changed to very amusing looks of shock when Sean and I just went ahead and had ourselves a little wedding right then and there. You have never seen so many open mouths before in your life. Even the photographer, mcav0y, was kept in the dark. She, too, suspected an engagement and even asked Sean as much, which he conceded that, yes, there would be an engagement happening. Even Diane and Sam: Sean’s best woman and best man were kept in the dark until the night before. I had only one maid of honor: Sean’s sister Caitlin — who did a wonderful job, along with Sean’s Mom, of harping me into at least having some of the trappings of a traditional wedding. The cake they chose was absolutely gorgeous.
The only unfortunate part is that some friends and family, for various reasons, were unable to make it. We held a toast for them, at a whole bunch of glorious food, and had a grand old time. All in all, a terrific wedding: so wonderful I can safely say that I never want to have another one. :)
