C.: Hey, d.c., where are you going? We need to write our blog.
d.: I’m sorry Cal.E, but I’m going to the Louisiana Renaissance festival today.
C.: I didn’t know that Louisiana had one of those. What’s the theme?
d.: A Look at Louisiana’s Future.
C.: O-kay. Have a good time.
I suppose I’ll just read. I’m on chapter fourteen of d.c. scot’s nonfiction book, BEYOND THE THIRTEENTH MILE: THE IRON MAN CHRONICLES. Y’all are welcome to read along with me.
CHAPTER 14: A FREE WEEKEND IN MAY
1715: Run course; mile five:
I’ll test my legs now and see if I can run. That’s not so bad. Maybe I can beat 14 hours. That would be a good, adjusted goal. It would mean that Seth would get to see me finish too. That would be cool! We’re beginning to get close. He would enjoy seeing that.
It’s a good thing I started running again, I think. It probably discouraged Nicole from chasing after me when we were trying to set our wedding date. It was honestly the only time that would work for both of us, though.
Nicole wanted to get married in October. Since I proposed in August, I just thought that was too soon. Christmas time wouldn’t work, since Nicole has a birthday around that time (and Christmas is less than two weeks after that). Christmas is the time for family gatherings that aren’t focused on just two people. January is too cold, in both our opinions. After that, my work schedule would be extremely busy for four months, and I wanted to try to keep training during that time as well. That only left one free weekend in May as the best choice in which to get married…
***
"I think I have a free weekend in May," I said, only half-jokingly, as Nicole and I sat trying to figure out when to set our wedding date. (To any females who may be reading this: I know that the bride usually gets to determine the date of her own wedding, but these were unusual circumstances. My schedule tends to be very busy early in the year but starts to slack off in May.)
I knew the statement was a mistake before I ever said it, and I could definitely tell that it didn't sit well with Nicole. That one statement, however, seemed to sum up our lives at that time. Because of my work schedule, I even had to miss the funeral of one of my uncles, because his death occurred early in the year. For me to make it to the funeral would have required a great deal of travel, something I didn't have time to do. After the spring, the triathlon and cycling and running season sets in, and that lasts until late November. That only leaves one season, the winter. To me, the winter just isn't a good time to get married, even in Southeast Texas, where the climate tends to be mild at that time of year.
Looking over both our schedules, though, we decided that May did, indeed, seem to be the ideal month for us to get married. In Southeast Texas, May is usually about the last month of the year that a couple can plan an outside wedding and expect the guest not to be too uncomfortable in the heat, if the ceremony is scheduled before noon. Since we both wanted an outdoor wedding, a morning wedding would be mandatory. We checked with our families to see which weekend would work best for the majority of the people planning to travel to the wedding. (Since my first wedding had been rather clandestine, with only the justice of the peace and Ali, my bride Patricia, and me in attendance, nobody in my family was about to miss this one, no matter how far they had to travel. My family’s fondness for Nicole probably contributed to this attitude as well.)
Our families confirmed that the last weekend in May, Memorial Day weekend, was indeed the most convenient for most of them—the exact date I had chosen in the first place!
If you believe in the power of numbers and dates, you can add to this particular date's favor that it was two days before my parents' 45th wedding anniversary. (I did, however, have to overrule Nicole’s decision for the date. She picked the date that happened to be my last two girlfriends’ birthdays. Avoiding that date would have seemed to be easy, because they were both born on the same day—and oddly enough, in the same year. It wasn’t. I convinced Nicole to change the date to the next day. She was very understanding, but a little disappointed.)
It still disturbs me a little that, in a period of nine months, we could only find one weekend that was acceptable for one of the most important occasions in our lives, and that one only worked because it was a holiday weekend. Sometimes I wonder what I would have done with the time I had when I was younger, had I known how hectic my life would eventually become. It's all water under the bridge now, though.
It would give me a great deal of pleasure to say that our wedding went off without a hitch, but wouldn’t you know it, it didn’t. Although the entire entourage of guests from out of town and out of state, as well as the ones from the immediate vicinity, made it to the wedding fine, there was one late-arriving guest—the minister we had asked to officiate the ceremony. It seems that his schedule had been a little hectic too. A trip to the emergency room with two sick little ones the night before our chosen wedding date had thrown the good padre out of his rhythm, and he wouldn’t have been able to attend if we had gotten married on the originally planned date. He was extremely apologetic upon his eventual arrival.
Nicole handled it like a trooper, though, making the necessary phone calls and arrangements for our guests to be comfortable until the ceremony could begin, while I checked the schedule of the out-of-town guests to see if the next day would still be convenient for them to attend the ceremony if it came to that.
A late-arriving originating flight, as well as a late-arriving connecting flight to our honeymoon destination, capped off the day for Nicole and me, two people whose pet peeve is wasting time. (My theory is that there is no such thing as "free time" because once you've spent it, it's gone, and you can never get it back. Time is our one asset that is truly irreplaceable.)
There are lessons to be learned every day of our lives, though. Again, although everything on our most important day as a couple ran off schedule, everything worked out fine in the end. I don't think that either of us will ever forget our “free weekend in May."
Comments