French Wedding - Finally!

After a year-long absence, I am back writing. I feel so disappointed that I have left this last year pass by with nary a word - especially considering it was one of the most challenging ever! However, maybe that was why. Simply too focused on keeping my head day-to-day to be interested in the minutiae that I would love to remember.

Two weeks ago, Patrice and I finally had our French wedding. First slated for October 2007, then moved to April 2008 and finally occurring October 3, 2008. As anyone who knows me well can attest to, I can easily find something to complain about in any situation, but I have to say that our wedding was absolutely perfect! It was exactly what we had imagined!

Two days before the wedding, Patrice and I drove to Paris Charles de Gaulle to pick up my mom, my sister-in-law's mother and my old friend, Becky, who lives in Houston and whom I had not seen in 10 years. Living a pretty quiet day-to-day life with my husband (and I say husband, since we were legally married in the U.S. in 2007), I was not prepared for the barrage of talking and questions! It was like being the mother to five-year-old triplets! "What's this? What's that? Can I pay in dollars? What's that crop growing over there? Do the French irrigate their fields? What side dish do we get with lunch? Where is the bathroom? Do French women curl their hair? What is the history of that? What is the history of this?" and so on and so on for the duration of the trip. Wonderful to have people here, but utterly exhausting! It also brought home two big facts for me: How much I actually am able to figure out on my own after almost 20 years of international living and travel and how little I actually know about French history.

One of the highlights of those first couple of days, though, was having the owners of the rental house my friends were renting give us a tour of their chateau which was also on the grounds. It dates originally from the 1100's having been burned and rebuilt but still having some parts of the original construction. It was a real challenge trying to translate that historical commentary from French to English for my visitors, but it worked out. Afterwards, we had champagne and h'or dourves in thier sitting from with a large fire. It was really wonderful (despite two people dropping theirs on the beautiful oriental rug).

The two days before the wedding were a blur of the usual-type appointments - hair, flowers, makeup, picking up wedding dress, etc. Itwas a little more challenging having visitors in tow, but the morning of the ceremony, I woke up refreshed and ready to go. It was really nice having an evening wedding because we had all day to prepare - not having to rush to get things done before noon. My friends Rob & Brent arrived the day before and were invaluable in preparation because they did all the table decoration for us because the caterers were a little late in getting the tables set up.

We were completely blessed with beautiful weather for our ceremony. For weeks before the wedding, I started obsessing over weather reports. Even though our ceremony was indoors, and in the evening, we were hoping for some time before the ceremony to have some outdoor photos taken, to take advantage of the beautiful location. How five different weather reports can give you five different forecasts, I will NEVER know! For God's sake, in this day and age, isn't there one computer or something that can just tell the whole world what it is going to be? I had one saying sun, sun, sun for the 10 days my friends were here, one rain and thundershowers the entire time.

It was a nail-biter up until the actual hour. In the afternoon when I was getting my hair done, it was pouring down rain and even hailing. Then, just an hour before, the sun came out and it was simply beautiful! I haven't seen the final photographs, but I am sure there are some lovely ones of the chateau and the grounds. He even took us down to the lake at the base of the chateau to get some with it in the distance. As much as Patrice questioned the value of this "jet-set" photographer I had travel to us for this occasion, hands-down I think everyone who was there thought he did a great job. Perfect in the sense that you never saw him - he was totally unobtrusive.

The ceremony itself was a bit of a short-but-sweet blur. It was in a room in the chateau, so there was not a long aisle - just the length of a very large room - so even a "short" 1 minute, 40 second wedding march song seemed LOOOOONG.... Having Rob walk me down the aisle was so wonderful. He even knew to pause when the door opened and we walked in. Everyone stood up and started clapping and taking pictures and I felt like a real princess... it makes me sniffle little just typing this. However, despite trying to slow down, we still had a quick walk up and had to stand there for a good 45 seconds (sounds short, but feels long) to finish out the wedding march. Patrice's first words to me were "You came up too quick!".... ah.... this man always knows the right words.

The ceremony was entirely in French, and it was the French legal wording, like "Article 9.1 - You must love and obey".... funny! We each read poems to each other in French, and to me that was the most romantic part. I chose "I carry your heart (in my heart)" by e.e. cummings and he chose "L'autre Jour (The Other Day)" by Pierre de Ronsard, which was unintentionally fitting, as it was written in the 1500's, the same time period of the chateau. After the ceremony, we had photos out front, then the cocktail hour next to the reception hall. Again, for me, just a blur of people taking photos - I don't even remember having a drink, but wonderful nonetheless.

The only glitch in the whole day was our DJ! Apparently, it was in his contract (that I didn't read....) that we were to provide him with food. Initially when we sat down to dinner, there was not even any music. He and his sidekick were M.I.A., but showed up and all seemed to go well. However, as the food was into service, the assistant came up and said we needed to feed them. I apologized and had the kitchen put something together. But apparently it was not enough! We kept finding the DJ seemingly taking a snooze on the sofa in the other room while music was playing but at some, well the beef course was served, there was a real problem that he wasn't getting meat as well! He put on a "Satanta's Greatest Hits Live" CD or something like that (NOT relaxing dinner music) and then loud reggae music and stormed into the other room, taking a whole bottle of our wine with him! The caterers came to tell us that he said unless he was served beef (like us) he would not work any longer! Patrice was furious and threatened to kick him out right then (about midnight) and not pay the bill. Of course, the caterers put together something to appease him, but it made for a really unpleasant time. (See photo above for Patrice and his best man's defiant "DJ Incident" stance.) I told Patrice that kicking the guy out now would just ruin things and that we would just have to kiss ass to get the evening to go the way we wanted.

The dinner itself was fabulous! Five courses including fois gras, rabbit pate, scallops, salmon, steak cheese, salad and cake - most of us couldn't even eat it all, but we tried our dangdest! Even though I started obsessing about 'left food' - I still feel it's better to have too much than too little. The only additional odd point was the choice of music during our cake cutting, which was announced by the DJ sidekick lady (who bore a striking resemblance to Heaven's Gate cult leader Marshall Applewhite). They chose the theme from "2001: A Space Odyssey" ! What?? Anyhoo...

Long story short, it all worked out and we had a WONDERFUL evening of food and dancing until three o'clock in the morning! the whole evening was a joy - seeing my "old life" and my "new life" come together to celebrate my marriage with Patrice, dancing with my friends to music we love and just having a wonderful, wonderful time. (I need another adjective!). You see and read so many Bridezilla horror stories of things that unintentionally go wrong or days ruined by overplanning brides and their mothers, I just couldn't have had a more beautiful day!

Having this wedding celebration 1 1/2 years after our legal marriage really was affirming to both of us because it really was a renewal of the love and commitment we have worked so hard have. When we married in 2007, it was so whirlwhind that our love and our life was just different, in those beginning phases because we didn't know each other as well. But now, after almost two years of "love and laughter and trial and tribulation" - it just feels amazing!