Chapter 19

A Wedding Gown for a Princess

Dave and I had a good time getting to know each other better. We spent our evenings together and shared about what had happened in our days, our hopes, and plans for our future. I met him right after Memorial Day and we dated a year before he proposed. He had told me he might buy a new car and that’d we’d get married later. My heart sank. He’d been the third man I’d had sex with. I didn’t know until years later that I hadn’t had sex with the Geek, what he did was rape, but I still felt like a fool.

Fortunately, we started making wedding plans before he bought a car. Early on during planning, we met with Pastor Sam, he said it might not be a good idea to have little children as flower girls or ring bearers because they often they get frightened or, steal the show because they’re so cute. We followed his advice but during our wedding, a little child dropped a lifesaver and it rolled a long way, creating quite a distraction while entertaining everyone at the same time.

When I was thinking about what colors I wanted for my wedding, I didn’t want the traditional pink or blue even though my favorite color is blue. I love Gloriosa daisies the petals are a soft buttery yellow with black centers. We set the date for May 19th which was too early in the season for them to bloom. The florist suggested using traditional daisies and spray painting them yellow. It turned out to be a bad decision. When the flowers were picked up from the florist the daisy petals were sprayed neon orange and the centers a sickly green color, they might as well have been plastic.

For the wedding party, I asked my oldest sister Grace to be my maid of honor, and my sisters Sophie and Leslie to be my bridesmaids. I also chose my youngest sisters Elsie and Debbie and the daughter of my co-worker Nichole. Dave asked his friend George to be his best man, his brother Zack and friend Roy were groomsmen.

Sophie graciously offered to sew all the dresses for my wedding. I chose an unflattering green, yet another bad choice. We made plans for her to sew my dress as well, but Dave surprised me and he said he wanted to buy my gown. We went to the most exclusive dress shop in Roseburg. I picked out my favorite dress and I felt like Cinderella, a real princess. He still likes to surprise me, when I least expect it.

My relatives from Oregon came to our wedding. I loved that they came to welcome Dave to our family. My cousin Jim and his wife Shelley stayed at Dad and Mom’s house. I was living at home at that time to save money for our honeymoon. Shelley showed me her leopard print negligee, it was a little embarrassing, but sweet too. The bulk of Dave’s relatives lived in Nebraska; they sent a complete set of the silverware I had registered for from Knudsen’s Jewelers. My best friend Connie was in the military stationed far away and couldn’t come to the wedding. Phyllis and I had a bit of a falling out I was sorry, but Sally and Betty came. Betty sewed my going away dress and lightweight coat I was blessed all the way around.

Our three-layer, vanilla flavored cake had lemon filling and was beautifully decorated. The background where the photographer took the traditional cake cutting was an ugly curtain, it depicted a fox hunt and for that reason, I threw away that picture. My favorite of all the wedding pictures is Dave and me smiling at each other, not at the camera.

Dave didn’t want anyone to tie cans on the bumper of his sports car or to write with lipstick on the windows. He hid his car away from the church and convinced his friend Gary to drive it to the church just as we were leaving for our honeymoon.

On the first night of our honeymoon, we stayed in Ashland which was a little over two hours south. When we got to the motel I expected him to carry me over the threshold the way I’d seen in the movies. When he didn’t, it hurt my feelings. He didn’t think it was necessary and I had an unspoken expectation that he could read my mind. Of course, he couldn’t.

The next morning we started south to our destination to San Francisco. We hadn’t been on the freeway for much more than an hour when we came upon road construction. The flag person showed a stop sign to us but also motioned for us to drive on, it was confusing so we stayed put, but a dump truck behind us didn’t stop. The sports car was no match for the heavy truck which rear-ended our car. It popped up one side of the hardtop, and punctured one of our suitcases and the gas tank too. A tow truck came from the closest town, Yreka, California, a mere map dot. We waited three days for the car to be repaired; it wasn’t freeway-worthy to drive a considerable distance so we drove back to Roseburg instead of traveling to San Francisco.

We walked wherever we wanted while we waited for the car to be repaired, as it was such a small town. Our hotel was close to a restaurant, and a public library. We discovered a big antique store, the first we’d ever been to. We wandered around the beautiful furniture and all the glassware. I saw a beautiful white plate with a cobalt floral design fading into the white. It was too expensive, so I bought something less expensive. Years later, when I could afford to start collecting them, I learned that type of fading was called “flow blue,” an apt description.

When the car was finally, temporarily repaired, we drove back to Roseburg. By then it was the opening weekend of trout fishing season in Diamond Lake, where his parents had a summer home. We drove my VW. It never occurred to me to protest going there, so we spent the weekend with about a dozen or so people. We slept in the little bedroom behind his parent’s loft bedroom. I was terribly embarrassed because I was sure ears were tuned in when we had sex.