Every wedding day is memorable, but ours was filled with many humorous, tense and downright funny moments that we’ve never forgotten.  This is the story of our wedding day.

While I was busy getting my hair done, and other bride related things the morning of Oct 5th, my husband-to-be was busily watching TV and relaxing.  Eventually, with much prompting from his  mother, he finally began putting on his tuxedo.  He’s tall, 6’3. The tuxedo was obviously meant for a man about a foot shorter.  The sleeves of the jacket were above his wrists. The hem of the pants were not only short but unfinished and raggedy looking.  Not a good look for a groom, or basically any man wanting to leave the house.  He called our best man (who, had been in a wedding that morning) and they rushed to the tuxedo rental place… thank heavens they were able to re-fit him with the right size tux.  Disaster averted.

While he was out taking care of the tux problem my mother was desperately trying to reach him to tell him that his brother had my wedding ring.  There were NO cell phones 45 years ago so it was just a matter of catching him somewhere.  He, of course wasn’t home, nor was our best man and my mother was getting more frantic by the moment.  All of a sudden someone in our house looked out of the window and there he was !! He and the best man were parking his car so that it could be used in the wedding.  Of course everyone blocked the window so I couldn’t see him…  bad luck you know.  Another crisis taken care of.

At this point we were waiting for the photographer to arrive and since I didn’t want to get my wedding dress wrinkled I was standing by the front window (groom had since left).  I was watching a young couple try to park their car.  The girl was driving, the guy was slumped in the passenger seat.  She finally got the car parked, turned off the engine and the guy literally jumped on her and they began kissing.   A bit of entertainment for us until the photographer arrived.

Finally it was off to the church.  As I was getting out of the limo a breeze kicked up.  My maid-of-honor reached up to grab my dress and off into the church we went.  I was doing a mental check list and asked her if she had the groom’s wedding ring.  She looked down at her hand….and…. it wasn’t there !!!!  Her fingers are slender and his ring was large.  I panicked, I was ready to grab her husband’s ring off his finger.  My dad walked down to the limo which was parked at the corner.  He and his friend the limo driver, my maid-of-honor and her husband were all looking for the ring. They figured it must have flown off her finger when she reached for my dress as I got out of the limo!  All of a sudden my dad sees a city bus coming… right for that very corner which was a bus stop… at that very moment something glistened.  Right there at the edge of the sewer grate was THE RING.  Another disaster averted.

The ceremony went smoothly.  No crises or disasters.

And then, the reception.  It was held in the banquet hall of an Italian restaurant in Newark, NJ.  One of the reasons we chose that particular place was that my dad was long time friends with the owners.  They’d definitely treat us right!   So…  wedding party arrives at banquet hall only to be told they weren’t ready for us yet… we’d have to wait a little while.  OK.. where ?   Well, in the restaurant of course.  It didn’t matter that people were eating in there, nope, just put us all in the corner until they were ready for us.  It also didn’t matter that we weren’t offered anything to eat or drink, nope, we were just THE WEDDING PARTY.  I did notice several of the guys downing handfuls of parmesan cheese while checking the score of the World Series on TV.  Not a crises or disaster.

Finally, it was time to join our guests.  We, the wedding party, lined up behind a screen and waited to be announced.  It was just a little mistake when the emcee mixed up the names of most of our wedding party… but a BIG mistake when he announced us wrong !  “And now presenting for the first time Mr and Mrs ____.”  He got the groom’s first name correct but coupled it with my maiden name.  Oy.  We didn’t budge.  Finally, with the help of our best man he got our name correct and we proceeded from behind the screen.  It was sort of comical when we think back on it.  Not a crises or a disaster.

We had a great reception… the food was terrific, the band was good… but oops, something was missing.

Some of our favors had not been placed on the table… none of the 150 books of matches with our name and date were anywhere to be found.  How ungracious did that look? What became of the matches?  We couldn’t mail them with our thank you notes as the post office frowns on that.  We handed them out to friends and relatives and kept the rest.  Since we don’t smoke the matches lasted a really long time.  The last book of 45 year old matches was just used a few months ago. Definitely not a crisis, definitely not a disaster.

Like any traditional wedding reception we did the throwing of the garter and bouquet.  It was nice that my cousin, who turned 16 that day, caught the bouquet.  Another nice thing was that we had a little anniversary cake for the groom’s parents who were celebrating their 35th anniversary the next day.

We danced, we ate, we socialized and had a blast and then it was time to leave.  Turns out it wasn’t going to be an easy getaway.  I mentioned a paragraph or so ago that it was World Series time but it was also the weekend of a big game at School Stadium across the street from our reception.  This fact is important to the story because… when our best man walked us out to the parking lot to get our car… it was BLOCKED in by a Volkswagen!  Our best man went back into the reception to ask if the car belonged to anyone there?  It didn’t.  That meant it must belong to someone in the stadium.  It definitely wasn’t an option to march over to the stadium and announce on loud speaker that a car was blocking a bride and groom from leaving their reception.  Our best man rounded up a few guys from our reception and they went out and picked up the Volkswagen and moved it!!  I often wonder what the owner of that car thought when they came back and found it moved?  Could have been a crisis or a disaster but in reality was just downright funny.