When your wedding plays like a scene from the Godfather.....

January's theme is  to share a funny story about family/friends. Mine is about my wedding day.

I've been married 175 years.
Well, really 32, but it seems like 175 - in a good way!

I got married on December 26th and the actual date was hailed as the coldest 12/26 in 75 years. Not a good omen to be sure.

The day started with a fight between my mother and me about my choice of eye shadow. Stupid, right?

It went downhill after that.

I'd decided to walk myself down the aisle instead of choosing between my father and stepfather. Neither would capitulate to the other because neither thought the other had a "right" to give me away. My decision almost left me parentless at the wedding.

The Priest had a serious case of conjunctivitis and no one wanted to receive communion from him, esp. when we all saw him rubbing his eyes throughout the ceremony.

Would you?

The pinkeye must have challenged his memory because he forgot about the readings I'd chosen and the people I'd chosen to do them, and read his own choices, leaving my friends in the ecclesiastic dust.

The Parish didn't allow rice to be thrown for good luck, but did allow birdseed, so I'd made hundreds of little linen packets filled with seeds that guests could open and then toss for good luck, with the added gift that the birds would get fed. Why the Church thought there would be any birds present on my wedding day, the coldest day in 75 years, is a mystery, but... Some guests ( not my side of the wedding) thought it was hysterical to toss the whole packet at us, ending with me being bruised and battered before we got to the reception.

Not funny at all.

Remember that fight about the eyeshadow? It escalated when my mother found out she was sitting on the left side of the room. She wanted to be on the right. Why? Who the heck knows. She was in the throws of menopause and the hormones were making her -- and everyone around her -- nuts.

My stepfather fought with the DJ because he said the music was too loud.
It wasn't.

My father fought with the DJ because he didn't like the music.
Too bad.

My husband of an hour fought with the photographer ( who really was a pain in the butt) because he kept interrupting us whenever we tried to visit out guests.
That part's true.

My grandmother fought with the wait staff. She thought the food was over cooked and under-salted. It wasn't. But she'd been nipping from everyone's champagne glasses at her table, so....

One of my step-uncles, the one that family gossip said was an enforcer for the local Mafia capo, had a gun tucked into his waistband and made sure the wait staff saw it and knew it was loaded. He also moved his chair to a space where he could sit with his back to a wall and keep an eye on the entrance doorway to the ballroom.

To this day I wonder if he was expecting a mob hit attempt and wanted to be prepared to shoot it out, shades of ScarFace.

I'd purchased little 4 packs of Godiva chocolates for favors for everyone and had placed a box at  every place setting - almost 200. They cost me a small fortune but, hey, you only (want) to get married once, right?  My step cousins very loudly complained the candy tasted "cheap." This started an argument between my menopausal mother and her equally hormone-raging sisters-in-law and their children about manners and keeping one's mouth shut.

It didn't end well.

By the time we got to the cake - chocolate buttercream frosted with chocolate cake and Swiss mousse for filling, tensions were so high in the ballroom, I seriously wondered if an Animal House-like food fight was about to erupt.

My husband's side of the room tried to ignore the mounting tensions on my family's side of the room, but I did notice a few of them checking their watches often. Probably wondering how much more of this ridiculousness they had to endure, or if they should leave now before the fists started flying and the cake started sailing through the air.

All in all, I couldn't wait to leave the reception myself and wished hubby and I had flown to Vegas for the weekend and gotten married by an Elvis-clone like I'd wanted.

Now you may wonder why I'm sharing this under the umbrella of a "funny story." Well, to me it is. Now, 32 years later, I can laugh out loud at all the ridiculousness, personality clashes, and plain craziness that encompassed the day. It was the perfect non-auspicious beginning to a long and successful marriage.

My darling daughter is getting married this year and you can bet her wedding will be nothing like her father's and mine.

First of all, I'm on meds for menopause....hee hee.

Bio: Peggy Jaeger writes contemporary romances and rom coms about strong women, the families who support them, and the men who can’t live without them.

Family and food play huge roles in Peggy’s stories because she believes there is nothing that holds a family structure together like sharing a meal…or two…or ten. Dotted with humor and characters that are as real as they are loving, Peggy brings all aspects of life into her stories: life, death, sibling rivalry, illness, and the desire for everyone to find their own happily ever after. Growing up the only child of divorced parents she longed for sisters, brothers and a family that vowed to stick together no matter what came their way. Through her books, she has created the families she wanted as that lonely child.

As a lifelong diarist, she caught the blogging bug early on, and you can visit her at peggyjaeger.com where she blogs daily about life, writing, and stuff that makes her go "What??!"

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