Happy Anniversary, Chief!!

My husband Jeff, supervised by Jackson and Tonks, waters the garden
this summer. It's our sixth wedding anniversary today, and this post
explains why I'm so happy. 

I can't believe that as of today, it's been exactly six years since Jeff and I got married.

Time flies when you're having fun. At least I am. I'll let Jeff speak for himself.

It's so funny how much Jeff moves me, even when he's not around. One small example: Jeff didn't go to the company picnic with me this year, but an Elvis impersonator performed there.

"Elvis" inevitably performed "Can't Help Falling In Love," which was a song at our wedding. Frankly, "Elvis" didn't perform it nearly as well as the singer did at our wedding, but whatever. Though I was having fun at the picnic, I had to turn away for minute during the song, because I was getting misty, like I always do when I hear that song nowadays.

On some evenings, driving home from work, I think about getting home, because I know Jeff's there. And I get verklempt just thinking about seeing him again. As if the 10 hours I spent without him around was an eternity. Either I wear my emotions on my sleeve or I'm a dog that looks like a human. You decide.

Sometimes, Jeff watches a television show that I'm not interested in, so I retreat to the office to play on the computer for awhile. Then something funny happens on TV, and his unique laugh booms down the hallway and into the office. (His laugh is the loudest thing he does, besides sneezing.)

Every time he laughs, I smile. And strangely, or maybe not so strangely, it reminds me of how comfortable and safe I always feel around Jeff.

I write a blog post about our marriage every year on our anniversary. I guess it's tradition. Each year, I say that by far the best decision I ever made was marrying Jeff. I think that every day. And with every passing day, the decision to live the rest of my life with Jeff looks better and better.

I'm basically a happy guy, but I never dreamed I could be as happy as I am with Jeff. Just like everyone else, we sometimes have our painful moments, our lousy set of circumstances, bad luck, bad moods.

But the constant is Jeff's steadiness, love, kindness, incredible moral compass, humor and compassion. I still haven't figured out how I got so lucky as to have Jeff in my life. I just know I cherish each day of it.

Denis, my best man at our wedding, is one of the most thoughtful people I know. He once gave me a delightful children's book called "The Gift of Nothing."

In the book, Mooch the cat wants to give his best friend, Earl the dog a birthday gift. In the end, Mooch gave Earl an empty box. Sounds disappointing, doesn't it?  But wait....

Earl opened the box and discovered nothing inside.  Mooch said yes, there's "nothing but me and you."

I love that line. To me, nothing matters except the love and bond Jeff and I have. "The Gift of Nothing" story ends with the following lines, with images of Mooch and Earl sitting side by side, embracing each other.

"So Mooch and Earl just stayed still and enjoyed nothing and everything."

Even when there's nothing there, it feels like I have everything because he's in my life. And that's all that matters.

I love you, Chief and happy anniversary. Let's have many, many more years together.

Wedding Day Blues: Bride's Drunk Driving Arrest Before Ceremony

Police said this women was driving to her wedding
but was drunk behind the wheel. 

At most weddings I've been to, there's been a fair amount of drinking. Which is great, because it's a celebration! I'll drink to that!

Like most people on their wedding day, both my husband Jeff and I were stone cold sober, each surely with a blood alcohol content of 0.0 percent before and during our vows nearly six years ago.

 I can't guarantee the same for later that day, during the post-wedding celebration.

You want to - pardon the pun - drink in the moment of your vows, and it's easiest to do that while sober.

A bride in Arizona didn't think so. She was drunk before the wedding, which led to a highly embarrasing and dangerous situation:

Police said she was drunk behind the wheel,  and in March caused a crash that sent one person to the hospital with what thankfully turned out to be minor injuries.

Even worse, we were treated to the spectacle of the bride being cuffed at the scene in her full-length wedding dress. No word on whether she made it to the ceremony, or even if there was one.

Though police said she was on her way to her wedding, and told them that at the scene of the crash. However, the woman, Amber Young, 32, said later that she was not on her way to her wedding that day and was wearing a sundress as she drove to meet a friend for lunch. 

You be the judge.

Her attorney said police posted the photo, not as a warning against drunk driving, but to mock Young.

In any event, don't drink and drive, whether you're going to your wedding, or just ready to have lunch.

Announcing The Worst Maid Of Honor At Wedding World Champion!

Amanda Willis is likely the world
record holder as worst wedding
maid of honor ever. 

Everybody wants their wedding to be memorable.

Mine was!        
 
Fortunately, my wedding four years ago was memorable in a great way, thanks to the wonderful people who helped us celebrate.

Sometimes, though, the people who are supposed to help most at a wedding fail at the job.

We now have the world record holder for the person who does the worst job at this.

The good news is the actual wedding ceremony for David and Jennifer Butler in Florida went off beautifully.

The bad news is maid of honor Amanda Willis turned things into a nightmare as soon as the reception started.

However, as NBC News 2 in Fort Myers, Florida explains it, bride Jennifer Butler said Willis hit the bottle hard as soon as the reception kicked off.

"She was drun within 20 minutes to a haf hour," Butler said.

"She was a mess. She drank almost a whole entire bottle of Fireball," said wedding guest Robert Templeton.

From there, Willis went up to the Best Man, Brian Butler (David's brother) and grabbed his car keys and jumped in his car.

Brian Butler chased after her, and Willis almost backed over him. He then grabbed onto the car and hung on. He was dragged a bit, but somehow reached into the car and cranked the emergency brake.

Phew!

But it wasn't over yet! Oh no. Bridesmaidzilla had MUCH more work to do.

Guests wrestled Willis out of the car, and she went back into the reception, grabbed a big bottle of Captain Morgan and started guzzling.

She then threw a punch at Templeton, the wedding guest.

That's when someone called the police.

On the way to jail, Willis pretended to have asthma and a seizure, she exposed herself to deputies, assauted two medics and kicked over her bed pan..

Geez.

NBC News 2 said Butler and Willis had been best friends before this incident, but Butler no longer considers Willis a friend.

Ya think?

Although it might not have hurt if Butler had done a background check on Willis. This was Willis' ninth arrest in Charlotte County, Florida.

Dad Dancing With Bride At Wedding Is The Distraction We All Need

Mikayla Phillips and her father, Nathan Ellison
put on an epic performance at Phillips' recent wedding.  

I know there are about three gazillion YouTube videos of people dancing joyously at weddings, some choreographed, some not.

But since we need a distraction from current events, this one shows bride Mikayla Phillips dancing with her father Nathan Ellison at her October 8 wedding in Utah.

The guy has GREAT moves, and is not shy about making a happy spectacle of himself.

ABC News says Phillips is a trained dancer, but her father is not. They rehearsed for just a week before the big day. Not bad for such a short training time.

It's quite a rigorous performance, too, so it's good that Nathan appears to have the stamina to handle it.

The takeaway: When in doubt, dance.

Wedding Save The Date Is Epic Action Adventure Movie

This couple made an unforgettable video
so that would be wedding guests wouldn't forget
the date of their nuptials. 

Most of us have received one of those "save the date" wedding announcements. Not exactly an invitation, but a notice that a couple is going to get married on such and such a date.

The risk, of course, is forgetting that date.

To combat this, couples could offer up an unforgettable save the date announement.

One California couple, Tyler Macniven and Kelly Hennigan, put this concept to a new level with an epic action adventure movie in which they "save the date" from thugs using such wedding staples as garter belts, thrown flowers and a wedding cake. (this one rigged with a bomb!)

This is so entertaining. I wish I knew the couple. If the save the date video is so good, I can't imagine how good the actually wedding would be.

According to the Huffington Post, Macniven offered hints at what the wedding might be like. "Instead of a cake cutting, were going to have a traditional cake explosion, where we blow up a giant wedding cake. "

Wedding guests will also have to sign a liability waiver for the secret hijinks they have planned for their nuptials.

Watch the video and see for yourself:

Worst Family Dynamic: Woman Calls Caterer To Cancel Brother's Wedding

Somehow, I think things are a little tense between Ann Duffy, 50, of Plymouth, England and her brother David Geatrex.

You have to admire Ann Duffy's persistence
in trying to stop her brother's marriage  

Last fall, Geatrex was getting ready to marry a woman named Sandra, the love of his life.

Duffy called the people putting on the wedding, and pretending to be Sandra, said she was canceling the wedding, according to the BBC.

The BBC continues "She called her brother David Geatrex and told him 'You had better put this on speakerphone. I have saved you from a divorce. I have cancelled your wedding. Would you like to send you the confirmation email?'

THAT didn't go over well, that's for sure.

The BBC said Duffy had a strained relationship with her sister in law (You think?) and was trying to prevent her brother from marrying a woman she disliked.

Duffy told police she did not mean to cause her brother distress, only Sandra.

Seems the brother IS distressed, though, so I guess that didn't work out.

Luckily, David and Sandra were able to contact the wedding company, get their bookings reinstated and were married as planned on their chosen date.

My guess is Duffy didn't show up to the wedding.  Which is probably a good thing. We have no reports of any trouble at David and Sandra's wedding, so all's well that ends well.

For her trouble, Duffy was jailed for eight weeks and has an indefinite restraining order forcing her to stay away from Sandra, which probably is the smart way to go.

The only question is, what fun things does Duffy have planned for the happy couple's first anniversary?

World's Best Parents Find Best Solution When Daughter's Wedding Cancelled

Forty days before Willie and Carol Fowler's daughter was to have an elaborate wedding ceremony, the wedding was canceled.

Willie and Carol Fowler are awesome  

The couple has already paid for the entertainment, food, reception, all that stuff. So they'd have to call the caterers and all those people and lose their deposits.

Just as Carol Fowler started calling, Willie had an idea. Let's not cancel the reception. In a stroke of genius, he suggested just giving the reception away to the homeless, says ABC News via Gawker

So on the day the couple's daugher was to have married, they helped the Atlanta-based charity Hosea Feed The Hungry bus 200 homeless people to the pretty swanky reception hall, where the adults dined on salmon and chicken while the 50 or so kids has chicken fingers, french fries, fruit and chocolate chip cookies.

"All the plates were empty and there wasn't any leftover food at all. It was an eye-opening experience," said Quisa Foster of Hosea, according to ABC. "You go to weddings sometimes and you see a lot of people really waste food. We take so many things for granted. These clients or guests, as we call the, they don't."

The Fowlers have declined to say why the wedding was cancelled in the first place.

So the Fowlers are classy on a number of levels. They're taking the high road on the purient questions about why the wedding didn't happen. It's none of our business, and they didn't make it our business. Perfect!

Then, instead of just dropping everything, they took action. Let's face it, it had to take a lot of work rearranging the catering and everything else, working with Hosea and doing everything else to pull the event off.  And they couldn't have felt like putting much effort into things after learning the big wedding was off.

So kudos to the Fowlers, who know how to take a bout of bad news and turn it into terrific news.

Wedding Gets Off To A Screaming Good Start

OK, I admit it, I love the juvenile, slapstick humor on the show "America's Funniest Home Videos"

It's been on the air for years, and features video clips of various mishaps, injuries, accidents, dumb mistakes and quirks in human behavior.

The show doesn't take much thought, the humor is not sophisticated, but I watch the show loyally.

One clip from that show has been making the rounds pretty extensively this week. It shows the beginning of a very nice wedding, when the flower girls come in to start the festivities.

The first flower girl adds some, um, emotion to the proceedings.  The kids that follow the initial flower girl are pretty cute, too.

I got a good laugh out of it.  Watch:

Love Hits at Any Age, Which is Wonderful

I have a serious bias against the wedding announcements in the Sunday New York Times. Maybe I'm unfair, but they seem so pretentious. This elite groom married this elite bride and they're so beautiful and so rich and so talented and so popular and so perfect and did I mention rich?

Newlyweds Robert Mitchell Haire and Ada Laurie Bryant

I always want to gack at this self-congratulatory boasting.

Then, a couple Sunday ago, the Times ran the story of the marriage of Robert Mitchell Haire, 86,  and Ada Laurie Bryant, 97

The nice thing about the article was that, unlike so many stories about people marrying late in life, this piece was not a condescending "aren't they cute" puff piece.

It reads as a just the facts ma'am account of their courtship and wedding. And it proves that love can strike anytime, anywhere, unpredictably.

I was struck by Mr. Haire's assertion that navigating love, and doing the right thing, doesn't change over the decades. 

All the butterflies are still there, which is a great thing. This is how Haire describes the courtship:

“I was desperately trying to strike a balance between too timid or bold. I didn’t want to mess things up,” he said about the courtship. “I can attest that it doesn’t get easier even in advanced age.”

Well, he obviously succeeded. Kudos to anyone who makes love grow, no matter who or what it involves.

Congratulations to the happy couple!

Inviting a Tornado to a Wedding

As many of you know, I'm getting married in August, and we're in the thick of planning it.

The ceremony scheme is pretty much worked out, and it's going to be beautiful.

But it won't involve a tornado, unfortunately.

I say that because a video popped up of a recent Kansas outdoor wedding, at which a tornado crashed the party. No worries, it didn't actually go through the ceremony itself,  so everybody's fine.

Here's the vid, then read, if you dare, more verbiage below:



Isn't great how nonchalant everyone is? Yeah, there's a tornado, so what? They react to the storm the same way the rest of us would react to a few, tiny puffy clouds on a spring day. s

I love the commentary toward the end of the video:  "It's an honest to goodness Kansas wedding," a woman is heard saying.

She sure is right on that point.

A question for wedding experts: If a tornado appears at your wedding, is that a good omen or a bad sign?

I'm a huge weather geek, and a key person in my wedding party is also a hardcore weather geek, so the tornado would have been a nice touch at the nuptials.

But my intended, Jeff, does not want a tornado at the wedding. And I see his point. He is a set designer after all, and he knows how to make things look just right. So I trust his judgement that a tornado just won't work.

Our wedding is going to be indoors, in an historic theater building, so we'd hate to see that get damaged.

And we're wearing white, so we don't want windblown debris marring our clothes. There's candles involved, and we don't want those to blow out, either.

Also, it would probably be rude to have people who we invited, after taking the trouble of doing their hair and wearing some nice outfits, have to deal with a tornado.  People will want to eat during the reception, and there's no sense of having guest hunt and peck for hor d oeurvres that were scattered to the wind.

The bottom line: No tornado at the wedding. I'm not disappointed.  I get Jeff as a lifelong prize, so a tornado is hardly anything that matters. Besides, Jeff, especially when he's on a roll, is a human tornado.

That's all I'll ever need.

A Marriage Withstands the Sandstorm of Time

Found this hilarious wedding video, at the bottom of this post, out of Arizona recently. It vividly illustrates  the perils of an outdoor wedding.

The ceremony is under way, and all of a sudden the groom looks up in shock and surprise. Yep, a wall of dust is heading right toward them.  Well, at least it wasn't rain. Or lightning.  Watching the video made me conclude I will never, EVER get married in Arizona.

Soon the haboob hits. I love the irony of the happy couple in the midst of the sandstorm pouring together two vessels of sand into one to symbolize their union. Couldn't they just grab dust and sand out of the air?  There sure was plenty of it.  But grabbing the blowing sand from everywhere would have symbolized polygamy, I guess, so it's just as well our newlyweds stuck to the original plan of their ceremony.

At some points, the couple and the priest marrying them almost disappear in the dust and sand and wind. I bet the pair wished they eloped to someplace non-sandy.  They should have come here to Vermont. No sand storms ever. Of course the epic floods we've been getting lately might have turned the wedding into a washout. I guess there's no safe place.

Happily, the couple muscled through this early test of marriage bliss. No word on how the guests managed the dust.  People cry at weddings, but I bet the dust inspired a few extra tears.

I hope the reception was indoors and everybody had nice, refreshing drinks.  Maybe somebody bought the happy couple a Dustbuster as a wedding gift.

I also sure hope they didn't serve sandwiches (ha!) at that reception.