This week I'm trying something new: the writer's workshop at Mama Kat's Losing It. Like Josie at Sleep is for the Weak, she gives readers weekly prompts and then you link up to her blog and read the others. The prompt I chose is 'Write about your wedding song. What was it and why did you choose it?'
We didn't have a wedding song.
We got married on the sly.
We'd been living 'in sin' for five years, but needed to be married so the children could get British passports. I wore a skirt I'd had a while, and a new top. A judge married us in a plain room. It was over in 10 mins. We did it while at work, a conference.
We didn't have a wedding song. We had a whole Opera.
We were married in New York, the Manhattan Municipal Building. We were there for a conference. We'd been wanting to get married for years, but with two nationalities between us, two sets of divorced parents, and us living in Turkey, it wasn't straightforward, so we put it off. A few weeks before we left a friend said: 'Do it in New York. It's easy.'
We announced to our relatives we were eloping and that they were welcome to join us. They sent my mother as a wedding present.
On 29 October 2003 we queued, for 15 minutes, in the Manhattan Municipal Building with our passports and birth certificates. We filled in a paper and chose our married names. We could have been Mr and Mrs Smith, or Withnail and I, Mork and Mindy. We kept our own names.
The next day my mum arrived and we went back together. Bill bought some yellow flowers that went with my new shirt, and Charlotte, then four, carried them. Max was running around in the corridors, making far too much noise. When it was our turn, the judge made us sign our names. We gave her sugar coated almonds decorated with Turkish Evil Eyes. She was pleased.
We had our lunch at the Tavern on the Green. My mother, the children and I took the subway. Bill met us a bit later - he'd gone to have our certificate stamped so we could have it certified by the French later. The French like stamps.
In the evening, we dropped the children off to my mum's hotel. And we took a limo. We went to the Met where The Barber of Seville was playing. Not quite the Marriage of Figaro, but nearly. We had a glass of champagne. It was beautiful. And because I hadn't quite recovered from the long flight, I fell asleep.
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10 comments:
Hi, I found you through MamaKat's workshop and as it turned out, we chose the same prompt. I found your post refreshing, to say the least! Wish we could've gone that route, eloping I mean. Or having a small ceremony! That would have been rad. :)
It sounds wonderful - but weren't you just a little bit tempted to go for Mork and Mindy?
We decided that that would be too confusing for the children. And for the French embassy.
Cyrene: thanks for coming by! Yes it was lovely to be able to have a special wedding, with my mum and our children there, but without the fuss! And although going to the opera was perfect, I wouldn't say no to a proper honeymoon if someone would look after the kids!
Liz: 'im indoors is right. Plus I don't see myself as either a Mork nor a Mindy. I did ponder Withnail and I, but we might have argued about who got to be Withnail, who got to be I. I thought that obviously, I should be I. But then, 'im indoors had a very similar argument. Besides Withnail is way cooler. Plus what would the children have been called? Camberwell carrot??? Not sure what the French Embassy would have said about that...
What a lovely story - it certainly sounds very romantic. So nice that your mother and your children were there to share your day with you.
What a lovely day. Sometimes the most simple of cermemonies without the kerfuffle of table decorations and wedding gowns, can be the most beautifully, meaningful.xx
Awwww, that really is a special story! Sounds like you couldn't have planned a better one. :)
Thanks for sharing your story! How wonderful:) Turkey, eh??? I've never been abroad, and am dying to visit other countries! I bet there are several gorgeous places there. Thanks for stopping by my blog :) West Virginia is gorgeous, if you're ever in the states and you're in the mood for some white water rafting you definitely need to check it out! :D
What a busy "no fuss" wedding day you had! But really you can choose your own name? I feel jipped! Stopping in from Mama Kat's!
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Julie: Yes, what I liked most about it was having the children with us, to the point where I wonder why people ever get married before they have kids! (But I can see I'm kind of missing the point, here).
Vix: I just couldn't have handled the table decorations, etc. Even before I met my husband my sisters were joking I would be married in flip-flops.
Mamma Kat: You're right - deciding to get married just before we left meant every thing was spontaneous and beautiful. It was a friend who put us on to the Tavern on the Green, and I'm pleased we went, because now, it's shut, so we never can again.
Thanks for stopping by! So glad I decided to try your workshop.
Steph: We moved here from the UK ten years ago and I still love it. I don't know about white water rafting! If coming to West Virginia I'd be thinking more in terms of taking photos and drinking beer!
Mommylebron Yeah it does sound a bit busy. At the time it didn't so much. Maybe because we were at a conference and this was our day off! You can choose your name. We were always going to keep our own anyway, but were so used to people, officials and otherwise, making a fuss about our choices that this felt very liberating.
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