I spent some time with people in the parking lot as they gathered but I hid in the bosom of my surrogate family for a while. I wasn't nervous, I just felt ... surrounded for a minute.  I needed quiet.  

Then my parents arrived. And my blood pressure went up. My dear older friend who is bossy, domineering, mothering though childless, and knows how worried I was about Mom, came over and introduced herself, took Mom's arm and I could breathe again.  She's wonderful precisely because she's all those things.  She's a take charge personality I've come to love and trust and she helped with Mom the whole time we were waiting in line at the courthouse so that Dad could just be.

We never have that kind of help and it was a huge boon that morning.  Mom was doing particularly well that morning, too, which was amazing.  She had trouble remembering names, and faces, but she didn't have any real outbursts early in the day. She wasn't overtired or overwrought.

As it turned out, we waited in the wrong line for 20 minutes because it wasn't clear which one to be in, and I felt a bit of a silly arse because I'd looked them over to check!  That made us late for our appointment.  As the minutes ticked off, my blood pressure started shooting up.  PiC was remarkably calm at that point, saying it was fine, we'd just go elsewhere if they didn't take us but that made me feel even worse.  The thought of dragging our 20 plus group back of beyond because I'd screwed up the lines??   Augh!!

Luckily they had our judge stick around for this last one and made it happen.

Of course, she was in a tearing hurry.  She started off, with her poufy hair, looking over her '70s shaded glasses, "in the middle of someone else's shift, so we have to do this expeditiously." So expeditiously it was done.  The ceremony could not have lasted more than three minutes.  Blink or breathe too hard and you missed it.  She wasn't rude but I think she still upset one of our friends for coming right out with the whole "let's move along" speech.  He felt it really wasn't necessary. (I was amused.)  It was not the worst thing ever, I was worried a long ceremony would have me in tears and I hate crying in front of people but we didn't realize that at least one of our guests had been downstairs and hadn't come back in time!

PiC was grinning madly throughout.

The judge granted us about 2.5 seconds to take photos in the room and then sent us out to the front of the courthouse for any pictures we wanted.  And those took too long - I was starving!   I know, sentimental. I do regret not getting a good photo with my surrogate family in the fuss of everyone bossing everyone else for the photos and then getting antsy for lunch, but I'll have a do-over.

We had a lovely lunch with the group, sans my parents, lots of photos were taken. The absolute necessity of following the A Practical Wedding's How to Write a Perfect Toast was underlined. There's a picture that I'm hoping wasn't captured on anyone else's camera that shows my face at a moment that I'll just call "sentimentality" to anyone else. PiC and I had a talk later about this. I'm not letting the memory fester but it also may not happen again at Round Two.

On a related note, I have no doubt thousands of photos were taken, in fact, which frightens me no end. Living in an age where photos are just ... everywhere. EVERYWHERE.  Augh!

Traffic to and fro, of course, this having been in LA.  But after all was said and done, we got home to visit with family briefly, and then went to feed me again. My lunch salad was sad and I was starving again.  Stuffed full of sushi, we made our final guest drop-off and collapsed at our crappy hotel room just before midnight. (I reserved my annoyance for a letter to the Doubletree after we got back.)

We. Were. Married.

You know, it wasn't perfect.  It was full of hustle and bustle and "are you serious with boutonnieres too-big, boutonnieres too-heavy, boutonnieres won't-stay?  Because non-essential stress, kids. NON ESSENTIAL. Skipped it for a reason. Also, you bring it, you fix it." (I fixed it.)

For all that we crushed this wedding into a time capsule we still caught other people's expectations, other people's imposed "necessities", other people's baggage.  We were also lavished with other people's love and joy and silliness and loyalty and steadiness. (And cute little tiny baby feet!  So many babies.)  We still played our roles of fixer upper, mediator, organizer, event planner, picker uppers.  Because that's who we are. That's what we do. And that's "who" our wedding was.  It was good. It was better than perfect, it was us.  Low-key, casual, almost-normal.  And PiC was stupid-happy. I really liked that.

It was good.
Next spring, we'll host a food thing of some kind where everyone we care about, including long distance friends who didn't get the chance to make it and were sad not to have been offered the chance, will be given plenty of warning.  I don't want to miss the opportunity to see them and spend time with them.  But it won't be a pressure cooker of an event.  It's just going to be a gathering of loved ones. And I guess we could get around to having some rings by then, if we wanted to.  There's also going to be the fancy dress, since it got altered already!

But for a bigger thing?  I'm asking a couple of my girls to help out. I'm not dealing with any more stupid flower pinning emergencies. ;)

{Next: a financial analysis, of course!}