Cindi and Ted, Chapter Eleven

Paulie had commented about our needing an apartment so soon and needing things like pots and pans, etc. She mentioned that many things like that were gotten as shower gifts.

Apartments in our area were difficult to find, so we knew that we had to work on that early. Neither one us wanted to be "stuck" with no place to live, and we were NOT going to move into my folks' house (YIKES!!!) or into Ted's dad's house. That's why we began to look right after the holidays. When we found something that was sort of okay, we jumped on it. Ted lived in the apartment. I was living at home with my parents.

As far as bridal showers are concerned, I did not want one. I just have a thing about showers. I don't like going to them, and I don't want to attend one as the guest of honor. It just wasn't my idea of a good time. I hate it when people feel obligated to get someone a gift. I hate it when I feel obligated to get a gift, too. So that was why we got those things on our own.

Now for more of the story....

In mid February we spent a Saturday at our local bridal shop. My mom and I went, along with my three bridesmaids. The maid of honor lived in California and we would be taking care of ordering her dress. Since my mom was a nurse at our local hospital, she had to work every other weekend, and we had to make sure that we scheduled this for a Saturday that she would be off, and that the bridesmaids would be free.

Mom and I got there a while before they would be arriving so we could look at dresses for her and me first. Her dress was fairly easy to pick out. My mom is a woman of simple tastes. She didn't want anything all sparkly and fancy, with doo dads all over. She selected a simple melon colored dress that looked wonderful on her and would look even better once she had spent a little time out in the sun. She tans very quickly in the summer.

***Yes, I know that being out in the sun and having a tan can be harmful to your body, and so does she. However, this is a risk that we are both aware of, yet choose to participate in. I may address this in a future post.***

Once we found her dress, we began looking for one for me. I am NOT a simple size 7, hahahaha, oh my...I'm about as far from it as one can possibly be! Therefore I was limited to dresses that came in plus sizes. THIS WAS A GOOD THING, BELIEVE ME!!

I do NOT like to have to make a decision when I have hundreds of things to choose from! For my dress I was limited to to about 30 choices, and that quickly was narrowed down. It really didn't take all that long to select my dress. I was happy with it. My mom was happy with it. And when the bridesmaids arrived, they told me that they liked it too. Whew!

I had seen a dress in the window that I liked for the bridesmaids, so that was where I wanted to start. I had decided that I wanted a variety of pastels for colors, so once we decided on the dresses I would choose the colors. I had some colors in mind, but wanted to see if they liked what I picked out first.

Fortunately they all liked the dress, or at least they said they did. I liked not only the style of the dress, but the simplicity of it, and the ability to be able to wear it to another function later on. The dress had a blouson type top with a simple lightly pleated skirt. The sleeves were short, but slit, and tied at the top.

The maid of honor, Mary, was going to wear light blue. Barb was going to wear peach, Davene was going to be in yellow, and Melanie was going to wear mint green (her favorite color is green, so that worked out well).

With the dresses ordered, we made an appointment with a woman who designed silk flower arrangements. Our evening with her was very nice. Thank goodness she had a list of everything that we would need, because I didn't have a CLUE! We selected the bouquets, the boutonnieres, the corsages for various grandmothers, etc., the flowers for the church, and reception, and a small bouquet for me to throw. The lady we worked with did a great job helping us out with our selections, and we were happy.

Our local newspaper used to have a section called "Love is..." in every Saturday edition. It included all the engagements, weddings, and "big" anniversaries. On the last Saturday of February of 1980, our engagement was in the paper. Back then the picture featured only the bride-to-be, so that's what we had. Now, they usually have pictures with both the bride-to-be AND groom-to-be, and I like that much better.

(Somewhere around this house is a clipping of our engagement. I wish I had been on the ball enough to find it and scan it so I could include it in this post, but I'm not that organized!)

The next thing we did was begin our meetings with my priest. At the time we got married, I was Catholic (and still am) but Ted was not. This would require us to meet with the priest several times and discuss things with him. Because we were getting married in a Catholic Church, we also needed to attend Pre-Cana classes.

Our Pre-Cana classes were interesting. Fortunately a new session was just getting ready to start at our local catholic high school, so we registered. We attended four Wednesday night sessions, each about 2 hours long, and found them to be somewhat informative. The discussed many aspects of being married with all of us, from finances to household responsibilities to (gasp!) natural family planning. A couple of times we had long questionnaires to fill out, then would talk and discuss our answers.

Our meetings with the priest were just the two of us and him and we talked about a lot of different things. One thing we had to discuss was the form that Ted would need to sign about any children that we might have. In order for the priest to marry us in the Catholic Church I had attended for years, Ted would need to sign a form saying that any children we had would be raised in the Catholic faith. The three of us discussed this thoroughly, and I was NOT going to force Ted to sign anything like that. I think that as long as we made sure that any children we had would not be raised as agnostics or atheists, we should be "good to go" but that's not the way the Catholic Church saw it.

Ted agreed to sign the form, and commented that it was not a problem for him, as long as he was not being forced to become Catholic, and he was not.

After we went through personality quirks and things like that, the priest gave us a small book about selecting readings and vows for the wedding. That was nice to go through together. He also told us that we could have non-Catholics do some of the readings. We were very happy with that, as we wanted one of Ted's uncles to do a reading for us, and he was a devout Methodist.

I had said from the very beginning that I did not want a mass for our wedding, but I would have changed my mind if need be. A portion of the people attending the wedding would be Catholic, but NOT the majority. I didn't want them to have to go through an entire mass if they did not understand everything and know what was going on. I also knew that by having the wedding in mid-June in a church that was not air conditioned, it could possibly be quite warm. A mass would add about an hour to the service, and in the best interest of all our guests, it was decided that we would have a ceremony, but no mass.

Throughout all this time, I was fortunate enough to still be subbing quite often and Ted was working as a plumber's helper. We were still able to go out with friends, or just sit around and watch television or whatever. It was a great time in our relationship.

Then one evening I came home, and my mom said she needed to talk to me. I got the distinct impression that this conversation was not going to be a happy one.

To be continued...