Did you know that I didn’t want a wedding? And that I have a vagina? TRUE MOTHERFUCKING STORY, INTERNET.

I was in favor of the Vegas-way. Elvis, gambling, boozing? All up my alley. A 440-lb white dress? Not my scene. Nonetheless, *someone* stupid told me that relationships were about Compromise so I gave in. We had a wedding on 9/10/05.

And I give my thanks EVERYDAY that it is over. Seriously, every day I wake up and am grateful that it is NOT my wedding day.

Over the course of the wedding, I had several epiphanies of things I will be sure to do the next time I get married. Because I am not just stupid but annoying too:

1. Don’t do it. Romantic as the whole shebang can seem from afar, it isn’tt. Don’t let any rosy-cheeked newlyweds tell you differently. It’s not a rite of passage, it’s a highway to hell.

2. If you’ve ignored my advice, do yourself a favor and elect someone from the wedding party to be the Annoying Questions Lazy People Ask Fielder. Make someone else be your bitch or people will walk all over you.

3. Do NOT get an upper respiratory infection before the wedding. Because then you will turn into Typhoid Becky and infect the entire Chicagoland Area with a Superbug worse than MRSA. Unless, you know, you’re into that stuff.

4. Make sure the DJ plays Nazareth’s “Love Hurts” as your first song. Because really, it does.

5. September 10th is a fucking hot day. Also, your knees have sweat glands.

6. Everything is better with bacon.

7. Elope to Vegas. Because, obviously.

8. Do not allow yourself to be suckered into doing all of the work for a wedding that you didn’t want to have in the first place because then you will be bitter and annoying to everyone around you.

9. Do not make your friends wear strapless dresses. They will bitch and moan and make YOU wear 608 lbs of yellow taffeta at their weddings. And ride on a llama.

10. RSVP’s are optional. Get over it.

And lastly, just don’t do it. Really, no. Don’t do it.

Around 3 months ago, our good friends were having a garage sale, and we having recently moved loads of The Daver’s crap from one apartment to our freshly-bought condo, had tons of shit to unload. So, I packed and packed the unused crap into boxes for Dave to pack into the car to take to their house. Pretty much any story where stuff gets moved involves me packing while Daver lays down with a headache.

(as an aside: we have a division of labor here; Dave carries shit down the stairs to wherever it happens to be going, and I do EVERYTHING else).

(an aside TO the aside: and by “division of labor” I mean that I pretend that Dave is going to carry the stuff downstairs and so I get it all together and about half of the time he actually carries it down)

(an aside to the aside to the aside: I want an elevator)

Predictably, the garage sale came and went. And the boxes sat. Dave always gave me some vague mumbles about donating the stuff to charity while the boxes remained in the same dining room position, slowly gathering dust and moss. For months.

Rather than getting angry about it I figured that I would take care of it myself.*

According to my calculations, it dawned on me that the longer that I let these items sit there, the more apt Dave was to remove them from the boxes and lovingly welcome them back home because he loves his things unnaturally. Like old threadbare underwear and broken cassette tapes.

I, of course, was having NONE of this. Our condo had no storage as it was and the less stuff we had, the better.

So there I went, huffing and puffing my way down to the dumpster, where I put the stuff to the side, hoping that someone might go through it and take what they’d needed. Because while I wasn’t going to be giving the Gnomes on Ice glasses a home any longer, someone else might find them perfectly lovely.

Before I brought my last load down, I took a break to eat. By the time that I had managed to get back downstairs, I noted that all of the boxes that I’d set out NEXT to the dumpsters were gone. Vanished. Fin.

This assuaged my guilty ego in more ways than one. Maybe I should invite them in to peruse Dave’s collection of old receipts and gum wrappers.

*this would prove to be THE running theme in our marriage. Well this and “Becky is kind of a bitch.”

Somewhere between the kidnapping that happened on August 20th and the wedding that happened on September 10th, my body began to betray me.

Perhaps it was something that I picked up at the macabre display of carnivalish body parts that we saw at Body Works, perhaps it was something that I got from one of the many wedding vendors that I had to sign over my organs and promises of my second born son. Maybe it was some combination of all of it.

I can’t be certain.

Between the horrible mutant fever bug that made The Benner spew The Exorcist-style chunks all over my living room and, well, anything else in his path while running a fever so high that had me running him to the ER and all the last minute, “I owe you an extra three thousand for what exactly?” Somewhere along those lines a mutant bug so big and so bad began brewing inside of me.

By the time September 10th, the day that I promised to Love, Honor and Repay The Daver, rolled around, I was already so sick that I could hardly stand up. It was a mixture of sheer willpower and adrenaline that got me through the day.

It looks like, though, that my wedding guests got a little something extra besides the candles and amazing tapas and all the sangria they could possibly drink. It looks like I was Person A.

Typhoid Becky.

Apparently I infected all of my wedding party, a good portion of the guests, and THEN, in the spirit of all things wedding-y, I got on an airplane. Well, no. Thanks to the good people at Delta, I got onto 5! airplanes. 4 cities.

Then I flew somewhere tropical.

You’re welcome.

I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

-Pablo Neruda

In four days, the two shall become one, or something like that. So here we are, posting as one.

Aunt Becky has been running herself ragged getting everything done for this wedding, because I don’t do anything for silly things like weddings. I prefer to focus my energies on my online girlfriends and computer-related foibles. I do this because you can’t hear online girlfriends queef.

It’s interesting that Powdered Gay Man or whomever DAVE would like to be would say something about weddings. See, hear me out, I didn’t want a wedding. No, no, in every OTHER man’s romantic life, I would be the most simple, kindest of women, because MY idea of romance is a short flight to Vegas away. I’ve not even BEGUN to understand why on earth ANYONE would want to spring such money for one single day. And honey, we will NEVER be “one.”

Hey, I offered a Vegas trip. I wanted to be married by Elvis. Of course, the ceremony would have to happen in true Road Trip fashion, the only TRUE way a Vegas wedding should be: Skydiving. That’s right. You, me, and the King with parachutes flapping open in the breeze, saying our vows in just enough time before having to pull that cord and land back on earth, joined in wedded bliss. But as much as my love SAYS she wants a Vegas wedding, this small little request was returned to sender. Denied. Kaboshed. And honey, we’re ALREADY one. We just don’t have the rings on yet.

I did quite appreciate the Vegas offering, I did. Let me set this record straight once and for all, though. You ONLY offered this trip AFTER I said that I would go skydiving, and I quote myself here,”when it becomes socially acceptable to shit my own pants.” YOU didn’t think that having my pants filled with dookie would be “romantic” or “sensual.”

You forget, my love, that I offered to clean those soiled drawers for you myself. With my own tongue. And on top of that, this is what Depends are for. You’ll never remember the dookie in the drawers, what you’ll remember is the love in the air. Besides, no one will smell it at 20,000 feet or so, in free-fall, you’re ALWAYS upwind.

See, honey-muffin, here’s where you’re lying to yourself, and to me AND TO THE INTERNET. Now I know FOR A FACT, that had you ACTUALLY offered to “eat my shit,” literally this time, I would have been more than happy to oblige you. I’ve been waiting to see something like that happen for AGES. No, this whole elaborate wedding is your fault, as are natural disasters, the fact that my closet doesn’t have enough purses, AND soaring gas prices. P.S. There is no one. The computers must count for SOMETHING.

It’s no lie. I mean, I may have been a bit, y’know, *figurative* about the actual “eating” part, but no, I’d have cleaned you up nice afterward. Instead, now, we’ve got all these people coming into town, an oncoming bar tab the size of China, cute-ass little place cards, and even some minor family drama. P.S. I’m sorry about the gas prices, but baby, your closet has so many purses that we don’t need to buy luggage for our honeymoon. We can just fill up the purses and carry ’em on.

God Bless America, and God Bless YOU, Dave. You have SO MUCH to learn about purses. I’ll teach you ALL about it after the honeymoon.

Oh baby, I can hardly wait. Maybe someday SOME day, I’ll have a purse of my very own in my closet. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.

The purse in your closet, honey, is actually called “spillover.”

We need a bigger house.

We need wealthy benefactors.

Now THERE is a brilliant idea. This is why I love you. Benefactors? You out there? Show us some love. W’re buying 160 people dinner on Saturday.
Give us the hookup!

You’re shameless.*I* was going to have a”love child” with an old, old, rich oil tycoon.

And you scrapped that brilliant plan just to marry me?

There are still four days left for me to change my mind.

There you have it, kind readers. True love.