What'ya say we get married?

It's a funny thing that when a man hasn't anything on earth to worry about, he goes off and gets married. ~Robert Frost

Marriage is nature's way of ensuring that a woman picks up some mothering experience before she has her first child. ~Robert Brault
robertbrault.com

I have no wedding pictures. I barely had a wedding.  This picture was taken a few months after we were married.  It was Jim's birthday and I made a cake (from scratch--I don't cook today but it's not because I don't know how!) and a fine meal and invited friends over.  I loved being domesticated--at first.  Man, I even had candles on the table!  That was a very happy day, but fetching out the candles for dinner other times in our marriage didn't impress Hubby very much, so I usually didn't bother.  On Valentine's Day or his birthday, I might put candles on the table and make him heart shaped biscuits, but he wouldn't have cared if they were shaped like dog biscuits.

I don't have a romantic story of his proposal.  He just started talking about how we should be married and I go, "Oh, OK."  Neither one of us put much thought into it.  He was lonely and wanted companionship, and I was just.... ignorant. I know he fell in love with me, as much as a person possibly could in our short courtship, but to be honest, I think I was more in love with the idea of love, than I was with him. Fortunately love grows if you give it a chance.  If we had lived today, we would have probably just moved in together, but we came from conservative, traditional families and that was unthinkable, so marriage it was going to be. 

The sad cloud over our wedding and marriage was my mother's rejection of both.  She refused to  meet Jim and was very angry that I just up and decided to get married without discussing it with her.  I carried the hurt of that for a long time.  After that rejection, Jim wasn't anxious to meet any more of my family and I didn't argue, and so we didn't plan much of a wedding.  I know now that my grandparents, and aunts and uncles would have been delighted to be there, but I transferred Mom's rejection over to them, and didn't even tell them.

Jim rented a furnished apartment and moved out of the rooming house; I was still staying where I worked caring for an elderly lady.  I closed out my savings account and bought things for the house; Jim bought the ring and my dress and made the arrangements.  Washington state law said that the bride could marry without her parents consent at age 18, but the groom had to have permission to marry if he were younger than 21.  Since he was a few months shy of that, he had to write his mother for consent.  Then we were ready... well we weren't really but we were young and dumb and filled with hope...