As anyone who knows B. and me can attest, we don’t always do things conventionally – and that includes our wedding. Rather than a large, catered party in a really swell venue with lots and lots of people, food, and music, we opted for just a tiny celebration – the two of us and two friends (well, one friend and her then-boyfriend), a judge as officiant, and a videographer (with his lovely girlfriend / assistant) in the backyard of our Santa Barbara apartment.

It’s the wedding video that inspired this blog post because finally, after 27 years of marriage, we decided to have it digitized, just in time for this year’s anniversary. Our VCR broke years ago (in fact, being able to view this one tape was the only reason we had kept it), so we hadn’t watched the video for a long time. When we received the digitized version and had the chance to look back, literally, at our wedding, we remembered the adventure.

We hadn’t necessarily planned it this way. When I had moved from New York and in with B. nine months earlier (no significance to that number, to those of you thinking about doing any kind of math) in December of 1996, we had talked about getting married in the spring of 1998. But nagging brought us to our vows in the summer of 1997. Not my nagging. The nagging of two mothers-in-law-to-be, one in New York and the other in South Florida at the time, both of whom were driving us nuts. To wit:

The judge thing – you may be wondering about that yourself. So were the mothers. My mother didn’t get it because her daughter was (thank God, finally!) marrying a nice Jewish boy. B.’s mom just plain didn’t get it. Neither mom got that we’re secular Jews and that a rabbi marrying us just wasn’t in our plans. Oy.

Next, the fancy-wedding concept. Try explaining (a couple of hundred times) to a couple of mothers, who had been planning their kids’ weddings since their kids were in diapers, that a big wedding to rival those of their friends’ children was not happening. “What? No wedding gown, no tuxedo, no bridesmaids and ushers, no band announcing your entrance, no spotlight on the parents? You’re depriving us of all that?”

Even the food. In those days, when we were starting out, our budget was very tight. But we were creative. We had envisioned a wedding list of maybe 20 or so adults (no kids, thank you very much); to feed them, we thought of ordering lots of mini gourmet pizzas (something for everyone), as well as my baking homemade wedding cupcakes. Bottles of champagne would round everything out nicely.

But no, not if the mothers (hereby known as the Mom-nipulators aka the Insister Sisters) had anything to say about it. “You cannot serve pizza at a wedding!” B.’s mom intoned. “No kids?” my own mother gasped, horrified. “What about all the nieces and nephews?” See where I’m going here? The joy of wedding planning was quickly dissipating, more and more with each not-long-enough-distance mother conversation.

Finally, after several of months of non-stop guilting attempts, we’d had it up to here with the mama drama about nearly everything – the what, where, when, and why of every detail. Whose wedding was it, anyway? We looked at each other one morning and, almost at the same moment, said “Let’s just get married now.” We set our date for two weeks from that day and then scurried around to get all the details taken care of. We limited the friends guest list to just B.’s law partner and her partner (our witnesses). B. made arrangements with a judge he knew. And I ordered the perfect size wedding cake – the top tier.

The videographer (I told you we’d get back to him) – a nice, good-hearted guy who obviously meant well – was a friend of a friend who came highly recommended, although, based on the finished product, I’m guessing that this video was actually his first job. Out of focus in parts, hard to hear in parts (except for the windchimes, those came through loud and clear), in shadow when it should have been in sunlight, overexposed when it, well, should not have been. It was a mess. (Fortunately, the videographer’s girlfriend / assistant used our camera and snapped beautiful stills so that we have a real wedding album.)

Ironically, while you can’t see or hear our vow-taking (the most important part) clearly, our first dance, to Glenn Miller’s In the Mood on a boombox, was shot perfectly. The fact that my dress was too narrow for swing dancing and that B. had two left feet is beside the point – that part taped wonderfully. Go figure.

How did the mothers take it, you ask? As it happens, my mom was not allowed to fly at the time because of a recent fall. And my darling B., who knows how sensitive I am and how much it would have hurt me if his parents came to the wedding when my mom could not, offered to not have his parents there either. While we didn’t tell my mom about our plans until after the wedding (amazingly, she wasn’t upset at not having been there, so overjoyed was she that her daughter, who had moved to California without a ring – oh my! – was actually married, and to a great guy), we did let B.’s parents know of our plans beforehand. His mother interpreted her son’s loving gesture to me to mean that we obviously didn’t want her or my father-in-law at the wedding (seriously?) and boy (and oy), did we hear about it.

Even though we rushed copies of the wedding video, photo albums, and our printed vows to my mom and my in-laws within days, my mother-in-law never quite got over it. For years afterward, she would tell us that whenever she passed by our wedding photo on her coffee table, she would start to cry. Despite her best efforts, the guilting didn’t work (extra points for the effort, though). I haven’t heard that from her for a little while, though, so now, 27 years later, maybe we’re okay. (Or not.)

The best part of the wedding was the vows, which we had written ourselves. Each year on our anniversary, we retake them, just the two of us, usually at home, sitting on the couch. They still hold up because, by the end, we’re a mess. The digitized video added to this year’s celebration – we were thrilled to see that the flaws are as fabulous as ever. We could not get through it without laughing so hard that we fell off the couch – it’s that ridiculous. But it’s all ours.

Vowing to love, honor, and cherish is a good thing – vowing to laugh makes everything better.

We do.

©2024 Claudia Grossman