After you read this, if any of you want my help in planning your wedding, feel free to contact me. I'll be more than happy to give you some tips of what not to do. Almost 39 years ago I took on the task of planning for our wedding. I shunned all help and thought to myself, just how hard can this be to arrange a simple ceremony? A case for eloping will be made.

My parents still lived in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, McAllen to be specific. They were members of the McAllen Country Club and would have liked for us to be married in that locale. The reception could have been held at the country club and undoubtedly would have been a lovely affair.

Let me digress for a moment.

What you readers must understand is that I did not fit the mold of many girls and young ladies who grow up dreaming about their wedding...the long white dress...multiple bridesmaids, etc. In fact, I had never even read one of those many magazines with brides on the front cover.

In fact, I did not even like playing with dolls as I was growing up, much to the sadness of my mother who would have enjoyed that aspect of bonding with me doing "girly" things. My mother still has a doll from her youth! It is one of those Dionne Quintuplet dolls that was so popular back then. It lies in a little white wicker cradle adorning her bedroom today.

Me? I was out climbing trees with my two younger brothers when I was young. In the Wisconsin countryside where I grew up (until the age of 13 when my parents moved to Texas) there were few other kids with which to play outside of being in school.

I did have one good neighboring girlfriend who was a year older than me and she went to a different school. My brothers and I were in a parochial school after my Dad helped in building it.

In the summertime and on weekends my girlfriend, Gloria and I would often climb those inviting trees armed with our pads of paper and pencils, pens or crayons and do artwork as we were perched aloft discussing all the important things of childhood.

Occasionally Gloria would spend the night with me in the playhouse my Dad had built and then I would get to spend the night at her home. Drawing and creating art was our main form of entertainment. Playing with dolls did not seem to be of interest to her either. Gloria turned out to be an art teacher in later years, but let's return to the subject at hand.

By the time high school had passed and my college years had ended with me becoming a registered nurse, I had chosen to begin my nursing career by working in Houston, Texas. The operating room at Methodist Hospital in the Texas Medical Center was my first job and I loved it. I was living in the nurses dorm with other single nurses that came from many countries all around the world. It was a wonderful and safe environment and I could walk to work a couple of buildings away or go to work in the underground tunnels in the case of inclement weather.

Fast forward.....

After meeting my husband to be and deciding to get married, we discussed the type of wedding that we wanted and we both decided to keep it simple. He pretty well left most of the planning up to me. BIG MISTAKE!

He had been raised in the Methodist Church, and me, the Catholic Church. So how did we handle that? We chose a Presbyterian Church with a nice little chapel and decided that we would like to be married there. It would be a religious ceremony and we felt more comfortable with that as opposed to merely having a justice of the peace performing the nuptials. We met with the minister who was to officiate at the ceremony a total of 3 times (for pre-marriage counseling) and he agreed to do the deed. However he DID warn us that Methodist's who marry Catholics...seldom do the marriages work out. Guess we have passed that test with flying colors! However, it would seem he failed. We heard some years later that he was selling insurance and was no longer a minister.

A traditionalist (when it comes to weddings) I am not. Several friends as well as relatives offered to throw wedding showers for us. We declined.

My thoughts on the subject were something like this...

Good friends or family members who WANT to give us gifts will do so without being forced into it with invitations to a shower where they feel OBLIGATED to purchase something.

Now that I am older (and maybe just a little bit wiser?......the jury is still out on that!) I realize that I probably cheated those people who wished to give us wedding showers out of doing something that would have made THEM happy. Oh well.........that is "over the dam" as they say.

So much for our wedding showers!

My husband to be was in the fine paper distribution business. He had made friends with one person who offered to print our wedding announcement as a gift. Of course I thought that was well and good when I was approached with the idea. After all, there must be some perks to marrying someone in that industry!

We were given choices of stationery and printing from which to select and easily chose what we both thought looked good.

It worked into my schedule to pick up the completed announcements and when I was presented with them, the fellow apologized and said that they were printed wrong. The wording was correct...just the manner in which it was printed was apparently more like a business announcement than a wedding announcement.

Being in a generous and loving spirit, I did not want him to have to pay for another run so I graciously accepted them. My future husband also thought that it was OK to use them. After all, it got the message across to our friends and loved ones that we were getting married. We knew that they would become fodder for landfills shortly thereafter. Why chop down more trees to get this short message imparted to others?

Expert wedding planner that I was becoming, I got everything addressed and mailed. I did not realize at the time that announcements are mailed AFTER the wedding, not prior to the event.

Small detail. Just a tiny mistake!

As you already know, I lived in the nurses dorm. Being surrounded by all types of hospitals, there were a number of flower shops nearby and I walked to the nearest one to arrange for flowers for our wedding.

It was to be an October wedding. I met this very nice elderly lady by the name of Micki who seemed to take charge and seemed very helpful. We decided that autumn leaves would be a nice touch at the altar and I liked that thought.

She asked what color my bridesmaid would be wearing and I told her that I did not know. I had told my good buddy from my high school days who would be coming from Colorado to attend the wedding to purchase something that she would like and want to wear again. Made sense to me!

So Micki advised me that if I would simply call at least a couple of days in advance and tell her the color of Ella's dress, she would make sure that her bouquet would match.

The ONLY THING that I had wanted if getting married someday was to carry lilies of the valley in my bouquet. Remember.......no long white dress.......no wedding showers......no fuss..... That was my sole desire.

Micki, the very helpful flower lady, advised that if we were to secure real lilies of the valley at that time of year, they would probably be wilted in an hour. BUT, there were realistic ones made of silk where each little white flower dangled from the stems just like the real ones would, and could be a keepsake long after the wedding. She assured me that she had seen them and that unless one were to touch the flower, they were indistinguishable from the real ones. I was persuaded by Micki.....after all, she was the expert, so I agreed.

When she found out that my one living grandmother would not be able to attend the wedding and that I would not be throwing the bouquet after the wedding (remember......this was a simple affair!) Micki suggested that a box could be provided and that my bridal bouquet could be mailed to my grandmother. I thought to myself.......what a wonderful idea! This would give her a flavor of the wedding and give her something very special to know that my thoughts were with her on that day.

A small detachable insert with my very special keepsake lilies of the valley would be removed before mailing the bouquet.

So that part of the wedding preparations were done! Simple! I knew that I could handle everything just fine. After all...arranging for the flowers was a piece of cake!

Calling the flower shop a couple of days in advance of the wedding I asked to speak to Micki. "Oh, she is no longer with us. She got drunk just one too many times!" was the answer. OK.........................not looking good.

I explained the reason for my call and they said that everything would be handled just fine. Whew! What a relief! The color of my bridesmaid dress was pink and they told me that a beautiful bouquet would be made to accommodate that color.

Fast forward to the day of the wedding.....

People are already seated in the chapel and there are a bunch of boxes up at the altar. Looking around, other than some cheap looking artificial fall colored leaves on either side of the altar, there was no one in sight.

My mother took charge. She walked up to the altar and proceeded to pick up all the boxes and take them to the back of the chapel as if this was an everyday event. After all.........no matter WHAT was inside, it certainly did not look good to have a bunch of boxes stacked up there.

Low and behold when she checked the inside of boxes.....you must know what is coming...

That's right..........all the flowers were neatly laid inside the boxes.

Ella's bouquet (my maid of honor) was very pretty. The men's boutonnieres were nice and my bouquet, well, let me put it this way. It was deposited into a garbage can after the wedding. All thoughts of mailing it to my grandmother fled at first sight.

What about my sought after lilies of the valley? PLASTIC! That's right..............CHEAP PLASTIC that could have been purchased in any dime store. They dressed up the garbage can in the ladies rest room quite nicely.

So much for the flowers! And so much for trusting Micki!

There is more...

Never one to spend much time in the primping department, I decided shortly ahead of the wedding to cut my hair. I'm pretty handy with a scissors and took fairly long locks and whacked them off into a much shorter hairdo. Back then it was fairly curly.

With the help of my parents who had come up to Houston from McAllen, we had moved my belongings into the apartment of what would now be my apartment as well after our marriage and honeymoon.

The morning before the wedding I intended to take a bath. Leaning into the tub and pulling on the knob to adjust the water temperature, someone who had been in that hotel room last had left it with the shower head in the "on" position.

Can you guess? My hair got wet. Those were the days prior to hotels furnishing hair dryers. There was no time to go out and purchase one. So...........

I just pulled the hat down a little further on my head that day and got married with very damp hair.

What else could go wrong?

This one aspect of what happened cannot be laid entirely at my feet. My husband to be had a role.  Well.....at least his friend played a major part.

When we briefly talked about photos for our special day an offer was made by a friend of my beloved. This friend had put himself through college taking wedding photos and offered that as his gift to us, he would be delighted to take our wedding photos. I had never met the man, nor did I ever see a photograph that he had taken, but I thought.........why not? That would be one thing to cross off of my non-existent list of things to do. Consider it done!

We graciously accepted his kind offer.

He was there on the appointed day and did shoot some photos. No fancy camera. No special lighting. No unique camera angles. We have some photos of our backsides standing at the altar and a few other photos.

Before we departed the church parking lot, this buddy of my new husband handed the roll of film to my husband to be developed. Not exactly what I imagined, but hey......casual wedding......no big deal, I'm thinking.  At least we have photos!

Now, almost 40 years later, I do not remember the exact instructions...but they went something like this: Take this to ABC professional photo developing lab and tell them that I used XYZ film and have it developed with EFG processing. We followed the instructions to a "T."

When my husband went to pick up our wedding photos, there was a banner strung across the counter stating something like this: We do not process ZYZ film with EFG processing methods. Oops!

The friend was long gone. The wedding over and what do we have for our photos? Amateur looking snapped pictures with squiggly lines running top to bottom.

My Dad snapped a few photos in the parking lot that day and those are the best we have of our wedding.

So much for the wedding photography!

At least it cost less than the flowers!

Music. Oops!

I just KNEW that there was something I forgot to arrange!

Oh well........short aisle..........small chapel.........didn't take long to get up to the altar with the fake autumn leaves and the minister that was waiting to marry us even though he knew it wouldn't last with plastic lilies of the valley in my less than spectacular bouquet. Had there been music it would probably have only been one more thing to go awry.

After all, can't almost everyone hum the wedding march in their heads?

Brenner's Restaurant was chosen for dinner the night prior to the nuptials.  After everyone who was coming from out of town got there (through torrential rains and flooded streets!) we all relaxed and had a good time visiting. The dinner was delicious.

After the wedding we had a beautiful brunch at Brennan's Restaurant and this was also very nicely handled.

Of course extra room had to be suddenly made for a few extra folks who came from out of town for the wedding thinking that our "announcement" was a wedding invitation.  But Brennan's handled it with aplomb.

So you see......we are pretty good at choosing restaurants and picking menus!  After all, that IS an important part of wedding planning, isn't it?

Now.......on to our honeymoon........

Think that I will leave that for another day!

As you can probably tell by now, being an expert wedding planner is not one of my stronger attributes.

At least I know how to pick good husbands!  After 39 years of spending time together we can almost finish each other's sentences and know what each of us like and dislike. There is comfort in that and we have seen each other through good times and bad.

I think that I have him pretty well trained by now. Guess he thinks the same! LOL

Now.....my offer:

Do you need help with your wedding?

Let me know. I'm willing and able!

Or would you rather elope?