Number 5, part 2 The Proposal & Wedding

So about 3 months after starting dating, we were at Wal-Mart shopping.  She was on food stamps at the time and we had filled the cart to the top with food.  We got in line to check out and she gave me her EBT card (it's a food stamp debit card) and told me the PIN.  Then she said she'd be right back.  I loaded the groceries on the belt, but when the time to check out came she still had not returned and I had forgotten the code, but thought I could remember it.  After keying it incorrectly 3 times in a row it automatically locks and you have to call them to unlock it.  Unfortunately they are only open Monday through Friday 8a-5p and it was like 8:00 pm on Friday.  Frustrated and embarrassed I got upset and when she got back I blamed it on her for not getting back soon enough and where the heck did she go anyways?

Well, aren't I just some fine piece of work?  She went off to go buy the Lord of the Rings movie that had just come out on dvd as a surprise for me.  And how do I thank her?  By making her cry.  I felt like the lowest dirtiest scumbag on earth.

I had been tossing around the idea in my head about asking her to marry me, but I had wanted to have a ring ahead of time and all that jazz.  Anyways, we're sitting in my truck and I'm apologizing to her for getting upset and taking the blame for it and the next thing I know it pops in my head that I should ask her now.  So I did, I asked her to marry me in my truck in the Wal-Mart parking lot.  No ring and her tears weren't even dry yet from me yelling at her.  Her response was, "R-r-really?"  To which I was taken slightly aback, but I said, "Yes." and then she said, "Yes."

During this time I also talked her into going back to school, so she enrolled with me in the fall (I had started going back to school one year prior).  The job that she was in was only a temporary position and they wouldn't let her take off the time she needed for school and basically told her that it was either school or them.  She chose school, but felt like she had been fired.  Right around this same time her divorce was finalized.  After this she went into a depressed state where pretty much all she did was sleep.  She would go to school and do her schoolwork, but pretty much spent the rest of the time in bed.  Nothing I did would change it and just before Christmas I was over it and was seriously considering breaking up with her.  Probably the only reason that I didn't was because I was afraid she might become suicidal if I did and I couldn't bear that thought.  Shortly after that she snapped out of it and started acting like a normal person again.

At some point, and I honestly don't remember exactly when this was, but I think it was early January, I did say to her that I thought we should put off the wedding for a while.  Wait until we could afford to have the wedding we want and all that.  The response that I received was one of, "You don't love me and you don't want to marry me."  I assured her that was not the case, just that I thought maybe we had rushed into this and should just give it a little time.  I wasn't breaking up with her.  Prior to that we had decided to get married some time in March.  Then about mid January (or maybe February, the dates are fuzzy in my head) something happened (I can't remember the details) that made me decide to go ahead and go through with the wedding in March.  We decided we would have it on March 27th, a Thursday with a small gathering of friends and family on the beach.  Then we would have a full blown ceremony where we invited everyone the following year (and since 2004 was a leap year that would put the 27th on a Saturday).  But the full blown ceremony never happened.  Once you're actually married, the ceremony thing becomes a low priority and life happens.

So, we were married on the 27th of March, with a whole lot of people mad at us because they weren't invited.  The truth was, everything happened so fast we were lucky that we were able to even have our marriage license (we got it the day of the wedding).  I wish things could have gone differently for the wedding, by the time the reception came I had a tremendous headache and was in somewhat of a foul mood because of it.  The wedding itself went well though, my father married us, the rain held off and the wind wasn't too bad.

My best man's speech at the reception could've been better, in fact it would've been difficult to make it worse.  I don't really believe in bad omens, but looking back on it, it just feels like it was doomed from the beginning.

More to come...