"Got 'er Did"

So...

I'm married.

I have a wedding ring. And a husband. With whom I've actually (finally) had sex (multiple times. Mmmm. And also ow).

We share a bed. And a home. And a cell phone account. Joint bank accounts soon to follow.

Wow. It's all so... just, wow.

What I don't have yet are pictures. Scratch that--I do have pictures from my shiny new picture phone, but they're of the pre-wedding process, not the wedding itself. But when I get wedding pics I'll post 'em.

In the meantime, here's a recap.

Friday

Errands. Packing. Chaos. Stress. Started the day with a Pilates workout, during which the power went out, nixing my plans for a hot, well-balanced breakfast and putting my shower, and thus the rest of my day, on hold until it came back on. Finally, it did, and I showered, threw on some clothes and ran to Wal-Mart for last minute necessities like safety pins and acid-free pens for the "guestbook" frame matte. Then it was, respectively, to the DMV, the pharmacy, my auto insurance provider, the bank, and the county health department for a hepatitis A shot. That last stop was worthy of a post all its own, but I'll save it and move on. Then it was back home to pack. Or rather, it was home to do my damnedest to start packing while fending questions and suggestions and endless focus-killing noise from an entire houseful of people, all of whom were home that day, and trying to entertain a fiancé who wanted to squeeze in some quality time before he wouldn't be allowed to see me anymore, and trying, futilely, to get my mom's improved-but-still-problematic PC to burn all of my carefully selected MP3s to a wedding day mix CD for my groom. Alas, I couldn't make it happen.

This is my stress face:



Finally, L'il Sis arrived to whisk me away to Arkansas, and (two hours later) I finished packing, and we were on our way. But not before one last goodbye cuddle with my soon-to-be groom, who next I would see standing at the altar.



At long last, we hit the road. L'il Sis drove.



She said she knew a shorter way than the route Matt and I took to get our license. Yes. Well. The object lesson for the day was that "shorter" does not necessarily mean the same thing as "faster." Especially when you get confused and take wrong turns and end up on back roads driving through what looks eerily like Deliverance country. But eventually, we found our way out of Oklahoma and into Arkansas. Whoo!



A couple of hours later, we rolled into Eureka Springs. We came with a plan: find our motel, drink a celebratory toast, and commence getting a good night's sleep. But first, we had to pick up the champagne.



Now, I'm sure that ours is not the first plan that began to go awry with a stop at the liquor store. Once we found our motel, the Country Mountain Inn, checked in and unloaded our things, we realized we were hungry, and that champagne should not be consumed on empty stomaches. So, after learning that our options after 10PM were pretty limited, we called in a carry-out order to the nearest Pizza Hut, and went to pick it up. By this time it was already past our bedtimes, but that didn't keep us from deciding that, after we'd eaten and imbibed, it would be a really good idea to take advantage of the Inn's jacuzzi, which was open all night and which nobody else was using, and for wich we did NOT bring bathing suits, and so had to make do with our tank tops and underwear. After all of the stress of the day, it actually did turn out to be a pretty good idea, even though we ended up turning in about three hours later than planned.

But, you guys, it was so nice in that jacuzzi, with my sister and a glass of cheap wine and a big, bright full moon outlining the mountains all around us. Turned out to be just the break I needed, and not at all a bad way to spend my last night of singledom.

Saturday

We got up plenty early, rarin' to go despite the late night, fueled mainly by nervousness.



And then the beautification commenced. Shower, shave, tweeze, exfoliate, it puts the lotion on its skin, the whitener on its teeth, the zit cream on its face, then a quick complimentary continental breakfast later we're off to the salon to get Wedding Hair.

Here's an extremely unflattering picture of myself getting curled and poofed:



L'il Sis's only rule was that her hair couldn't look like mine:



Once the hair was done (you'll have to wait for the wedding photos to see the finished product), we set out to scope places to eat, wait for the family to arrive, and watch the parade. Yes, there was a parade. A vintage automobile parade, to be exact, which trapped us on the wrong end of town and severely limited our pre-wedding luncheon options. Finally, mom's van rolled up, a gaggle of relatives piled out like clowns to gawk at the old cars and stretch their legs before piling back in and heading back the other way to the closest restaurant, the Pine Hill Restaurant, to eat and wait out the parade. Despite the parade, we made pretty good time getting back to the motel, where everybody stuffed themselves into our little room for makeup and costume changes. Then before I knew it it was time for L'il Sis and I to meet Tess at the bed & breakfast for our mini-rehearsal with the wedding coordinator.

This is where things start to become a blur. The coordinator met us outside the B&B and immediately started running through all the details. Mostly all I did was nod and agree to whatever. Meanwhile, since we weren't given time to haul all of my stuff up to the room before getting started, L'il Sis and Tess and Nephew #2 (who had arrived earlier with Matt, who was currently being ushered into another room to finish changing so he wouldn't run the risk of seeing me before the ceremony) kept running back to the car to fetch everything we could think of that was vital, i.e. my dress and the flowers and all that falderal. And then we were being shown what order to walk in and where to stand and then LS had to hurry and go pick up the rest of the family while I was taken upstairs to change. This is where I realized that (a) I had forgotten entirely to pack the little wedding bells (for the guests to ring while we kissed at the end) and the wedding bubbles (for them to blow while we rode our carriage into the sunset), then got over that when (b) I realized that LS had taken off with both my digital camera AND the video camera, and (c) there was no time to fire up the portable steamer to de-wrinkle my dress. And as I stuffed myself into said dress I also forgot to put on any of the Very Special Perfume that I'd bought especially for the wedding. But as glitches go, these were all pretty minor, and then LS came back, and my mom came in, and the photographer, and there was posing, and pictures, and perfecting, and then they knocked on my door to tell me it was time.

That was about when the crying started. They were happy tears, mostly, but they were also mildly terrified tears, and I managed to keep them mostly in check until I got down to the back door that led out into the garden, and LS was holding my hand and reminding me to breathe, and I was blinking, and then the music started and everybody was walking, and then I reached the chapel and saw Matt standing there all gorgeous in his tux, and we made eye contact as he mouthed an appreciative "Wow!", and I managed to pull myself together and get married. I didn't flub my vows, Matt's vows got the tears flowing again, then we were exchanging rings and lighting the unity candle and then he was kissing me and a minister was pronouncing us husband and wife. And then the photographer began ushering us from one photo op to the next and we barely even had time to see who showed up for the wedding, let alone socialize with them, but everybody said it was beautiful and that we made them cry and I guess being social is what this Friday's wedding party is for. Inside, cut the cake, feed it to each other, freeze for pictures, back to the chapel for more pictures, to the garden for still more pictures, then we're being hurried to the carriage for goodbyes and yet even more pictures. And then it was just me and my shiny new husband and... pretty much the entire town of Eureka Springs, where every person we passed on the street waved and shouted congrats to us as we rode by. Our carriage driver was also very talkative the whole way. Oh, and the title of this post? Comes from the sign that hung on the back of our carriage. Charming, innit? I guess that's the sort of risk you take when you get married in the "Wedding Capital of the South."

Finally, we got back to the B&B, and up to our room, where they had cake and champagne waiting for us on the ledge of our own private jacuzzi tub, and we finally got to be alone together. And that's all you need to know about that.

Sunday & Monday

Sunday, after a lazy morning of breakfast in bed and enjoying each other's... *ahem* ...company, we went out to do the tourist thing. We went out to Turpentine Creek Big Cat Rescue and took the guided tour, then after lunch we went to see the Giant Jesus. Then it was back to TC in time to watch them feed the tigers, where a small (as tigers go) female named Syria who had practically been left crippled through inbreeding and had to be fed separately from the other cats because she was on a special diet broke my heart begging to be fed while the other cats around her happily chowed down on raw chicken. She didn't have to wait long till they brought out her food, but watching her drag herself over to the handlers to beg was one of the saddest things I've ever seen. Even so, it was all pretty neat. We got plenty of pictures of that, too, but mostly with the video camera, and we have to get a USB cable for it before we can share.

Watching the big cats eat made us hungry, strangely enough, so we went back to our room to freshen up before venturing downtown to take advantage of the "complimentary romantic dinner for two" that was included in our wedding package.

Let me pause here a moment to briefly explain Eureka Springs, for those who have never been there, which I'm guessing is most, if not all, of you. When you come into town and stick to the main drag, it's all very Southern, very Good Ol' Boy, very Arkansas, but in the good way, where it's all down home and small town and friendly and there's plenty of barbecue and meat & potatoes and Tex Mex to be had. But then you turn off the highway and go down into the historic downtown area, and suddenly it's like somebody picked up some hip, funky little urban burrough and dropped it on the side of a mountain in the middle of the Arkansas wilderness. It's... odd. But very cool. There are all kinds of people there, from bikers to yuppies to hippies to Bubbas, and they're all as friendly as can be. Really, it's quite awesome.

So we had dinner at DeVito's which, despite serving varieties of fish that aren't generally associated with Italian, was fabulous. I had the chicken bolognese, and then I had a food-gasm. The bites of his spinach/parmesan ravioli that Matt fed me were also preddy fan-damn-tastic.

Then it was back to the B&B for more private time, and sleep, and then Monday morning we woke up and lazed about in bed while reminiscing about what we were doing on 9/11 before getting dressed to go eat breakfast and settle our bill. After packing and loading up the car in time to check out, we headed back downtown to file our marriage license with city hall and check out some of the shops. Once we'd loaded up with souvenir wine (for me) and hot sauce (for Matt) and mailed ourselves a commemorative postcard, we headed out of town, stopping for lunch at a barbecue place on the highway that I keep wanting to call The Pig Pit, even though I'm pretty sure that wasn't it's actual name, before starting the drive back home. A few hours later we were reuniting with family and pets and then we headed upstairs to our part of the house, where he held hands as we stepped over the threshold together for the first time.

Getting married is exhausting. But being married is most excellent. I have to say, so far I'm in favor of it.