Six Years

August 17th marks the sixth anniversary of my wedding to April. I can't believe it has been six years already.

When we met, she was dating another guy and I was engaged to another woman. We sort of started seeing each other, indulging our need to do something "bad" I guess. It never got really bad, but we did spend about a week together when we probably shouldn't have. After that week I went to visit my fiance (long distance thing here) for the weekend and she went back to her guy.

As fate would have it, Bonnie, my fiance, told me she thought we should start seeing other people. Just out of the blue...we should start seeing other people. After three years...the nerve! LOL! I guess she had some need to be "bad" that I was unaware of too. That same evening, April broke up with her man. Both events happened independently and were not affected by the one week April & I spent together.

I headed home early and pulled off to call April. I figured, why wallow in sadness when I could bounce back in record time. She was amazed I was coming home early and more amazed that I was the one who got dumped. I wasn't as amazed at the being dumped part. That happened a lot.

I was amazed that she broke it off with her guy the same night and decided we should actually start "dating". I put dating in quotes because we didn't really date at all. We went a few places together, but in reality she moved in within a month and that was that.

I found out that IF she were to ever get married, she wanted to be married by Elvis in Las Vegas while wearing a red dress. I told her that if we were ever in Vegas together we'd get married. Not too long afterwards, we found ourselves in Las Vegas, thanks to a business trip I had to make.

We brought our bright red outfits in case we actually did get hitched, figuring that we could always back out if we so wanted.

We ended up shopping for Vegas weddings. There are many different wedding choices available, from the most elegant and extravagant, to the simple drive-thru service. We specifically looked at weddings in our price range.

As it happened, just having Elvis at your service, no words, no "Love Me Tender", no nothing other than an Elvis was an extra $150.00. To get the full Elvis package could cost as much as $500.00-$1,000.00. We decided that Elvis wasn't cheap, but WE WERE! Besides, the anniversary of The King's death was the previous day and that had to somehow be bad karma.

Ultimately we ended up choosing the A Chapel by the Courthouse. This is a tiny little dive, the perfect setting for a Vegas wedding . They offered all the same things as the bigger places. There was limo service to the courthouse, chapel, & back to the hotel. They had music (an old Sony boom-box with a bad cassette of the wedding march). There was a professional witness lined up (Evelyn) and a professional photographer (Hector) who would take a 12-exposure roll of film ( we would be allowed to take and develop the film on our own, saving more money). All this, including chapel fees and the like...$99.95! That's right, we chose the Earl Scheib of wedding chapels.

We waited for nearly an hour for Reverend Stone (we called him Reverend Stoner) to arrive, which I'm told was way too long a wait and nervously decided if this was the right thing to do. The chapel videotaped the service on an old JVC video recorder, which Reverend Stoner crashed into once during the service (VERY FUNNY TO WATCH!). Hector snapped away the whole time.

After about 3 minutes we were all married. All told, including gratuities and the purchasing of the videotape we spent about $200.00 and we're just as married as all the folks who spent tens of thousands of dollars. Of the 12 photos, two of them turned out most excellent and a few more were pretty good and from what I can recall about EVERY wedding I've ever been to, that is a great ratio!

The wedding service was the first purchase I made on my MBNA credit card. Much like all the other experiences I've had with women over the years, I'm STILL paying for it today! ;)

There's considerably more to the story of our meeting and the wedding, but I've blathered on long enough. Let me just say that I'm far from a perfect husband. April is not without her quirks as well. I can't even say that either of us would do it all over again if we had the chance nor can I say that we'll be together forever. I can say that I could not imagine spending the last six years (seven in total) with anyone else and I have no plans on spending the next chunk of years with anyone but her. She's the reason I'm alive today and given that she accepts my job, my penguin obsession, and my Louie Louie collection I think she's pretty damned cool.

We're taking a day trip to the Cincinnati Zoo and celebrate. We've never been to that zoo before and since we enjoy adventures of all kinds, we're pretty excited. They've got TWO species of penguin I've never seen before (The Black-footed & the Little Blue penguins) and they also have manatees, a big favorite of April's. Cincinnati is an unusual place to go and celebrate a wedding anniversary, but then again, we're something of an unusual couple.