ursamajor | on weddings (for a friend stressing over planning her own)

I was never one of those little girls Imagining My Wedding Since I Was Five. When I was five, I got this idea in my head that you had to marry somebody with the same birthday as you, even though I knew my mom and dad had different birthdays. But the only person I knew who I shared a birthday with in my Catholic kindergarten was another girl, how was I ever going to find someone to marry?! (Yes, I learned about girls who liked girls once I transferred out of Catholic school, LOL. But that still left me knowing nobody else who shared my birthdate!)

After that got straightened out, I stopped caring about weddings until I started being in serious relationships 15-20 years later, and even when

hyounpark and I were planning our own wedding, making all the little choices and doing every last tedious bit associated with it - five years later, what do I remember?

I remember the looming thunderous clouds and the ferocious wind as we took pictures on the beach pre-ceremony.

I remember we started 20 minutes late because we waited for Hyoun's dad's taxi to make the 110 mile journey from SFO to Pacific Grove immediately after getting off the plane from Seoul where he'd left Hyoun's mom with her dying mother because she said that one of them had to be at the wedding. I remember the sun coming out right as his car pulled up. (This picture was from afterwards; M pulled us back to the rocks for some sunny shots.)

I remember

ladysisyphus marrying us, though I couldn't tell you what she said anymore (sorry, W2!). I remember reading my vows completely out of order.

I remember peeling off my shoes so I could walk back up the grassy knoll to the waiting car like a normal person.

I remember forgetting the lyrics to our "first song" for probably the first time in my life as a musician, and it luckily being the favorite song of my best childhood friend's husband, so he sang along from the audience.

I remember dancing with my dad.

And that's it.

I'm a foodie, and I couldn't tell you what food we had at our wedding because I think I got to eat maybe two bites of it? There were M+Ms in various shades of blue and white and I remember that because we got our names printed on them!

Still, there is this:

And everything after.

(Three weeks ago, my brother's wedding started 20 minutes late because there was a miscommunication about the programs and we had to make a surprise last-second 15 mile round trip back to the hotel to retrieve them because primarily English ceremony with written guidance in Chinese. I joked to the pastor as we ran out to the car that we were upholding family tradition. He seemed a bit alarmed by that.)