Blended: The Day Our Family Married

With some of the most important wedding guests delayed on a bus (the kids!), a local mom, about to remarry, felt lost. But their arrival turned things around, and made a magical day into a real “family wedding.”

The bus carrying our wedding party and most of our guests was an hour late getting to our house, the spot we’d chosen for the ceremony and reception. Eric and I waited. Today, after three years of dating, we were getting married, joining our hearts, homes -- and five children -- Johnny, Jamie, Olivia, Sophia and Luke, ages 4 to 10. Our little quintet would be our wedding party. And they too were stuck on the bus.

The children had been excited since our engagement five months before, wondering where we’d go on our honeymoon. After the announcement, we all moved into the historic Henry Finch house circa 1842, Eric and I having passed on purchasing one of the cookie-cutter colonials that had closets and updated plumbing. The Finch House had character: thick moldings, a Harry Potter closet under the stairs, and four chimneys to give Santa options. All this and our own slice of the Saugatuck River, which cut through our backyard, where there was now an arbor, rows of wooden white chairs, and a piano set up for the ceremony, which was supposed to start an hour ago.

With the children at the hotel last night, I’d imagined a leisurely morning, a long hot shower, a chance to comb my hair. Instead, I was a sack of mud up until noon. Eric and I moved the trampoline, in the drizzle, to the neighbor’s yard, and while Eric fixed the party tent that had blown down in last night’s storm, I drove Lemon, our oversized Brittany Spaniel, to Dog Gone Smart, the pet hotel, since he gets hyper around a host of people. Lemon was short a shot (required for admission), so I’d raced him to the vet and waited an hour for Dr. Noonan to immunize him.

Eventually I did get dressed. I wore a fitted ivory gown, nipped at the waist. The gown held every inch of me in except for my calves, where the dress flared, producing, what I felt now, was the look of a mermaid, not the look of an hourglass, as my mother had convinced me in the bridal shop. I’d curled my long blonde hair, normally straight as uncooked spaghetti. I put on pink lipstick. Then felt I had to jazz it up somehow. I tried the false eyelashes, ultimately flushing them down the toilet in frustration. Other than those lashes, I did not fuss much. I had no time. Until now. As I waited for the bus.

I stood at the kitchen window in the mermaid gown. The servers flew in and out the screen door, keeping the salmon crepes warm, moving everything into a second kitchen they’d set up in the garage. I took a small sip of scotch. Straight from the bottle.

Clearly at some point in the wee hours I’d fallen through the rabbit hole and like Alice, woke in a nonsensical place with strange characters that surrounded me now. The Justice of the Peace, a top-heavy middle-aged woman who I had a bad feeling about from the start but who was available on this date, paced in the living room, tapping her silver wristwatch. The DJ, a substitute for the man I hired, blew by me. “Everything’s cool,” he said, positioning his ponytail.

I was a spectator in my own home and I did not fight it. My sister-in-law, a woman who can manage twelve tasks at once, breezed by holding organza bows and a hammer. “You look beautiful Marcelle,” she said. Antonio, the cook, passed by -- “Bellisimo Marcello” he said, blowing me a kiss and waving the carving knife he’d finally found. I laughed out loud, feeling sillier by the minute in the gown. I took another small swig and considered changing into my jeans.
Out back, the river swelled with rain and the September air swooned with the smell of butterfly bushes, penne pasta sauce, and a hint of hornet spray. Several dozen of our local guests sipped blue martinis in the backyard, under the fixed white tent whose tiered tips poked into the late afternoon sky.