My Bridal Hurricane

When I got married, back in 1988, I really didn’t have a clue about anything. Back then there were not entire websites dedicated to weddings and wedding planning. I wanted to get married, but the whole thing kind of confounded and embarrassed me. I don’t think I could even bring myself to buy a BRIDE magazine.

I decided that I did not want to have a wedding shower. I had heard that those things involved lingerie, which I also found embarrassing. I declared that I wanted to have a bridal “hurricane” instead of a bridal shower. I invited a bunch of friends to come camping with me in a regional park nearby.

We slept in tents and roasted marshmallows and I’m not sure what else. I think it was spaghetti and garlic bread that we wrapped in tin foil. There was a ritual involving something that looked like a Christmas tree. Everyone who came brought some kind of symbolic object to hang on it, to wish me good things in my marriage.

I look at this picture now. It amazes me in so many ways. That purple shirt that I’m wearing, with the tree on it? It was the very first gift that the man who would become my husband ever gave me. He said it reminded him of me. I had never felt so seen. I look at that picture and I can’t believe all the time that has passed.

I still have the shirt. My daughter wears it more often than I do. I look at that red mask on the tree and I wonder what it was supposed to symbolize. But all the things that were hung on those branches, they must have worked. Because we have been married now for 28 years. They must’ve worked their magic.