“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw
Sally and I had dinner at a little Italian restaurant called La Scalla a couple of months after she got back from Romania. We weren’t sure where we were going to get married, but we knew that it would be a small ceremony. Neither of us had a lot of friends in Hoboken, nor did we want to waste money on an event that we were most certainly going to have to finance on our own. I studied La Scalla’s menu, decided on a steak topped with gorgonzola cheese, and looked up to find Sally staring at me expectantly.
“We could get married by a judge,” I said at last. “That’s not romantic, but it would be cheap.”
“I want to get married in a church,” Sally replied. “Well…” she hesitated. “I want to get married in the presence of God, anyway. That’s important. We want to start this off right.”
“Okay. I’ve been going to the Lutheran church lately. I can see what that would cost and check on availability.”
“But I’m not Lutheran. I don’t like all that ceremony.”
“I’m not Lutheran, either,” I replied. “But that is where I’ve been going.”
Sally hesitated a moment and then said, “I’d like to get married at Redeemer in New York, but they don’t have a sanctuary. They just meet wherever they can. Besides, I think their waiting list is like six months or something.”
“We could try the local Christian Church,” I said. I looked away a little sheepishly. “But, I, uh… I went out with the pastor a couple of times late last year. Not sure what she’d say if I asked her to marry us. Besides, I haven’t been by in almost six months.”
“Ugh. Seriously?”
“Yeah. And anyway, that church is in bad shape. They’d probably ask for a huge donation, hoping that they could get their windows replaced or something.”
Sally shook her head. “Good grief.”
Our waiter arrived a moment later. “Good evening, sir, ma’am. How can I help you?”
Sally turned and smiled. “We need a place to get married. Do you know a place?”
“Why don’t you get married here?” he said seriously. “We’ve had weddings here before. We do the place up real nice, with flowers and everything. There’s even a piano in the other room.”
“Yeah, I don’t know,” I said.
The guy took our orders and then said, “Think about that wedding. When I get back, we’ll talk some more. My name is Francesco, by the way.”
Francesco walked away, and Sally laughed. “That guy is amazing.”
“Are we seriously going to have our wedding in a hole-in-the-wall Italian place on a side street in Hoboken?” I asked. “That sounds insane.”
“I know, right?” Sally looked around, studying the room. “But we do love this place, and it’s not like we have a bunch of better options. And it’s pretty, with all the exposed brick. I’ll bet it would look nice.”
I shrugged. “It’s bring-your-own-bottle. We could buy a case of wine at the store down the street, get a legitimately good vintage, and probably save ourselves a thousand bucks in catering costs.”
“The same is true with the flowers. Plus, this place has a great menu.”
“Great,” I said. “Now all I have to do is talk to the Lutheran minister. I assume that’s okay.”
“If he’ll make a house call, it’s fine.”
“He will if I pay him, surely.”
Francesco came back with our order, and Sally said, “Okay. We’re getting married here. Now all we have to do is find a place to live.”
Francesco didn’t miss a beat. He set our plates on the table, reached into his back pocket, and pulled out a business card. He set the card down in front of Sally. “I’m also a realtor. Call me next week, and I’ll show you some places. What’s your price range?”
I stared at the man, astonished, but he and my bride-to-be launched straight into a serious discussion of the local apartment market. I soon realized that meeting Francesco was a gift from God. He and Sally planned ninety percent of the wedding right then and there, and he soon found us a big two-bedroom apartment in nearby Union City that would become our first home as a couple. This left me with the relatively simple tasks of arranging for the minister, the flowers, and the wine. By mid-October, we were all set for a late December wedding. We had a beautiful ceremony with twelve guests, including my dad and Joe, Sally’s mother and two of her sisters, and a few of Sally’s local friends. My mother broke out in hives the week of the ceremony, but by now… well, I wasn’t exactly shocked that she skipped the ceremony. The wedding itself turn out to be gorgeous, and we did all of it, including the minister, for less than twenty-five hundred bucks all told.
We were married on the Winter Solstice. It turned out to be one of the happiest days of my life.
* * *
Our honeymoon was a miracle. My car broke down halfway to our destination, and as a result, we wound up stranded for a day in a cheap motel in Coxsackie, New York. We made the most of it by renting a limo to take us to the movies, and we got lucky with the replacement parts for my car, so that by the sheerest chance, we were able to get back on our way by dawn the next morning.
That was the miracle.
Sally rented us a little cabin on a ranch in near Lake Placid. We got there and were promptly snowed in. This left us nothing to do but spend time together and occasionally ride the ranch’s horses through their extensive backwoods trail system. We bought a pair of baked quiches at a local store in the opening hours of what proved to be a legitimately epic blizzard along with a few other snacks, and we enjoyed each other’s company in front of the fire for the next several days on end. We played board games and card games, and we read, but we mostly just hung out and talked.
After a few days of this, we decided to drive out to Mount Snow. I bought Sally her first pair of boots and skis at a little shop just off the mountain, and we kept it simple after that, sticking mostly to the green trails, with the occasional blue thrown in for good measure. At night, we sat by the fire, drank tea, and chatted with the owners of the bed and breakfast where we stayed, along with some of the other guests. Sally even watched one of the NFC playoff games with me on the big television in the main sitting with genuine good humor.
This proved to be a good sign for our future.
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