Two Weddings, No Regrets

Both VERY low cost! One more so than the other.

Deb & Jack’s wedding day: 5 February 2000. Our then brother-in-law, Michael; Deb’s first husband, Bill; Deb; me; Deb’s sister, Nanci, photobombing in the rear. Bill designed and assembled the rose arrangement Deb is holding, along with all the other floral decorations. (photo by Doug Tanguy, Deb’s brother)

[This started as a comment on Yana Bostongirl’s post on her wedding (see below) but it got too long.]

I’ve been married twice, so two wedding ceremonies. Compared to Yana’s, my first one probably doesn’t even count as a wedding, but we (my first wife and I) liked it.

It was on Guam, in February 1989. I was passing through Guam from South Korea on my way to my next Navy duty station in Newport, RI, stopping to see my best friend, Linda (also in the Navy — we had gotten to know each other while we were both stationed in Arlington, VA, 1985–1987). We loved each other dearly, got along better with each other than we had ever gotten along with anyone else in our lives, and we had talked about possibly getting married, but there was the little problem of Linda only being sexually attracted to women and only having had romantic relationships with women.

Hence my surprise when Linda asked me what I thought about getting married. She didn’t say to her, precisely, but based on context, that’s how I took it. I was surprised, not because the concept had never come up before, but because we were in the middle of a department store shopping for swimsuits for her. I had some time to think about…