I was seperated but trying to work things out with my then-husband for twice as long as we lived together as man and wife. We'd gotten married for one of the worst reasons: I was pregnant. I didn't want to get married; I tried to put it off. I said, "It'll be great if we wait till the kid is old enough to be ring bearer. Won't they be cute?" What it really meant was "You need more time to sober up before I want to be tied down to you." The combination of pressure from him and my family got to me, and I realized i was going to have to get married. Still, I tried to minimize the wedding. "Let's just go to a courthouse. Or even better, you're mom could marry us. She's a notary." But no - he wanted it all, the big ludicrously white church wedding. I was seven and a half months pregnant when I waddled down the aisle, my feet killing me in off-white low heels and a slightly-used wedding dress. Shopping for a second-hand maternity wedding dress on Ebay was hell, and it was one of the most depressing things I have ever tried to do. In the end, I was wore my plus-sized sister's wedding dress, with a big silver ribbon tied empire-waist style, above the mound of my belly.
The wedding itself was pretty, on a shockingly small budget ($1,200 for everything, including both rings), but I was far more nervous than happy, and my sense of unease wasn't lifted when I heard from his brother that my now-husband had started drinking at 6 am, before making his way to the church. I had put my foot down very firmly on not serving alcohol at the wedding. His family were all a bunch of lushes who would have drunk us out of rent and electric, and since I was pregnant, I sure as hell wasn't footing the bill for a lot of them to get drunk if I had to be sober. (I think any woman that doesn't get to drink champagne at her wedding should have a bottle to celebrate her divorce.)
We held the reception in the big cafeteria Fellowship Hall in the church, and served pizza and chicken wings from Westshore Pizza, where he worked as a cook. The California style cheesecake my brother-in-law made was the high point of the day, in everyone's mind looking back. (That cake was amazing, and he lost the recipe. *facepalm*) The groom spent far too much talking talking to his old friend Tiffany or "Tiff" as he called her, with a baby voice that made me hate them both. I just wanted to go home and have a guilty cigarette in solitude, but it was a wedding and you're supposed to be happy at weddings. We said our vows in front of our families, God, and an Episcopal priest on July 16th, 2005. My son was born in September, and by Halloween the two of us were living at my mom's.
