Erin Blank

Marriage Ceremony: check
Wedding Day Weather Freak-Out: check
Too Short (but very fun) Reception: check
Beautiful Honeymoon: check
Easy Name Change: hahahaha...good one.

As you have read from my checklist(I am checklist queen. I have them everywhere. During the school year it gets worse.. my students are walking post-its.), Andy and I are officially hitched. It was a wonderful wedding. And the only person who knows I am a J. is some worker in some record office in California. And as much as I would like to think this person saw our marriage license and thought about how truly unique and fabulous our wedding/honeymoon/marriage/life was/is, he/she most likely stuck Marriage License #838584871203857393937569270 in a file cabinet and went to lunch at Taco Bell. And as long as I am imagining this worker, I would like to think he/she got a Nacho Bell Grande because I am hungry and that sounds delicious. So. While I am waiting for the return of Marriage License #838584871203857393937569270 (because I thought, so stupidly, that when we paid for and signed and notarized our license, that it was ours)it continues to reside in a file cabinet in California. Maybe marriage licenses enjoy living in file cabinets. I wouldn't, but I am not a piece of paper. Pieces of paper always seem to be in file cabinets. Well...Not in my house. My pieces of paper roam free and wild. Or in my classroom. Where the pieces of paper seem to disappear or are stuck on my kids' heads in the form of post-its. In order to free Marriage License #838584871203857393937569270 from file cabinet captivity, I filled out an application, had it notarized (the first bank we went to, they said their Notary moved to California. I was imagining some machine moving to California by itself. With little legs - it was running like the wind. I almost asked, "How did it move there by itself? Can't you just buy or borrow one?" when I realized that the Notary was a person.), then sent some cash-olah to the State of California. When I called this Office of Vital Records to find out how long it would take, I listened to a Spanish voice tell me to press uno for English (good thing I took a semester in college) then spent 10 minutes pressing number buttons and getting useless information such as, "The worker you are trying to reach is enjoying a delicious Nacho Bell Grande at Taco Bell." I kid! But they should tell you things like that - honesty goes along way, I think. So I might be waiting 6 months for this license. I am going to tell my students to call Mrs. J. but I am still signing things using my maiden name. The government will probably arrest me for identity fraud in the classroom but so be it.

Back to the more fabulous parts of our union, the whole weekend was such an excellent time. We had a 5 day long wedding! For some people, like the ladies I see on Bridezilla, this may sound like torture. But I had so much help from so many lovely people, that I got to enjoy it all! We had a rehearsal dinner at a steakhouse hosted by the Jensens and I got to meet/see lots of family. This steakhouse had DELICIOUS garlic mashed potatoes.. it should be called a garlicmashedpotatohouse. Then we had a BBQ on the beach the day before the wedding where I got to eat even more. Prewedding diet be damned, apparently. It was so wonderful. I got to hang out with family and friends and eat and those are my very favorite things. THEN it was finally Wedding Day and of course I waited til the last second to get ready. The one day I should have given myself hours to get ready, and of course I don't. So I am speed getting ready and multi-tasking.. as in editing my vows and getting my hair did. Zipping and shoeing all at the same time. Good grief. I think I gave myself more time to get ready when I went on my first date with Andy. But I ended up making it down the aisle ok.. with my bustle up. Yes, I got ready so fast that I left my train pinned up the WHOLE time. Woopsie poopsie. My alter ego inner fashion goddess was cringing. My other alter ego, rock goddess who dies her hair unnatural colors, was pretty pleased about the whole going against tradition thing, albeit pissed that my hair was blonde.


Not to brag or anything, but I had the BEST seat in the house for the ceremony. I was sitting in a car in the very back, watching the bridal party wander around before the ceremony with my family. I felt so incredibly loved. They were all there for us. (this is the only time I will ever get sappy during this blog. I promise. No ones likes a sappy blog.) The processional music started to play

and all the people I loved started to walk down the aisle. This is when all my nerves disappeared (because I was thinking well if they can walk down the dang aisle, certainly I can). Oh my goodness, I was so happy I almost started crying. Then I realized I hadn't even moved yet and my cue was coming. So I had to hop right up (which is hard to do in a wedding dress out of a very low Corvette) and get to the aisle. Then as soon as I saw Andy waiting there, I felt like I kicked it into high gear, practically dragging my dad down the aisle. I was like the Notary on its way to California. So I really hope I was not running down the aisle in my dress. And the best seat in the house continued! While we were standing up there, Lake Tahoe was right there in the background and the sun was just setting behind the mountains. It was perfect. A wedding on the lake with my tootsies in the sand is my kind of wedding. We all should have just worn bathing suits and gone swimming afterwards. Oooohh.. wedding by floatie. I like it. Then the maid of honor would drift one way and the groom would drift the other and I would be beached somewhere and we would have to yell our vows across the water. But I was not beached and we did not yell, so these are some of the vows that the guests probably did not hear:

Commitment Reading of the Pueblo Indian
Before we met, you and I were halves unjoined except in the wide rivers of our minds. We were each other's distant shore, the opposite wings of a bird, the other half of a seashell. We did not know the other then, did not know our determination to keep alive the cry of one riverbank to the other. We were apart, yet connected in our ignorance of each other, like two apples sharing a common tree. Remember?

I knew you existed long before you understood my desire to join my freedom to yours. Our paths collided long enough for our indecision to be swallowed up by the greater need of love. When you came to me, the sun surged towards the earth and moon escaped from darkness to bless the union of two spirits, so alike that the creator had designed them for life's endless circle. Beloved partner, keeper of my heart's odd secrets, clothed in summer blossoms so the icy hand of winter never touches us. I thank your patience. Our joining is like a tree to earth, a cloud to sky and even more. We are the reason the world can laugh on its battlefields and rise from the ashes of its selfishness to hear me say, in this time, this place, this way - I loved you best of all.

This is the point in the ceremony when I usually talk about the wedding bands being a perfect circle, having no beginning and no end. But we all know that these rings do have a beginning. Rock is dug up from the earth. Metal is liquefied in a furnace at a thousand degrees. Hot metal is poured into a mold, cooled, and then painstakingly polished. Something beautiful is made from raw elements. Love is like that. It’s hot, dirty work. It comes from humble beginnings, made by imperfect beings. It’s the process of making something beautiful where there was once nothing at all.



Now we are post-wedding and post-honeymoon.. back at work and back in the classroom. I am no longer buying everything with an orange and blue color scheme and browsing through bridal magazines. We still eat Chipotle and watch Entourage and Trueblood all the time. Now all my money is disappearing into furniture and homestores and I have completely forgotten about jeans and shoes! This is horrific. Memo to me, get back on track. I will add it to my checklist. Along with: Change Name so Children can Legally Call Me Mrs. J. I probably still won't respond it, so I will to attach post-its to all their foreheads.