A stressful marriage, the article states, “can be as bad for the heart as a regular smoking habit,” while a sound marriage can put a person at lower risk for everything from cancer to dementia. According to this article, “in virtually every category, ranging from violent deaths like homicide and car accidents to certain forms of cancer, the unmarried were at far higher risk than the married.” But… don’t get too excited, lifelong singles still had better all around health than those who’s marriages were rocky.

There did turn out to be a very interesting gender difference in the effects of marital discord on health. It didn’t have to to with how much fighting went on in a marriage, it had to do with the tone of the fighting. A woman’s immune systems went into the dumper if her husband withheld affection during their fights, but she was okay if there just a reassuring touch or tone of voice now and again. For the man, the threat was the presence of “controlling language” in his partner’s attacks, not the attacks themselves. The secret to good health is so not what I thought.

All this got me looking around for other studies on marriage and health and the thing I found most striking is that cohabitation didn’t come with the same health benefits as marriage. While this is very affirming for an altar-bound person such as myself, it also brought to the surface a question that has been gnawing at the back of my mind, somewhere behind the to-do lists and script re-writes and menu-planning. The question is this: “Does something magic happen when the minister pronounces you married?”

All my married friends say, “Something changes when you get married.”

“What changes?” I ask.

“Well… It’s just… Different.”

Obviously, whatever it is, it happens during the wedding, right? Because, as far as I can tell, that’s the only thing that marriage has that commitment or cohabitation definitely does not. The wedding. This gives me a little tingle-chill every time I think about it. Is there a moment of transformation? Transmogrification? Will we turn from committed to married like water to wine? Or is something invoked? A bond? Or the entity of marriage itself, like a third wheel, creating a trinity out of our current duo?  Will I feel it happen? Will my ears ring? Will have a floating feeling in my stomach?

Does anyone out there know what changes when you go from the “big C” to the “big M”? And more importantly… What makes it change? Seriously, I would like to have your input on this. Tell me what you know, or what you think you know, or what you feel in your gut to be true. I am on fire with curiosity about the way that this one little word – marriage – affects us so profoundly, even so far as to lengthen or shorten our life span.

deb

Chris Nottoli

On May 15^th in Libbey Bowl, I’m going to marry Deb Norton, the coolest, smartest, most talented person I’ve ever met. There might be 500 to 1000 people witnessing the ceremony. Why? Because I’m ego-maniacal braggart? Hardly. As you’ll see in the musical, that is the ceremony, the last thing I wanted was to be married, much less involved in some culturally mandated, pair-bonding ritual.  Was it because Deb’s dad has a shotgun to my back? Nope. Well, I hope he doesn’t…

I’m doing it this way because getting married any other way seemed downright alien. One man’s normal is another man’s nutty, I suppose. Turns out, I have what’s been called an ‘artistic temperament.’ Imagine the artistic brain like a pitch-back; that elastic thing you throw a baseball against and it lobs the ball right back to you. You throw a baseball at an artist, and what comes back to you is a mechanical trout singing a song about redemption. Thanks to my artistic temperament, I’ve been fired from almost every ‘straight’ job I’ve ever had because when the boss asked for customer service metrics, she usually didn’t want a poem about the ‘river-ness’ of communication. When the word “wedding” came at us, what pitched back was a full-length musical with krumping Jell-O, kale-loving cheerleaders, and special appearances by Greek gods.

Some folks might think that using a wedding as a fundraiser, plastering logos of sponsors, NASCAR-style, all over the bride, groom, wedding party, food and everything else and charging a ‘donation’ to come see two people get married is inappropriate, crass, profane, or at the very least…tacky. How they got ‘singing trout’ out of this pretty serious thing called ‘wedding’ is beyond me. So let me try to explain my brain.

I believe in transparency. I believe you are savvy enough to know that the arts are necessary – they make our lives better– and, they aren’t free.  I’d like you to believe that we aren’t going to wreck your experience of a play by putting a Coke in Hamlet’s hand, having Willy Loman hawk adult diapers or using Stanley Kowalski to sell Prozac. But, when it’s time to fundraise we’re not going to pretend we’re not trying to raise money. And, of course, we’re going to make it fun.

The conceit of this particular fundraiser, is that two folks are donating their wedding to support theater by performing a musical about trying to get married. For those who can’t imagine how this event will also contain the sacredness of marriage, try this: Sit down with your partner and write a play about how much you love them, and why you should commit your lives to one another. Lay bare and make manifest all the reasons you’re a better person for being with them by singing to them, dancing with them and listening to why they like you so much. Mine your fears, worries and secrets for the key to the bond that keeps you together in the face of overwhelming odds that you won’t stay together. It will deepen your relationship profoundly. That was our journey in the creation of this ritual.

Our relationship began at, was hot-dipped and pressure-tested by, and is now contained within Theater 150. There is no difference between us at this point: We are the theater and it is us. Our fortunes are tied together.

A wedding is a community event that binds a couple and bonds the witnesses to that union and, to each other. We want you to know the names of the donors and the businesses forging community through art. While watching this wedding play, don’t feel bad when we remind you (via a sponsor’s logo) that they sacrificed a lot or a little for your enjoyment. Know that they did it out of love. It’s their gift to you and your community. We want you to thank them on the street when you see them. We want you to stand up and say, “Count me in.”

Perhaps one man’s tacky is another man’s artifice-free, humorous gateway to a better future for you and yours and ours.

So come on down and watch this story of goofy, transparent and soaring devotion. If I can remember all my lines and hit all my high notes, you’ll enjoy yourself knowing you are responsible for making sure your town has a theater that will continue to do innovative, stirring and sometimes calculatedly-inappropriate work.

You know, Chris is the one who soldiers on through broken bones and deadly viruses. I am the unbreakable one with the iron-clad immune system who ladles chicken soup into the cheery, over-sized Superman mug. Ah, the tables, they turn.

A few weeks ago, our General Manager, Andy Gilman, told Chris that it was now or never. We either took a weekend away, or there wouldn’t be another opportunity until August or September. I think it was that same day that Chris’ best man gave him a very out-of-character dressing down, complete with stern finger wagging. It was something about, “The days keep getting longer and the dark circles keep getting deeper.” He ordered Chris to “keep it to a 13-hour day.” I don’t think he said, “Or I walk,” but in my imagining, it was implied. Who can blame him for not wanting to stand up for a sagging, grim, ghoul of a groom.

Fiddlenecks as far as the eye can see

So, Chris and I piled our belongings into the back of the truck and headed for wildflowers and moonstone beaches. The minimum of driving with the maximum of natural beauty, through the wildflower-crazed Carrizo Plane and then over to the central coast.

Chris in coreopsis

Honestly, it was the sweetest couple of days – endless stretches of butter-yellow coreopsis and bursts of purple lupines, hot soaks in mineral springs, sun-kissed dozing on grassy beach cliffs under sea-weed funky breezes, subterranean deep naps in the hotel room. Even the on-the-road work was pleasant at a shaded patio table with a cup of strong, locally-roasted coffee. Unfortunately, what I didn’t know is that the cliff-hike would have been less wheezy and the naps less sweaty under the influence of a wide-spectrum antibiotic.

All this is by way of explaining my blog silence over the past 10 or 11 days. I found that writing a blog entry is nigh on impossible when fighting the urgent physical imperative to lay down anywhere that is flat. However, I have a renewed lease on life. Viva la pharmaceuticals! I’ve finished my antibiotics and have started the pro-biotics that will restore and repopulate all of the floral collateral damage and I feel great! Clear, re-energized and so grateful for all my working parts now that I’ve been without them for a little while. My brain. My lungs. My senses. My muscles. I just want to spend time with them and really give them a place at my table again.

Then I’ll be ready to – knock on wood – continue my reportage on the way to alter.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that none of Chris’ friends are giving him books. Hm. I asked him about this and, though he has been idly browsing through my books, he doesn’t have need of his own books, or any books at all, really. I believe him when he says he’s been ready for four years. He knows what all this means to him. After all, he had to work it all out before he proposed, didn’t he?

Chris is one of the thinkiest people I know. He strategizes all day long in his mind – on paper, on whiteboards, with a stick in the dirt. We have a tablecloth in the filing cabinet, on which he drew a blueprint for one particularly strong and sudden vision. He doesn’t make a move, sometimes to my utter frustration, until he’s worked it all out. One example is researching. Every purchase requires fantastic amounts of researching – for price, durability, design, safety, functionality, sustainability and least amount of people harmed in the process of creating it. That last one can take a few days on its own. If Chris couldn’t research, I’m not sure he’d want to live. I’ll have to ask him. But, I suspect even I might not be enough to fill a hole like that.

After noticing the sound of my teeth grinding during one of his research sessions, he asked a therapist if he wasn’t being reasonable to spend a few weeks of intense research when buying something as important as tires. The therapist responded, “Well, some people just buy the tires.” This was the first time it had occurred to him that his shopping style was “different.”

Before going another step, I have to say that Chris’ dogged enjoyment of research has resulted in some extraordinary purchases, my engagement ring being one of them. It took him almost a year to put it together, but the result is the most perfect ring that a man could ever give me. It’s made of recycled gold, so I know that no landscape was raped and no one was enslaved on my behalf. It sports a sapphire instead of a diamond, completely clearing the whole De Beers thing in one leap and again avoiding any environmental or human collateral damage. And the sapphire is domestic, sustainably mined in Montana. Next, he worked with local jewelers Stan and Hallie Katz at Human Arts for design and assembly, ensuring that some of the purchase would go to support the community in which we live. He made sure that they created a ring with a full bezel, even though that’s highly oddball, because he knew I’d be gardening, backpacking and getting my hands into all kinds of rough situations at the theater and he wanted me to be able to wear my ring without the constant threat of losing the stone from the setting.

A man who puts that much care into the ring is also a man who has his mind right before he proposes marriage. And then there’s been four more years of research since then, as we’ve lived and worked together and explored what it is to be committed while waiting for our opportunity to marry. I believe him. He’s ready.

And so am I. If it were happening tomorrow, I feel sure and clear and so, so happy. But, it’s not happening tomorrow. It’s not happening for another month and change and while Chris feels there could always be more research, I feel I can always be more ready. There is no end to getting prepared. There is always more you can do. And it’s in the getting ready for a thing, that I find so much richness.

Getting ready has included, but is not limited to, writing the wedding musical, which has been an incredibly enriching experience. Because of it, I see even more ways that can connect to and love Chris. I got to go down memory lane and see everything we’ve been through and marvel at the people we’ve become in just seven years. I got to laugh myself out of my chair with Chris and Val (My MOH and long-time Co-Writer) in our writing sessions. And, I got surprised by some lurking issues that I am relieved to have had the opportunity to address before the knot is cinched. Reading poetry, researching the tradition and the ceremony, listening to my friend’s stories, grilling my friend, Reverend Nancy, questioning, probing, turning over rocks, groping in the backs of drawers.

In acting school they told us, “Prepare like your life depends on it, then when you walk on stage, throw it all away.” I think this is the same basic principle. All this prepping is a way of building the aisle, down which I’ll walk. And, I want a solid aisle, not some rope bridge. Once I join Chris at the altar the aisle is behind me, kicked away, like in an Indiana Jones movie when some kind of bloodthirsty hordes are after him. Then he’s on to the next thing. Probably more adventure. Maybe treasure.

~deb

One day, a few months before our wedding, Robert sat me down at a table in one of our favorite cafes in Santa Monica, and told me that he didn’t want to exchange any vows.

I was startled. No vows? In planning the ceremony, I had already been noticing how far away our wedding plans were from a conventional church wedding. I’d grown up in the UK, and had always imagined a traditional Church of England wedding in the local parish church, stained-glass windows bathing us in blessings, varnished pews glowing, and ancient hymns played on a panting pipe organ. The only other option in Britain until recently had been the Registry Office wedding (a bit like a City Hall ceremony, I believe), and having experienced a close friend’s wedding where the registrar whizzed through a few paragraphs of legalese, consistently mispronouncing the bride’s name, I wasn’t keen on that.

Coming to America, I had been impressed by the imagination and freedom of wedding ceremonies here, and having attended some beautiful nuptials in gardens and on beaches, I was willing to expand my vision.

But no vows? I stared back at Robert over my cooling cappuccino. What could this mean? Wasn’t he serious about our marriage? Why didn’t he want to promise me anything? Until this moment, he’d shown no signs of anything other than a keen loyalty and devotion to me, and a sharply honed sense of integrity… but now this?

“Please hear me out- this is very important to me,” he pleaded… and so I did.

The problem with vows, he said, was that they could get you into a lot of trouble. Was it really a good idea to make binding commitments to each other in a sacred ceremony when we had no idea what the future might bring? What if one day we had grown apart or stopped loving each other and decided to split? How would we feel about breaking our vows then?

I thought about couples I’d known who had been in that exact situation- either breaking up and feeling ashamed of their broken promises, or staying together out of a sense of duty, “even when the love was gone” as one of them said to me proudly, in front of her long-suffering spouse. Neither alternative sounded remotely appealing.

I didn’t want to think that this would ever happen to us. And anyway, if we didn’t make any promises to each other, how strong would our marriage be? What was to stop him just walking out on me one day?

Robert put his espresso cup down and eyed me sternly. “Val, this is you and me we’re talking about! We’ve already been through a lot. You know me better than that!”

“You’re right, I do. I’m just nervous, that’s all.”

“I prefer the idea of “so long as we both shall love” rather than some promise for life that we don’t absolutely know we’re going to be able to keep.”

I did see his point. And so I listened as Robert laid out his idea— that we would state intentions to each other instead. They would be loving statements of the direction and purpose of our union, and would lay the foundation for our path ahead. And so, after consulting with our minister, we decided to express intentions instead of vows at our ceremony.

Over the weeks ahead, we discussed the topic, along with all the other practical considerations of a wedding. Seven weeks beforehand our venue fell through, we needed a kitchen for the chefs (friends of ours), and a grand piano for John, a pianist friend from London who was going to play at the reception—so many lists, so many phone calls, so much that I’d never done before—and gradually, in all that newness, I began to embrace the idea of intentions.

On the day itself, I sat upstairs in my robe having my hair and makeup done. When our minister popped in to see how I was doing, I began to cry. “I wish I had a script— why did I say I would create intentions? What if I freeze in front of our guests?”

Reverend Deborah smiled calmly at me. “You’ll be fine. I suggest you put on your dress.”

Strange advice, I thought, as I dabbed at my eyes trying not to smudge my makeup, but I did as I was told. As I stepped into my ivory beaded gown, fresh hyacinth blossoms in my hair, I became aware of a sense of peace and poise. I was ready. I walked down the stairs and into the sunny garden, my father on one side, my beloved on the other, our faces shining.

I don’t remember the details of the ceremony very clearly now. I remember the joy on Robert’s face, mirrored by my own. I remember the freedom with which we stated our intentions. One in particular has stayed with me: “ I intend to support your creativity and nurture my own.” I remember the loving support of our friends and family, some of whom often still remark to us that “there was something so amazing about that ceremony”. And I know above all, the infinite blessing of a loyal, loving and stable marriage, based on clear intentions and unconditional love.

~Valerie Kampmeier

Just Let the Waters Wash You Clean

I have no advice about marriage, even though my husband and I are celebrating our 23^rd wedding anniversary on April 4^th. The longer it goes, the less I know for sure.

Every single day I feel we’re only as good as the moment right before we walk to our separate work spaces in our home; or only as good as how well we collaborate when the unexpected rings into our lives and we wing it, with or without each others’ sympathy. Here’s why: several times in my life I have had the experience of hearing from one long-married spouse or another, “We are SO MARRIED, we’ll still be together when they wheel us to the dining hall for cookies and bingo thirty years from now!” Darkly, and without a single exception, every one of those marriages has come apart. This has made me very humble in the face of perceived domestic security. Thus I always pause before giving marital advice, long and hard, if only to ask myself anew, anew, ‘What do I really even know about it?’  No advice then, but perhaps just a few observations and even they are spoken at a good clip, knocking on wood – and in stride. Here’s one: every day is a bonus point in a good marriage, whether it was a great day or a stomach-churner and if you’re smart, no one is keeping score.

In marriage, time itself will encourage you and also it will test you. Anniversary after anniversary. Though like any other test, it’s best not to cram the night before. Best to learn as you go and especially good to learn how to let go. Perhaps the greatest daily gift one can give a partner is to  be generous with your heart and not to judge; not to need them to act within expected emotional boundaries; not to draw any lines in the sand (especially that) and not to need to understand them as they change (and especially this). Because the true test of the years themselves seems to be not what you are at any given point – happy, rock-solid, Very Married, working-some-things-out – but rather how light on your feet you are in the face of change and if you’re still close enough to feel each others’ body-warmth while it all happens. Not common change, either: deep change. Change from left field. Change from an unrecognizable sound crashing in the next room. Change spoken while talking in one’s sleep. Change of habit. Change of preference. Change not knowing to what, but just because one feels it coming. Because the span of years themselves seem, in retrospect, to be only a current of flux running through the cupped hands. The big bonus being that you’re kneeling at the same streambed together, both thirsty, both fascinated and for the briefest moment of all – still safe, still together.

Then maybe this can happen: a silent moment broken only by the sound of a sip of tea and the crunch of toast on any given morning in a span of decades that wrenches your heart with gratitude more deeply than 250 close friends toasting your 30^th wedding dinner in the theater that’s finally on it’s feet with a whole wall of awards and next season’s seed money in the bank. Just one brief stunner with a summer breeze barely moving across the hands of first one, and then the other of you – still together after all these years.

~Jemi Reis-McDonald

I believe in proofreading. I believe that it shows courtesy and consideration and earnestness. I also believe in being ready with curiosity when spelling mistakes occur.

I recently sent out a godforsaken email invite to this blog and in the subject line, I wrote, “My Journey to the Alter.” I misspelled altar again in the body of the email. And in the name of full disclosure, I also wrote “your” when I meant “you’re,” and in my follow-up email (sigh), used the possessive “its” when I needed the conjunction “it’s,” but that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

After the short-lived embarrassment, I got right to the joy. Altar. Alter. Hee! It’s too good. I went running, with gleeful anticipation, to my on-line etymology dictionary… Any excuse. It’s word porn, really.

Alter: to change (something),  from O.Fr. alterer, from M.L. alterare “to change,” from L. alter “the other (of the two),” from PIE *al- “beyond” + comp. suffix -ter (cf. other). Intransitive sense “to become otherwise” first recorded 1580s

Altar: O.E., from L. altare (pl. altaria), probably originally meaning “burnt offerings” (cf. L. adolere “to worship, to offer sacrifice, to honor by burning sacrifices to”), but infl. by L. altus “high.”

Doesn’t that just give you a chill right up the back of your neck? “The other of the two?” “To become otherwise?” “Burnt offerings?!” Oh my. The two words tango semi-violently, eying each other with fascination. I wonder if I’ll spiritually self-immolate when I say, “I do.”

My married friends all tell me that on the other side of my wedding day, it’ll be different. There is a gravitas when they say, “It changes things…” They let it hang in the air, not revealing the details to the uninitiated. The implication being that, “This is a transformation that can only be gleaned in the experience… It’s dangerous. Not for the faint of heart. But, it’s worth it.” Yikes! And, Oh, boy!

A friend wrote to me, “Spelling is overatted.” A vision of Mrs. Patterson with crazily teased hair arose. This was followed by a delightful fantasy inspired by the movie Ben, in which droves of rodents teem out of the sewers to gnaw all of the red pens into disuse, so that all of the disobediently punny misspellings can goof around, uninhibited, bringing us their playful, and sometimes useful, information.

He caught this cold from me, and my guilt compels me to ply him with care, which he fends off with adorably weak little protests. I can’t get anything bad-tasting down him, like the traumatic, but effective remedies I get from my brilliant witch doctors, Carol Wade-Hak and Tara Jeffery. But, I did manage to tempt him with vitamin C crystals drowned in apple juice and found some cherry flavored zinc lozenges that were candy-tasting enough even for his very suspicious palate.  I also got some veggies down him by drowning them in peanut sauce, which is full of fresh ginger and garlic. It’s like his immune system is a political prisoner, and I’m on the outside working for the resistance, slipping messages past the guard while distracting him with feminine wiles, or in this case, treats.

All this puts me in mind of that “sickness and health” vow. Neither of us is a good patient. I get passive-aggressive (It has to be somebody’s fault that I’m sick.) and he gets annoyingly stoic. We’re both belligerent about admitting that we’re sick, and we both compound this foible by doing little to prevent it in the first place. Partly this is due to being too busy, but even when the schedule is more spacious, we tend to treat our bodies like cheap cars – put as little time and money into them as possible and wring as much work out of them as you can. Just patch, primer and jerry-rig some more miles out of them. We’re both pretty dinged up, but Chris… Well, we’re pretty sure that he’s broken at least half of his bones. He’s had pneumonia 3 times, that I know of.

The impending marriage is bringing visions of the long-term implications of this short-sighted behavior. Do we really want to stick each other with a clunker? When you enter into a 50+ year contract, your want something dependable.

I am seriously thinking about re-evaluating my maintenance regime. Otherwise, on the altar, I’m going to feel like one of those unconscionable used-car salesman that dress up a junker in some fresh paint and sell it with a no-return policy. Not a good way to enter into a contract that so explicitly calls upon the signers for transparency and integrity.

Disclaimer: Chris is concerned that this blog entry will have you all worrying about the state of our actual well-being. Please don’t. Aside from my enjoyment of hyperbole, there is the fact that we are much healthier than your average person with an artistic vocation. Neither of us is hooked on heroin, having irresponsible sex with multiple partners or getting into bar fights. With the exception of Chris’ insomnia, my undiagnosable hysterical ailments that resolve without intervention and our mutual inability to find time for sunshine and exercise… We’re in pretty great shape.

La Deb

Now I’m heading into rewrites, but there won’t be any cabin this time. This will require focus. I look in the mirror and say, “Focus, Norton!” I actually do this. Whenever ago, I would regain focus by going on a hike. Nothing like some strenuous locomotion to restore perspective. But, who has time for that. So, now, I bring focus about with some compassionate self-bullying. It works, in a pinch.

Yeah, focus. So, when I tell people I’m writing this play in which to get married, I get looks. I don’t know. I’ve been Googling marriage and weddings for a while now and all I get are novelty ceremonies involving Elvis, Harley Davidsons, goth gear and even mimes, or… SHOPPING. Shopping accounts for about 95% of all wedding sites. How do these things make you more married? And everyone knows I’d rather eat salted socks than shop. Nothing wrong with shopping, I just suck at it.

Chris and I were going to write the wedding play before we ever even thought of morphing our wedding into a fundraiser. Stories are the only way we understand anything. Sometimes information can lead to understanding, but the big epiphanies tend to drop down as the result of a well-told story. So, what better way to enter into marriage consciously, than through a story.

And that’s what’s happening. Through writing our story, I’m understanding who we are together, the important role that our community plays in our relationship, what we have to bring to a marriage and most importantly, what marriage is (that’s another blog entry. Actually that’s another 14 blog entries). In order to get this play written, Chris and I have had to knock our brains against each other, open our hearts and humble ourselves. Already, even before it’s completely written, the process of finding our story has taught us so much. And that’s what relationships are for, right? Am I right about this? Relationships are continuation school for life. If you’re interested in knowledge, that’s the place to look. And looking at your relationship through the lens of story, takes it all to another level. Because what does a lens do? It focuses stuff.

“Focus, Norton!”

I worried most about whether it would be interesting to anyone but us. What if we get up there in front of everybody and our story isn’t even entertaining, and everybody is just wondering if the cake will be chocolate with raspberry or white with lemon (There will be every kind of cake you can think of, actually.). Fortunately for all of you, I’m in a relationship with Chris, who is such a rambunctious and complicated creature that any story in which he appears, will be entertaining. It turns out there aren’t enough pages… I mean, there’s the broken neck (then the hand, foot, and all those ribs – and that’s just since he met me), near-death back-country hikes, the Christmas fetish combined with the love of heavy metal music, the bats, the basic fervor and conviction with which he approaches the smallest moment in life, the… Well, the Mongol hordes. I couldn’t fit in the charging bear or the garden of anger and spite. I could write a play a week. I could write a television series and every week would be a cliff-hanger. When Chris is in the story, it’ll keep your attention.

A final script is imminent, and then there will be rehearsals, which will be chronicled here, of course. Daily, we create our stories, and through our stories, we find meaning. When I cross the threshold into marriage, I want to know what it means, and I want to mean it when I say, “I do.”

~deb

It’s a surreal experience today. Wedding planning sessions are called production meetings and various committees give reports about their progress. Problem areas get troubleshot and everyone involved can make a piece of it their own. The committee heads go away and coordinate with their people and I hear back about what they’ve come up with. Decisions get made based on what folks can donate, volunteer or get sponsored. There is s small army of folks working on marketing (anyone else out there have an advertising budget for their wedding?) and ticket sales. Selling tickets to a wedding sounds loony.

All I want is a team of horses at the wedding. Maybe a guy shoots from horseback as they stampede across the stage and a dude falls from the top of the Libby Bowl into a pit of foam blocks. There should be a motorcycle jump timed perfectly to intercept the bouquet toss. There definitely needs to be flame pots and a lava flow out of the mouth a 20 ft. high Tikigod. Somebody needs to get a pie in the face and there should be lots of tackling.

And everyone needs to have a good time. That’s the bottom line: This is a sacred moment for Deb and I but we’re doing it in public and it’s a fundraiser so it better be really entertaining. If folks are going to gather in a place, for a community ritual, then it had better be amazing. Otherwise, why would folks keep the tradition up right? Or, am I off base here?

Imagine Deb and I in a 10 ft. clear plastic bubble, in our little world, being rolled around the nuttiest scene of mayhem and spectacle you can imagine. That’s my wedding.

I guess when I think of it that way, it’s probably exactly what I would have wished for when I was a kid.

Chris