Another anniversary

Today seems like a good day to take a break from our travel stories. I wouldn't want to make anyone too jealous with my descriptions of breathtaking scenery, rare native treasures, and scorched cruise ship furniture.

Plus, today marks a different anniversary. It is Joe's and my 2nd anniversary of the longest wedding photo session in history. Oh, wait, that was yesterday. Today actually marks two years since we were married.

At least we think we were. This has always been a cause for concern on my part, because the minister, Mark, never actually pronounced us man and wife, or woman and husband, or anything legal like that. It had always seemed a traditional part of wedding ceremonies, and one that we had, perhaps naively, assumed would be included in ours. Perhaps Mark was too overcome with emotion to remember to perform this routine but significant part of the ceremony. Perhaps he was thinking, these two don't know what they're getting into.

So through the rest of the ceremony, I worried. I felt an urgent need to whisper to him, like the scene in Princess Bride, "Say 'man and wife!' Say 'man and wife!' " The difference being, of course, that in the movie it is the bad guy saying this as he is trying to force the lovely maiden, whose true love has been mostly dead all day, to wed him against her will. So there is not too much similarity between that scene and our wedding, but nevertheless that's what I was thinking. I find that Princess Bride has many such lines that are applicable to everyday life, even though the plot and characters are far removed from any reality I'm aware of.

Of course I brought this nagging issue up to the minister as soon as we were finished taking more pictures, which was 6 months later. Were we, actually, married or not? This had great and far-reaching implications for many things, such as whether or not we could, legally, display all those wedding photos we had taken. If we weren't technically married, well...it was questionable.

My chance to question Mark came when he brought the marriage license for us to sign. How do you tell a respected minister that he had, by all appearances, goofed up on your most important day? I took a deep breath, prayed for wisdom, and chose the direct route.

"You didn't say we were husband and wife!" I hoped it did not come out accusatory. "Are we really married?" I went on. "Is there some sort of addendum we could do to the ceremony, right here? Or do we have to do it all over again?"

At this point Joe fainted, no doubt envisioning that such a course would necessitate retaking every single photo.

But the minister, as always, was calm. "I most definitely said it in the prayer," he assured me.

I was sure that counted with the Lord, but I had my doubts about the state. However, Mark seemed confident that this was okay, and so I signed. Well, I thought, even if the state doesn't abide by prayers, it can't argue with a signed license.

The irony is that 2 years and 1758 photos later, we still do not have a single wedding photo displayed. Even though we have a license to do it.