A Wedding in the Summer 1993

We started making preparations for the wedding. We had set the date for July 9th 1993. Jenny and I went to a store called Ambers beside East Hills Shopping Mall on the Belt Highway. They had all kinds of wedding supplies. We bought fake flowers for making teal green bouteneers for the guys lapels and I sorted through many flowers I would use to make a bouquet.The color scheme was white and teal. My favorite color was green, and teal was a mixture of green and blue. I had called the Parks and Recreation Dept. for the use of Civic Center Park for an outdoor wedding. It had a huge fountain in the center that would be shooting high cascades of water over a garden of beautiful roses that would be in full bloom at that time of year. There were roses all around the park and the trees in the Spring had pink and white blossoms bursting out all over them.
This way I wouldn't have to go to a florist and buy flowers however, I did gather as many rose petals as I could find from my own roses. Kelvin had gotten bags of them given to him from florists as well. The plan was to have a basket full of the rose petals and have little Brandy be the flower girl and walk behind me spreading the petals on the walkway as I made my way to the altar in front of the fountain to stand beside my husband to be. There was a white trellis behind us with climbing red roses that would be alive and blossoming and smelling up the place with their sweet perfume. It sounded so lovely.
I bought my wedding dress in the Spring at Deb's. It was prom season and they had many formal gowns awaiting the arrival of skinny teen age girls, giggling and laughing and saying, "What are you going to wear,no, what are YOU going to wear!" Here I was looking to buy a wedding dress, shaking and scared of the possibilities of my new life with someone I hardly new and what I did know gave me little comfort. I was determined to have my wedding and live the rest of my life happy and secure, knowing I'd finally done it. I'd captured a man! A younger, handsome man with blonde hair and blue eyes, whom I thought needed me and the security marriage gave us both.
The closer the date got the more frantic I became. I had chosen bride's maid dresses in a dark teal green color. They shimmered in the light. My daughter loved hers. Thankfully she paid for hers. I had asked LeeAnn to be my Maid of Honor but when she found out she would have to pay for her dress she said "no" and didn't show up for the big day. So much for best friends. I had found my wedding dress at Deb's, it had lacey sleeves and puffy lace at the shoulders . The bodice was beaded with sequins and the skirt was satin. It came to just above the knee. It was the most beautiful dress I'd ever seen. It was white. The veil I had bought at a wedding store downtown St Joseph that was owned by my previous landlady who had owned the trailer in Wathena. She sold me a beautiful long veil with netted material and a band with sequins and pearls. We put it on layaway. I found a necklace with a lone pearl hanging from the chain that settled at my throat and earrings to match.
His family was coming from Sacramento and Kelvin had invited some of his "old" friends to be there. The invitations were bought and sent out. We were to spend our honeymoon in Branson. He had a cousin Bill that owned a motel of cabins there called Cloud Nine that he said he would make us a deal on. We had asked for cash instead of presents since we already had everything we needed and didn't need a toaster or blender, we already had those things.
Kelvin's cousin, Madison's wife Pam, said she'd love to be a bride's maid and would happily pay for the dress. The wedding had cost me several thousand dollars already. I bought things a little at a time with the help of my daughter. I called a gal in Savannah about the cake. I told her I wanted a 3 tier white cake with teal green frosting. It was a beautiful thing when it came time on the day of the wedding to pick it up! It was decorated with teal green roses and leaves. I had purchased a topping for it, a garter that Kelvin would take off of my leg and throw it at the men waiting in a bunch to catch it. My bouquet that I had made for myself was white and lacey with teal green flowers in the center. Jenny showed me how to do it from a program we had watched on television and many books we had bought. She had a hot glue gun, we bought the plastic holders and after a few burns we had a marvelous bouquet and several others for the groomsmen and Jennifer and Pam. It was so much fun planning the wedding and going to stores looking for just the right thing to accent this or the other. Again I was very happy and was starting to come back to life.
Then came the rain! It rained and rained and rained all through June and areas were started to flood. It rained all week long the first week of July and they even announced in the local news station about the wedding at the park that was to take place at 7pm. We had a local dentist who worked at the church across from the park, start ringing the church bells at 6pm. It was going to be glorious! The dentist either forgot or set the timer for 6 am instead of pm, either way there were no bells. The evening of the 8th there was a continuing storm that felled a tree at the park and of course it fell across the walkway leading to the white flowery trellis where we were to take our vows. Kelvin stayed that night over at Madison's and Pam's apartment building, I thought we shouldn't see each other until the moment I met him at the makeshift "altar".
He called and told me about the tree and that he was working with the parks dept and Madison and Kyle to get it removed, cut up and out of there before 6pm. I had bought tapes of wedding songs that his cousin Grant would play in a large stereo system all around the fountain. He was in charge of the music. His sister's boyfriend Larry, had rented a teal green Ford Probe, a type of sports car. I was to ride to the park in that and at the end of the ceremony my new husband and I would walk back down that wide cement walkway with onlookers cheering and throwing birdseed. At that time there was a myth that rice caused birds to fill up and explode upon impact after eating the tasty rice grains so no one was throwing rice at weddings anymore. We would ride off into the sunset to Letterman's, a bar that was licensed for dancing, with a big dance floor and a band or DJ playing old songs from the sixties and seventies and some newer ones for the younger crowd.