by Meg Cabot
To: Jane Harris
Fr: Claire Harris
Re: Your phone call
Honey, I’m just writing because last night when you called, I could have sworn you said you were staying in Italy. With Cal Langdon. Permanently.
Daddy says I must have dreamed the whole thing. But I don’t think I would have dreamt the part where you said if your Wondercat development deal ends up going through, of course Cal will move back to New York with you, because the two of you arein a committed relationship and fully support one another in your careers.
That’s just not the kind of thing I usually dream about.
And another thing: this morning when I was at the Kroger Sav-On to buy some more Band-Aids for Dad (he put a nail through his thumb hanging up another watercolor from his sister—I wish she’d take up a new hobby), I ran into Marie Caputo, who asked me—with, I must admit, a smile I didn’t care for—how it felt to be gaining a son. Gaining a son? What is she talking about, sweetheart? She can’t have meant you and that Cal Langdon, can she? Are you two getting married? Does Holly know something I don’t know, and maybe told her mother?
How can you marry Cal Langdon, honey? Last time I talked to you, you said you hated him. And that he wouldn’t stop looking at your shoes.
None of this makes any sense to me. I don’t think you ought to be staying in Italy with—much less marrying—someone you’ve only known for a week.
I hope Marie misunderstood. In fact, I’m SURE she must have. You’ve always been such a sensible girl.
Besides, what about Malcolm, that nice investment banker you’ve been seeing?
Daddy’s right, and that phone call last night must have been just a dream. Because you would never move to Italy without The Dude.
Oh, wait, I asked you that last night, didn’t I? And you said you were going to pay your super’s son to bring The Dude to you there….
But that can’t be right. You would never do anything so silly.
Well, ignore me. Hope you have a nice time on the rest of your trip.
And try to be nice to that Cal Langdon. I’m sure he can’t help being in love with you. And you always did have very pretty feet.
Love,
Mom
* * *
To: Julio Chasez
Fr: Jane Harris
Re: The Dude
Hi, Julio! Listen, I was wondering. How would you feel about an all-expense paid trip to Italy?
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Why We Didn’t Get Married in Las Vegas Like Normal Americans
Maybe it’s because I also write books for younger readers, and so most of the 200 or so emails I get a day are from kids. But the vast majority of the emails in my inbox contain this question: “Where do you get your inspiration?”
Inspiration seems to be a big thing for my readers, but I have to say it’s not something I ever think about. Whenever anybody asks, I always have to pause and think, “Where DID I get the inspiration for that story?” The truth is, I usually can’t remember. To me, the story is generally the important thing, not how I thought it up.
My book Every Boy’s Got One is different, though. I got the inspiration for the story—a tale of love and elopement in the Italian countryside—from my own marriage, which was… well, an elopement in the Italian countryside.
* * *
a tale of love and elopement in the Italian countryside
* * *
I didn’t think writing a story about a bride would be all that interesting, though, either to me or my readers. It seemed to me that the story of how a woman came to BE a bride in the first place would be the more interesting tale.
So when I decided to write a novel based on my own wedding, I chose for my main characters the best man and maid of honor of the couple who are eloping, basically telling the story of my elopement (with, I’ll admit, numerous fabrications) from the point of view of my maid of honor.
Fabrication Number One: I didn’t actually have a maid of honor for my Italian elopement. The girl who was supposed to be my maid of honor—the best man’s girlfriend— bailed on him the week before our wedding.
Fabrication Number Two: In Every Boy’s Got One, the elopement takes place in Le Marche, in the village of Castelfidardo, the accordion-making capital of the world. My own wedding was hundreds of kilometers from there, in a town near Monaco called Diana San Pietro, in Ligeria. I changed settings because it’s been eleven years since I was last in Ligeria, and I was in Le Marche less than a year ago, so I felt the details would be more authentic.
Fabrication Number Three: In Every Boy’s Got One, the characters spend a lot of time emailing people on their Blackberries. I did not actually have a Blackberry, or access to the Internet, while I was getting married. In 1993, when my wedding took place, the Internet was not yet that widely known or available. At least to me.
These are, however, pretty much the ONLY ways in which my real-life wedding differed from the one in my book. And here’s the blow-by-blow to prove it!
“You kid me, si?” The secretario eyed us suspiciously over his typewriter.
My husband-to-be and I exchanged glances. The fact was, we were not kidding him. We wanted to get married in Diano San Pietro, a sleepy village on the Italian Riviera, just a few miles from Monaco. A popular beach resort in summer, the Ligurian town was relatively deserted in March, except for the natives, who farmed the olive groves that dotted the steep, climbing hills, and ran (when you could rouse them from their afternoon naps) the many restaurants and cafés that lined the beautiful shore.
Considering how deserted the town was, the secretario’s reluctance to marry us seemed odd. There certainly didn’t appear to be much going on in the Comune di Diano San Pietro, the city hall. With the exception of ourselves, the white-haired secretario, our translator, and would-be best man, Ingo, the building was empty. It didn’t look to me like there were a lot of people banging down the doors of Diano San Pietro city officials demanding to be married.
And yet the secretario looked extremely unwilling even to entertain the idea of two Americans being wed in his village.
“You do not understand,” he entreated us in broken English. “We here in Italy take the institution of marriage very seriously. There is much to be done. There are many forms that must be filled out.”
That was when we handed him the Stato Libero we had filled out in the office of the Consulate General of Italy back in New York before we’d left for Europe. Signed by four witnesses unrelated either to us or to one another, we had been assured by the consulate that this declaration was the only form we would need in order for us to be married on our vacation in Italy.
But for good measure, we also relinquished our birth certificates, which we’d had translated into Italian, and our passports. Italians, we explained, as nicely as we could, were not the only people in the world who took the institution of marriage seriously.
The secretario took the forms from us with an expression of bewildered chagrin. This was clearly not what he needed an hour before his lunch break—his three-hour lunch break.
Non-Fabrication Number One: In Italy, everything really does shut down from twelve to three, just like in Every Boy’s Got One: banks; shops; grocery stores; you name it, all in an effort to allow employees to enjoy lunch with their families.
Muttering that he was going to have to speak to the mayor, the secretario disappeared into an inner office. When he returned moments later, it was in the company of a large man in a jogging suit, who was eating a somewhat messy salami and onion sandwich. This gentleman, it appeared, held the office of mayor of Diano San Pietro. He took one look at our paperwork and inquired, with a sigh, “Why can’t you just get married in Las Vegas like normal Americans?”
Non-Fabrication Number Two: He really did say that, just like in the book.
I’ll admit it: I’m wedding-phobic. I have nothing against marriage. It’s th
e shower-gown-register-bouquet-cake stuff that gives me the heebie-jeebies. I’m often beseeched by readers to write sequels to my contemporary novels that feature the wedding of such-and-such a character. The fact is, I can’t do it because I’ve never actually planned a wedding myself, and have no idea how one goes about doing so.
Eleven years ago—when our trip to the Comune di Diano San Pietro took place—I was twenty-six, and my husband-tobe, Benjamin, was the ripe old age of thirty-two: certainly old enough to know what we wanted—which was not a big wedding. And certainly not one in Vegas, the wedding capital of the world.
Non-Fabrication Number Three: Like the bride and groom in my book Every Boy’s Got One, Benjamin and I had decided to elope in Italy—only not because our parents disapproved of our relationship (like Holly and Mark), but because:
a) The idea of looking for a wedding gown actually gave me hives (Benjamin was the one who found the dress I eventually wore, a Bill Blass cocktail gown in white lace with black stripes and polka-dots that hit me just above the knee).
b) While both our families got along, the idea of all of them in one room together was daunting. We both come from very large broods, and, both of us being of Irish/Italian or Irish/Hungarian descent, there was always the possibility of a fistfight breaking out, and
c) Benjamin, like Cal, the hero of Every Boy’s Got One (Non-fabrication Number Four) had some pretty negative opinions on the subject of marriage, and had often vowed never to marry at all. Since I’m all for marriage—just not weddings—this created an impasse in our relationship…for about a day. We were able to reach détente on the subject when our German friend Ingo suggested that if he were to get married, it would be in Italy, because it’s the most beautiful country in the world. Something about that appealed to Benjamin. And next thing I knew, we were filling out paperwork at the Italian consulate in Manhattan.
Eloping in Italy, back then, seemed the ideal solution to all of our problems… providing the Italian bureaucracy didn’t get in the way.
The mayor’s question about Las Vegas caused us to laugh nervously… until we realized he wasn’t kidding. Marrying Americans was apparently something the Comune di Diana San Pietro did not do often—in fact, they’d NEVER done it before.
And they weren’t very enthusiastic about making an exception for us.
I tried not to take it personally. It probably didn’t have anything to do with the fact that they were worried this was going to cut into their lunch hour. Right?
While we stood behind the railing that separated us from the secretario’s typewriter, our friend Ingo attempted to explain, in his excellent Italian, that the reason Benjamin and I couldn’t get married in Las Vegas like normal Americans was that we were not normal Americans. That both the groom and the bride were terrible romantics—that I, in fact, was a fan (though at that time, not yet an author) of romance novels, while Benjamin was a published poet—and that we had long ago decided that if we were ever going to get married, it would only be in the most romantic country in the world, Italy.
I stood there holding my breath, waiting to see if Ingo’s argument worked. It wouldn’t, of course, be the WORST thing if we didn’t end up coming home from Europe married. Neither Benjamin nor I had revealed our marriage plans to anyone except our four unrelated witnesses back in New York. Our plan was to return to the U.S. as a married couple, our wedding a fait accompli with which our doting families were going to have to cope… and which would relieve us of all responsibility of having to pick out china patterns or choose bridesmaid dresses. We could always, I figured, try again some other time….
But it wouldn’t be in Italy. As a poor graduate student (Benjamin) and administrative assistant (me), we’d blown all of our savings on this trip. We wouldn’t be able to make it back to Europe for some time.
To my relief, I could see first the secretario, and then the mayor, melting under Ingo’s eloquent argument (a miracle, considering how hungover he was after all the prosecco we’d consumed in our rented villa the night before—Non-Fabrication Number Five). Finally, with a frustrated sigh, the mayor laid down his sandwich and explained that he would marry us if:
a) We supplied a translator, approved by the Comune, who could tell us exactly what we were agreeing to when we said “si.”
b) We provided a “donation” to the “Children’s Fund.”
c)That we obtained additional paperwork, in the form of certificatos di cittadinanza from the Consulate General of the United States in Milan.
Since this last condition entailed a drive of approximately four hours each way, Milano being five hundred kilometers from Diano San Pietro—we argued strenuously against it, insisting that the Italian consulate in New York had said nothing of this additional form.
But the mayor remained firm. It was clear he thought we would bail on the whole thing if it meant an entire day’s drive. Because who in their right mind would give up a day of their vacation in Italy to drive back and forth to Milan? This would leave the Comune di Diana San Pietro free to do whatever it was they did all day when they were not marrying Americans… which appeared, to my eyes, to be very little.
When, defeated, we finally agreed to do all that they re quired of us, the secretario, looking very official, rolled a sheet of paper into his typewriter and began filling out our request for a certificato di matrimonio.
“And when,” he asked, “do you want to be married?”
We replied promptly, “April first.”
The secretario began typing, then suddenly stopped, looked at us over the rim of his glasses, and asked, “This is a joke. You are—who you say?—kidding us, si?”
I shook my head. It had been Benjamin’s idea to get married in Italy. It was my idea to do it on April Fool’s Day, playing on Benjamin’s belief that only fools get married in the first place.
I will admit that there was a delicious irony to the fact that, when we sent telegrams to our families afterward, they wouldn’t know until we returned from Europe whether we’d actually been married, or if it was all a prank.
Hey, at twenty-six, that seemed excruciatingly funny to me.
“You are not kidding,” the secretario said. He looked back down at his typewriter keys, trying not to smile.
The mayor eyed us suspiciously, then gave us another lecture on how in Italy, marriage is taken very seriously, unlike in America.
Then he picked up his sandwich and announced he could only marry us at nine o’clock in the morning on April first, since he was refereeing the Diano San Pietro boy’s football (soccer) game at ten (Non-Fabrication Number Six).
We assured him we’d be at the city hall promptly at nine. He looked as if he was thinking, Yeah. Right. The secretario, typing steadily, continued to smile to himself. It was clear neither man believed he would be seeing us on April first.
But the Comune di Diano San Pietro was sadly underestimating how tenacious a pair of young Americans in love can be.
We received only two speeding tickets on our way to Milano at five the next morning.
Non-Fabrication Number Seven: The wait in the Consulate General’s office turned out to be almost longer than the drive itself.
Non-Fabrication Number Eight: While we sat waiting for our certificatos, we listened to a young American woman as she tried to convince her older brother that marrying Paolo, an Italian auto mechanic whom she had met the week before, and who sat broodingly beside her, clearly not understanding a word of English, was a good idea. She was still arguing persuasively as we left, four hours later.
Non-Fabrication Number Nine: We really did eat at the Amici Amore restaurant, and the toilet really was just a hole with two footprints around it.
Fortunately, we received only one speeding ticket on our way back to Diano San Pietro.
Non-Fabrication Number Ten: The only CD in the car during this eight-hour drive was a collection of songs by Queen. “Fat-Bottomed Girls” really WAS our wedding’s theme song.
The transl
ator was much easier to come by than our certificatos. Word of the impending marriage of two crazy Americans spread like wildfire throughout the village.
Non-Fabrication Number Eleven: The eighty-year-old woman from whom we were renting our charming, two-storied house in the hills overlooking the sea, insisted upon going down to the Comune and yelling at the mayor for us, to assure him that we were very serious about being married, and that he had better not wear his referee uniform to the ceremony.
Touched by this gesture, I asked her to be my maid of honor.
Meanwhile, a German tourist staying in a pensione a few houses away introduced himself and said he would be happy to translate for us—his Italian was flawless, and he was a translator for a living.
The mother of another young neighbor boy—who regularly volunteered to ride his motorino into town each morning to fetch us breakfast rolls (Non-Fabrication Number Twelve)—insisted upon acting as official wedding photographer, claiming that our parents would be furious if we didn’t at least photograph the big event.
And the night before our wedding, some of the village children came to our house and decorated our front gate with flowers and hung two pairs of bedroom slippers from the wrought iron spikes, an old Italian tradition promising connubial bliss (Non-Fabrication Number Thirteen). They also presented me with a beautiful wreath of flowers to wear in my hair on the Big Day… garlic blossoms, I found out after I put it on (Non-Fabrication Number Fourteen). But it was the thought that counted.
These same children were the ones who, at seven in the morning of the Big Day, tapped on our door. Since I was further dressed than Benjamin, I answered. Two little cherubs looked up at me and explained in broken English, their big eyes soulful, that they were very sorry, but the mayor had telephoned and the soccer game had been moved up an hour, and so there could be no wedding that day.