Life Is Short (No Pun Intended)

by Jennifer Arnold

  It probably should not have surprised me, given the frequent ironies of my life, that after we’d finally picked a date and secured the church and reception location, the American Board of Pediatrics decided to move the board exam for the first time ever from the fall to, yes, you got it, the spring. And the date they picked was exactly five days before our wedding date. Of course, it wasn’t announced until we had already booked and announced the wedding date and venue. Being the typical crazy person that I am, I thought to myself, I can handle it—what’s a little more stress to add to the year? That year I was graduating from my fellowship, moving to New York from Pittsburgh, starting a new job as an attending neonatologist, planning my wedding in another state—Florida—and oh, by the way, taking my boards! Another example of how good I am at piling it on.

  The second decision Bill and I had to make was where we would get married. Because I was moving from Pittsburgh to Long Island to be with Bill after graduation from fellowship, just deciding which state to hold the wedding in was challenging. I had strong roots in Pittsburgh after having lived there for seven years. However, I would soon be living in New York, which is where Bill grew up and where much of his family still was. But I was originally from Florida, almost my entire family was there, and even some of Bill’s family now lived in Florida.

  I had always envisioned a beach wedding—not necessarily barefoot on the sand in front of the setting sun, but at the beach. So Pittsburgh was out. Long Island had beautiful beaches out in the Hamptons and Montauk. We toured quite a few wedding venues there, and the benefit would be that we didn’t have to travel far. Although we liked the idea of the beaches of Long Island, we found the venues very expensive and ultimately realized the beaches did not have as much sentimental value to us as the ones in Florida.

  One weekend, Bill and I flew to St. Petersburg Beach, the beach I had grown up on, to try to make a decision. We met my parents and my aunt Barbara and uncle Jack. We both stayed at the Don Cesar Hotel and fell in love with it. I felt that if I was going to plan a wedding remotely, this was the best place, since my mom and Aunt Barbara were there. Bill was in full agreement. He fell in love with the beach I already loved so much.

  I wanted to check out the Don Cesar Hotel for the reception not only because it was a beautiful, old-Florida-style beachfront hotel built in the 1920s, but also because I knew it had sentimental value to my family. It had been abandoned for many years in the 1960s, and my mom and her sisters used to play in it. What an amazing playhouse!

  Now it was refurbished and beautiful. It was built during the height of the Art Deco era and exuded sleek elegance, with really cool architectural embellishments. It was affectionately known as “the big pink hotel” to the locals, because the entire exterior was almost a Pepto-Bismol pink. If you were driving along the beach in St. Pete, you could not miss it. Many people had their weddings/receptions there, because it offered every kind of option possible, from formal soaring indoor ballrooms to pavilions on the beach.

  Because we had such a large invitation list, we choose the grand ballroom for the reception. With magnificent chandeliers and floor-to-ceiling arched windows looking right out at the Gulf of Mexico, the views were truly breathtaking. The room had two tiers connected by curved staircases. The dance floor was on the lower tier. Although many people elected to get married at the hotel or on the Gulf of Mexico right out in front, we decided to have a traditional Catholic wedding, which meant having the wedding in a church. We toured many churches in the area, and ultimately chose St. Mary Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church in downtown St. Petersburg. This meant guests would have to take the bridge from St. Pete Beach to downtown and back.

  Bill was very excited to plan the cocktail hour. Since he had given me free rein in almost everything else, I wanted him to choose all aspects of it. He picked a selection of sushi, seafood towers, and cheese platters, as well as an open bar with unlimited Glenlivet Scotch for the guys, Veuve Clicquot champagne, and the signature “starfish fruit” cocktails as the featured drink. For the dinner, the guests could pick from a filet mignon, chicken, fish, or a fancy vegetarian chef’s special. Bill and I had done some of the tasting before we committed to a menu, and we both picked a favorite.

  Planning a wedding, there were so many details to address—so many whats, wheres, whens, hows—fortunately, at least I knew the “who.” I also knew the one aspect of the wedding that I wanted—a starfish theme. I love everything about the ocean, and one of my favorite stories is The Starfish Story, a lovely parable about an old man who walks the beach trying to rescue the starfish that have become beached. A young man who sees what he is doing questions his motivation, “You can’t possibly save them all, you can’t even save one-tenth of them. What you’re doing isn’t going to make a difference.” At which point, the old man picks up another starfish, throws it back into the ocean, and replies, “It made a difference to that one.” It was the perfect theme for our wedding, and fortunately Bill was willing to go with it, too!

  My mom was truly our wedding planner and organized the whole process from start to finish, although we did hire a day-of wedding planner to take some of the pressure off the big day. With her attention to detail and interior decorating skills, I knew she would not let me make any mistakes in planning my dream wedding.

  One detail that we had to take care of, the one that I think all brides get excited about, was picking out my dress and dresses for our bridesmaids. I had been searching the Internet for styles I liked for about a month before I went home to Florida on a long weekend and decided to start shopping with my mom. We went to a local wedding boutique, The Collection, in my favorite shopping area near Orlando, Park Avenue in Winter Park. I brought printouts of all the dresses I had liked online.

  At the shop, I couldn’t believe it—they had one of my top three dress choices on sale, 75 percent off, in a size eight. I, of course, had to try it on. Their bridal tailor helped me pin it all up using large clasps that look like chip clips on steroids, and the dress went from a size eight adult to size eight my size—it was amazing. The tailor said she could completely break down the entire dress for me and make it a perfect fit.

  After trying on many other dresses, I kept thinking about the first one I tried on that had caught my eye from my Internet search. Because the alterations were going to cost as much as the dress, I realized that getting a dress at 75 percent off might be the only way we could afford one that I wanted. So I decided to buy my wedding dress off the rack. I never thought in a million years that would happen. After many fittings, my amazing tailor created basically a brand-new dress that fit me perfectly! It was fantastic!

  We didn’t want too large a bridal party, since we were getting married in our thirties. However, it was our first wedding, and, we hoped, our only, of course. We decided on five attendants for each side. My bridal party included my closest friends, Lakshmi, my maid of honor, Chetna, my matron of honor, and three other bridesmaids who were close friends from Pittsburgh, Manju, Nickie, and Danelle. Bill’s groomsmen included all of our brothers: his two brothers and two stepbrothers and my brother, David. Bill had a crazy insane fondness for his little brothers. Tom, six-foot-four, was a professional firefighter, paramedic, and lieutenant in the Brevard County Fire Department. Joe, a slightly shorter six feet, was a banker and had plans to go to law school, which he later did.

  According to Bill, Tom was a man of bravery and selflessness, and Joe, the more buttoned down of the three, was smart as a whip and an enthusiastic get-things-done type. Bill’s pride in “these two clowns” was beyond brotherly, and he loved that he had helped them buy their first cars and find their first jobs. Bill was equally proud of his stepbrothers, Jonathan and James. Jon was very similar to Bill, both academically and professionally. They both loved sciences and had gotten bachelor’s degrees in biology. James had elected to stay in South Carolina, where he had gone to college, and made quite a home for himself, with the sun and sand nearby. He was the last of the five
boys to get married, six years after our wedding day.

  We asked Bill’s younger cousins from New York, Paige and Patrick, to be our flower girl and ring bearer. We would have asked our only niece, Maddie, to also be a flower girl, but she was still too young.

  All the other details slowly fell into place. We picked French blue and silver for the colors. I picked out a designer, Carolina Herrera, and the color for the bridesmaids’ dresses, an almost Tiffany blue, but allowed them to pick out the style dress that they liked, so the dresses went together but each was different.

  My mom started gathering all the decorations for the reception in an elegant beach theme with starfish embellishments. My mom and I were back and forth on the phone and sharing pictures of decorating ideas via email almost weekly. We designed our wedding invitations with the help of Bill’s youngest brother Joe’s girlfriend, Karen. He had recently started dating Karen, who would later become his wife. He proposed to her the day after our wedding in Florida. Bill and I even took a few dance lessons. Neither of us has rhythm, unfortunately, but we had a blast doing it.

  When our wedding weekend finally came, I had just taken my boards and was so ready for some fun. We flew to Florida and spent a few days staying at my parents’ house in Orlando. We did a few last-minute preparations—final dress fitting, nails (even Bill got a manicure), and looking over all the beautiful decorations my mom had put together. My mom had her close friends she worked with at Walt Disney World helping us, too! Our florist was also a friend and the florist at the Grand Floridian Hotel. My mom’s best friends Gloria and Lulu, both of whom I had grown up with, were going to be there, and although they were supposed to only be guests, they were my mom’s right-hand women, making sure all went well that day. My mom has great friends.

  The day before the wedding, we checked into the Don Cesar Hotel. We had a rehearsal at the church, which was when the first bout of drama occurred. As my dad was driving Bill and me into the church parking lot, another car hit us on the passenger side! Fortunately, it was a small fender-bender, but, of course, it shook us up a bit. We had a fabulous wedding rehearsal dinner with all of our immediate family, out-of-town family, and the bridal party, which was hosted by Bill’s dad and stepmom at a local Italian restaurant. Quite a few people made speeches, including Chetna, my matron of honor, and Joe, Bill’s youngest brother.

  Bill and I formally thanked all our family for their support and for coming from near and far. We gave out gifts to the bridal party and did all the traditional things you are supposed to do at a rehearsal dinner. After that, we organized a cocktail hour in the Don Cesar lobby for all our guests who were in town and available to get together. Although I was very tired, I was very glad we had added this event to the evening before the wedding, because it gave us much-needed relaxed quality time with all our out-of-town family and friends.

  We had about 225 people accept our invitation. There was my family, scattered all over from Florida to L.A., Bill’s family from everywhere, and our friends, mostly from Pittsburgh, New York, Chicago, and Maryland. No one objected to our destination wedding, especially at such a beautiful place.

  The wedding day, Saturday, April 12, 2008, began with a Continental bridal breakfast and mimosas for the ladies of the wedding party, but as is typical, it was interrupted by the groom’s party raiding the room and stealing a few muffins and coffees. The wedding itself took place at St. Mary Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church in downtown St. Petersburg. The priest who married us, Father Tom Hartman, was very close to Bill’s mom and had baptized Bill when he was a baby. He was now a monsignor and quite famous for a television broadcast he shared with a New York rabbi, Rabbi Marc Gellman. Together, they called themselves the God Squad, and they were very respectful of each other’s faith as they addressed issues of spirituality and religion on a Sunday morning television show.

  We flew Father Tom and his assistant down from Long Island and put them up in the hotel so Father Tom could preside over the wedding mass. He had Parkinson’s disease, but he wanted to marry us, and we couldn’t have been more appreciative.

  For the wedding day, my parents had rented a limousine to get everybody in the wedding party staying at the Don Cesar to the church and back. The guys would go first, and then the limo would come back for my bridesmaids and me. Of course, there was another moment of drama—another car accident. This time it was a major accident that resulted in the bridge from the Beach, where we were all staying, to the mainland, where the church was, closing.

  The men, who had gone to the church first and had seen the accident happen en route to the church, didn’t think it was going to affect traffic. But the limo could not get back to St. Pete Beach by way of that bridge, so it had to drive all the way back to St. Petersburg, over to Tampa, and across Tampa Bay, which took an extra hour. There was no way the women (the bridal party—including the moms and sisters) could possibly get to the church on time, nor could most of the guests. Everybody was stuck in traffic.

  On the morning of the wedding, we ladies were all enjoying ourselves getting hair and makeup done in the salon and getting dressed. Trying to help me relax, my bridesmaids confiscated my cell phone. After we were all dressed and ready to head downstairs, I began to wonder why no one seemed eager to get to the church. I kept asking, “What time is it?” “Don’t we need to get moving?”

  All the bridesmaids and the moms kept saying that the limo wasn’t ready for us yet. Finally, after time kept passing, I demanded to know what was going on. My mom and my bridesmaids were trying to protect me from any stress on my wedding day with vague responses. Finally, after more questioning, they told me there had been a bad accident on the bridge, and they couldn’t get ahold of the limo.

  Of course, my heart stopped and I said, “Has anyone heard from Bill?” My mind immediately went to the worst possible thing that could possibly happen on my wedding day. Had Bill been in the accident? Was he okay?

  I demanded to have my phone back and started texting him. Fortunately, he responded. He was fine, waiting for me at the church, and was so glad to hear from me and that I was not standing him up. He told me that no one in the wedding had been involved in the accident. I was so relieved to hear that he was all right that at that point I didn’t care when or where we got married. At one point, we were joking via text that if the church canceled our wedding because we were too late, we would just elope to Bora Bora, our honeymoon destination.

  Fortunately, the church let us proceed with the ceremony two hours behind schedule. As I was standing in the back with my dad, waiting to walk down the aisle, I started to tear up. He looked as if he was about to cry, too. I will never forget the conversation I had with my dad at that moment. He didn’t want me to cry, even though they were happy tears, so he tried to make me laugh by saying, “Just think of dying kittens!”

  “What?” I replied. “That isn’t funny at all.” But we both began to smile again at each other! As “Here comes the bride” started playing, and we took our first steps down the aisle, I am pretty sure my dad and I were not the only ones crying. In fact, I later heard that there was not a dry eye in the church.

  The ceremony itself was a traditional Catholic wedding with a mass included. We wanted to include the people who were closest to us who had either supported us or brought us together. Our parents gave the readings, and Diane, who had been the first person to have a try at being our matchmaker back when we each did our summer internship with Dr. Kopits, sang “Ave Maria” during the ceremony. I was thankful she could be there, and I knew Dr. Kopits was there, too, watching over us from above.

  As Bill and I were exchanging vows, I had one crazy thought flash through my mind, one of those “what a long strange trip it’s been” thoughts. I thought about the chaos of getting to the church—the closed bridge, the circuitous detour, the things that were out of our control, and the way we managed to still get to the church. I thought about the stress we’d experienced, the release from stress I was feeling at this
very moment, and how I was staring into Bill’s eyes and knowing we were committing to each other forever. The two hours it had taken to get to this point were like a metaphor for Bill’s and my lives. We had had so many bridges that were difficult to cross, so many detours to get to places the long way, so many stressors we couldn’t control, and so much happiness and fulfillment in the end. I was the happiest bride there ever was.

  I probably shouldn’t even mention the third occurrence of drama. We almost didn’t get married, after all! We inadvertently forgot our marriage license at the hotel, so when the ceremony was over and we were supposed to sign our official decree of marriage with the priest, we couldn’t prove we were legally married! Lakshmi’s new husband, Nikhil, saved the day and rushed back to the hotel to retrieve the license for us.

  By the time the ceremony was over and we had all our official documents signed, the accident on the St. Pete Beach bridge had been cleared, and we all made it back to the Don Cesar without further delay. Bill and I had taken our dance lessons well in advance of the wedding, so we were ready to kick off our shoes, boogie down, and celebrate our new life with the people we loved.

  We started off with a nice slow song by Van Morrison, “Someone Like You.” As we started dancing, all I could think about as I looked into Bill’s eyes and saw all of our friends and family I loved so much around us was how lucky we were. Almost everyone who loved us and supported us was in that ballroom at the same time. At that very moment I knew I needed to burn the memory into my brain, because I doubted there would be another one like it where I felt so much love all around us. I was with my true love I had been seeking my entire life, with everyone else we loved watching us have our first dance together as husband and wife. His family—the Kleins, Croners, and Diecidues—had known him through all the tribulations of his life, as my family, the Arnolds and the Shipmans, had known me. Now, all of these people who had birthed, nurtured, encouraged, and launched us were supporting our union. These were the people who had told us never to let our size hold us back, and here they were, cheering for us now. It was a pretty awesome moment.