THE WEDDINGS OF ALL WEDDINGS

When my youngest daughter was almost 21 and lived with her older sister in another town, she brought her boyfriend down so they could tell Hubby and me that they were getting married in a month.

I was in shock! My baby was too young! I tried to think how to be tactful until I could get her alone and beg her not to get married yet. In desperation I said "I can't possibly put together a wedding that fast!". They immediately upped me with "We will just get married in Lake Tahoe, then." I told them "But February is a terrible time to try to get to Lake Tahoe!" My son-in-law to be piped up with "My family goes skiing up there in the winter and they have never had trouble!"

I eventually lost the battle. I couldn't change my daughter's mind and so I began to plan a long distance wedding. We didn't have a computer then so everything had to be done by telephone.
After ascertaining the name of a chapel in Nevada, I called them, set it up and they very nicely gave me some names of cake makers, liquor stores and reality companies.

We got the two attendants dresses, the wedding dress and paraphenalia. We got the silk flowers and cake top. We forwarded a piece of ribbon and cake top to the decorator and we rented a five room house for everyone for four days.

My Mom and brother flew up from Maine two days before and we made the seven hour round trip to L.A. to pick them up. I thought we'd better make our barbecued beef before we went so I did that. Mom helped me make about twenty dozen donuts and we took bread and sandwich meat to have at the house.

Finally, we are all ready! We have 9 people in two vehicles which doesn't sound too bad until I explain that my vehicle was a little Toyota hatchback. My husband had a Bronco but we still were so crowded with packing all the things we would need for the wedding. We took off about 8:00 a.m. in the morning for a six hour drive. And, by the way, I had caught a flu bad enough that I hardly cared if I lived or died.

I had reminded everyone to make sure they brought winter clothes. When we hit Sacramento and it was pouring cats and dogs, I felt secure knowing that everyone had listened. We had chains for both vehicles although mine had never been on the car before. Well, it started to snow just before we reached Cameron Park. About twenty more minutes up the road, we came to a complete halt. There was already about 1 1/2 feet of snow by that time. It took us about an hour and a half to go two miles to be turned around by the state cops. The highway was closed due to snow.

We went back to Cameron Park where there was one motel. The whole town was out of power!
The motel rented us a room just fine! They gave us 1 candle to use and they had no spare blankets. The men went over to Safeway and got some cold food for everyone to eat (thank God the store had a generator. By this time, it was alread dinnertime and getting very dark.
And by the way, it was very hard to feel sorry for my son-in-law to be who wore sneakers and a light jacket. Luckily, I took a lot of extra gloves so at least his hands were warm.

Hubby had thrown in a sleeping bag (which I told him we wouldn't need-it's one time I'm glad he ignored me). Hubby and I crawled into it on the floor (it was only a single-we were thin then), everyone else shared beds except my poor brother who wound up on the floor covered with wet coats. No electricity meant no heat! I know I was a bear. Nothing was going well and I felt so bad. For that I apoligize to my daughter.

We had a radio with us and after about five hours of laying there in the cold, we heard they opened the road. We packed in a hurry and boogied on out. Before we started, we put the chains on. Gee, mine didn't fit right! The whole rest of the trip, we could hear them tearing up the wheel wells on our car. My brother drove because I was so sick. He only has one eye that works due to a hunting accident when he was sixteen. Finally he said "Sis, I just can't drive anymore (Oh, by the way, the back sear was piled so high he couldn't push the seat back and he is six foot three-He looked pretty funny with his knees under his chin!). I took over at that point and two miles later we pulled into Tahoe. When he realized that I knew we were almost there and I could have driven earlier I think said something like "You bitch". He said it with love, of course, and we had our first really good laugh of the trip.

Well, this is getting really long. Will put the rest on another blog.