My super fabulous wedding

All you brides to be, grab your pen and pad and take some notes. This is the wedding of a lifetime. Celebrities? They ain't got shit on this.

I met my husband in August of 2004. We were both aggressively filing paperwork in the US CHAir Force, active duty, at the time. I had been on that base for a couple weeks, and I go outside to the smoke pit, and this beautiful Puerto Rican hunk of man meat was sitting out there smoking a cigarette. I was actually spending the day pampering myself, so I had like stuff in between my toes from my pedicure as I was walking outside on my heels. Anyway, we talked, all day, outside there. It was his first day on that base, and he needed some things from the store and had no car. So, I offered to drive him the next day. That's actually all I remember talking about. I think I was too busy humping him in my mind to pay attention to the shit I was saying otherwise.

I decided to take advantage of the situation (duh) and forced him to look at every store in town to price compare television sets. At one point, I even did that, "Oooh, look at this movie down here on the bottom shelf, not the movie, my sexy butt, okay the movie, keep looking at my butt." When we finally got back on base, it was dark. A Wyoming starry night was the perfect setting for a first kiss in my opinion, so I opened the moon roof and started asking what constellations were what. I know right? My swag is fantastical. It took about an hour of me being obsessed with the stars in sight of where I had to lean in his personal bubble, mouth close to mouth, before he got the fucking clue to kiss me. I knew right then and there, this man is dumb enough to marry.

Not to sound like the only slut in the room, but clothes came off after that and he never left my dorm room except to work. Really, he was just supposed to be a one night stand because he was younger than me. I would never seriously date a guy who was younger than me. He years later confessed that I was supposed to be a one night stand as well, and that it took him about a month to remember my name. In his defense, it took me about a year of being married to finally spell his name.

NOTE: In the military, E3 and below lived in the dorms, unless they are married or rank up to E4. We could get apartments, but the military did not supply BAS or BAH for single E3's (because we had dorms instead of BAH and the free meals at the dining facility for BAS).

A few months later, we broke up for about 4 hours. That's when I think we realized we were probably going to get married some day. We actually talked about it a few times after that, planning something closer to our one year anniversary mark of meeting, like ideally, the wedding would be on that day.

My separation date was approaching. I was volunteering a lot at the tax office on base to get away from my NCO with short man syndrome, and it's been confirmed by men who showered with him that I'm very accurate with my theory that my NCO probably had the smallest dick on that whole base, and yes, that was a question I asked people. Like, "how are you? Good good, and how's the shop? Good, and out of curiosity, you deployed with so and so didn't you? Yeah, well did you shower with him? Did he have a vagina?" Anyway, I managed to finagle everything so my outprocessing process was something where I checked in with the tax office (instead of my NCO), which gave me loads more freedom, like I could have gone to my dorm, slept, masturbated, and then went shopping during my duty day for all my boss cared. I was Untouchable at that point.

So, one Friday morning, I was sitting in my car getting ready to go into a building for a signature to outprocess, and my cell rang. It was my boyfriend. I guess during the formation I missed that morning (oops), they asked for people who were bilingual Spanish and English. He was one of several who raised his hand, and he was the one they chose to deploy. I guess a bunch of guys in El Salvador got food poisoning bad enough to come home, and they needed to replace the linguist. They told him he'd be flying out on Sunday, 2 days later.

So I'm freaking the fuck out. Here I am outprocessing with no where to go after separation a week away. We had planned on getting an apartment together, but he would be the only one with a pay check for a minute. I didn't feel right using his money on rent for a place he wasn't staying. I sure as hell didn't want to be stuck in Wyoming by myself waiting on some boyfriend who could dump me before he returns home. So I did what any woman in my situation would have done. I proposed over the cell phone. It went something like, "Well I'm not sticking around for a boyfriend, if you don't want me moving back home with my mom, you probably should consider marrying me." And he was like, "Well I don't want you cheating on me with that Tech Sgt you constantly flirt with. I was thinking maybe we should get married so that way I know you are still here when I get back." Then I'm like, "Let me call and see if we can afford the fees and swing this today."

So I called the courthouse, got all the information, called the boyfriend back "Yes we can afford it, and yes we can do this today on our lunch break." He was like, 'See you at lunch." So then I call my mother and tell her.

Lunch time approaches, we get the certificate and stuff. The judge takes the same lunch break as we do, so we had to wait on the judge, and while waiting, we got lunch from Wendy's or McDonalds or something and called for witnesses. We needed 2 witnesses. Out of 50 friends, not one answered their phone. So, we are like 15 minutes away from it thinking it wasn't going to happen because we had no witnesses, and we were going to be late coming back from lunch, which some people could be assholes and call it going AWOL.

Finally, I get the bright idea... I called the tax office. The receptionist has to be there during lunch to answer the phone. She did, like the fabulous receptionist she was. She also closed down the tax office (not allowed) to leave, grabbed her boyfriend who was at home on his day of leave, and dragged his ass to my wedding. I totally have no idea what their names are.

I always wanted to get married in green. My favorite painting in art appreciation class was Jan Van Eyck's Arnolfini "Wedding" Portrait (the picture in this post). My art teacher explained that green was the old school traditional color for a wedding dress because it helped ensure fertility. So my wedding colors were definitely camouflage green and black maybe? I don't know. I was wearing my BDU's (Battle Dress Uniform, you can't get better symbolism than that for a wedding) and combat boots. The judge had married many grooms in that attire, but I was her first bride (swing my head up high with pride). Let it be known, I think the green worked on the fertility thing, three kids later.

The hubs didn't end up deploying for two weeks after that due to paperwork issues, so he actually got to help me move us into an apartment. I really anticipated this marriage to die within 2 years. We've been married almost 8 years now. Not bad for a one night stand.