It's not something we normally talk about, but yes, I pulled a knife on Paul and forced him to marry me.

A woman's gotta do what a woman's gotta do, eh. I mostly kept my weapon hidden in the sleeve of my dress during the ceremony, but I slipped up during one of the pictures. Dang.

Some women dream all their lives about their weddings. They spend eons planning a Princess Bride extravaganza that costs the budget of a small African country and has a staging as complex as any Broadway show. Good on them, there's probably lots of fun in that.

Us, it was five weeks from the moment we decided to tie the knot until the actual marriage. The whole shebang, including reception and our clothes, came in at under $500.

"Why the speed?" I can hear you asking. Was Marn "in trouble" as we used to say back then? Nope. Heck, it's just that once the "m" word came up I moved fast--didn't want to give him time to come to his senses, eh.

It was one of those hippie dippy, rollin' in granola kinds of weddings. I made my own dress, and I wore my Earth Shoes so I had that seductive, clod-hopping farmer walk for which every bride strives. What! You don't remember Earth Shoes? Zygotes, I'm surrounded by zygotes ...

Earth Shoes were a ten minute fad. They were wide at the front like duck feet and instead of having a raised heel, they actually sloped backwards. It was impossible to walk gracefully in them. So far, I don't see any sign of them coming back in style. I *can't* understand this. But I digress.

For the scene of the crime, we chose the tiny, century-old country church my husband had attended all his life. There we were, Dec. 21, 1974, in an uninsulated building in the dead of a Quebec winter. Smart thinking, huh?

The community closed the church each Thanksgiving and normally didn't open it again until Easter 'cuz it was too hard to heat. So when we fired up the furnace two days before the wedding, we were basically thawing a church-sicle. We never thought about what all those months of cold might have done to the antique pump organ that would be playing the wedding march.

Okay, the scene is set, let's fast forward to the evening of our wedding. The organ swells, the cue dad and I have been waiting for, and we enter the back of the church. The first bar of the wedding march starts, we begin our stroll up the aisle ... and then the organ's keys begin to randomly stick and/or go silent. Neither Paul nor I look at each other, I can barely keep from laughing.

Did you know the rhythm of the wedding march helps the bride swan up the aisle? Your correspondent, already seriously grace-impaired by nature, shod in gunboats, with only random fragments of the wedding march wheezing out of the old pump organ, basically Daffy Ducked her way up the length of that church.

Uh, did I mention that our organist, increasingly frustrated by the balky organ, began softly muttering the word "shit" under his breath? Ah, the memories ... (Marn blots a sentimental tear.) I don't think he realized he was audible during the bits when the organ refused to play at all. Yep, those old churches sure do have interesting acoustics.

Well, somehow, I made it to the altar and Paul and I made the biggest promise either of us has ever made, our wedding vows. And GET THIS ... oh man, sometimes I kill myself ... I fully believed that because we had been living together, because I wasn't going to change my last name to his ... I believed that we weren't changing anything in a big way.

To be that stupid I must have been dropped on my head as a child ? and probably more than once.

It changed everything, of course. Gradually it dawned on us both that we had been playing house before, that for us living together had been about "no promises, we'll stick around as long as it's easy." Uh oh.

I hadn't thought to check the fine print before I got married. Imagine my horror when I got around to that step, and found marriage doesn't give you that "as long as it's easy" parachute clause thingie. Uh oh.

Is being married hard? You bet. Both of us have thought about strolling out the door and not looking back. We've had some wicked "hide the sharp cutlery" fights, too. Boring? Ummmm, we've been married over 25 years, so yes, sure, sometimes boring. Worth it? Oh yeah, definitely.

Hey, for one thing, part of the package was the kind of kid who could flip the bird at six weeks. Woo HOO!

And for another, Paul *always* gets my jokes and I understand his.

--Marn