Continued from A Transatlantic Love Story, Part IX.

I’d always loved the song Misty, but it wasn’t the type of weather I wanted to see out my window on the morning of my wedding day.

My grandma hugs me and says, “I liked helping you plan your graduation party a lot more than planning your wedding.” I’m still in my pajamas and I have no idea what she means.

I sit at my mom and step-dad’s breakfast bar getting my hair done, hoping I won’t hate it.

The Fisherman’s Wife, long before she was anyone’s wife, shows up bright and early and I know everything will be okay because she is there.

My grandfather gives me the best gift in the world. It is a love note written by my great grandfather to my great grandmother in the week before they were married. After my wedding day, I will never find it again. I will spend years searching my mom’s house only to determine that it must have been thrown out with the wrapping paper.

My step-grandma hugs me and says that she hopes this wedding is my only one. I love that she says it and it makes my mom mad.

At the wedding/reception sight, the mist grows heavier. My mom and my in-laws start to fight about whether the wedding should be moved inside or not.

The dress goes over my head and I think, for the very first time, I’m the bride!

My dad shows up. I didn’t know that he would. He made it that morning and, because the suit I ordered could not be tailored on an hour’s notice, his jacket sleeves are four inches too short. But he is there.

My dad says, “You look pretty.” I say, “I’m happy you’re here,” and he acts strange, knowing that I know that he’s never really been around for my life, instead of hearing what I want him to hear, that it didn’t matter since he is here now.

The pianist forgets how many bridesmaids I have (only three) and doesn’t start the wedding march until five minutes after my bridesmaids have entered. People stir and wonder if I’ve bailed out.

I walk down the aisle to my husband-to-be. I circle him three times, in the Jewish tradition, and it is the most wonderful part of my wedding ceremony, as I get to take my time and really look at him.

But he looks sad. He looks like something’s wrong. And I want to know what it is. I want to know why he’s upset at the moment of our marriage. So I make little kissy faces at him to get him to cheer up and will forever feel embarrassed about doing that in front of everyone I know because … my husband is trying not to cry because seeing me as his bride is so overwhelming.

During the ceremony, the skies open up and drench our guests. We look out into the crowd and I ask, “Should we go inside?” My step-sister shouts to me, “Keep going,” so we do while our guests sit in a steady stream of rain, most without umbrellas.

My step-dad, who is a minister and is marrying us, pauses at the end to look over his notes. I tease him by shouting, “Come on!” He pronounces us man and wife and I pounce on my new husband.

I’d forgotten to buy matte lipstick, though, and I cover his mouth in red. He makes an icky face—captured by our photographer and videographer—before wiping away our first kiss on the back of his hand.

We get into the limo and the first thing he says to me as my husband is, “I love your hair like that,” and I think, I LOVE this man.

We take some lame pictures at a historical house nearby and the photographer, later, will decide that all of my freckles need to be Photoshopped out, making me look freakishly like a ghost.

Back at the reception, people are wet but happy and so are we.

People eat dinner before we eat and by the time we get to the buffet all of the food is cold and mixed together.

The Fisherman’s Wife and The Accountant’s Wife give a joint speech, and The Fisherman’s Wife begins to cry almost uncontrollably (as I will also do at her wedding). They raise their glasses and the photographer snaps my most favorite picture of my best friends. When I need to remember that I am loved, I still look at it.

One of our groomsmen adds to his toast that my husband was attracted to my incredibly bouncy breasts.

We do the Jewish chair dance and my friends join in. The Accountant’s Wife, who is three months pregnant with her first child and hiding it below her bridesmaid’s dress with a girdle, tells me that we should do this at all weddings whether anyone is Jewish or not because it’s so much fun. And it is. And I won’t learn until later that this tradition made my family feel “uncomfortable.”

We have our first dance and it feels a little lame dancing while everyone watches us.

Instead of a father/daughter dance, I have a mother/daughter dance where me and my mom get down to Aretha Franklin’s RESPECT. It is a surprise I’d been planning for a full year. Everyone knew except her, and it is really, really fun.

Until the song ends and my mother-in-law’s best friend pulls me aside and tells me that she doesn’t know how I could be so hurtful and disrespectful. I guess my mother-in-law had always assumed that the mother/daughter dance would also include a special shout out to her.

She’s in the bathroom crying, her best friend tells me. I try to find her but can’t. I tell my husband. We are both going out of our minds to try to fix it. I go to the DJ and request Destiny’s Child’s Independent Woman. I introduce it with a funny story about me and my mother-in-law and dedicate it to her as the microphone screeches because I’ve gone too far out of its range in an attempt to try to see my mother-in-law in the crowd. She and my father-in-law come out to dance with me and my husband and they will not look us in the eye, in possibly the worst dance rendition of Independent Woman ever.

My husband and I give the speech thanking everyone for coming from so far away to be at our wedding on such a rainy day. My husband thanks our parents but apparently the London crowd thinks he does a bad job of it because …

My husband’s godfather takes the mic in an impromptu speech, telling us off publicly for not being more respectful to my husband’s parents and then praises them for all that they’ve done.

I’m panicked. I’m not having a good time when we’ve spent all of this money on having a good time. I know I’m not having a good time on the day that’s supposedly the best day of my life.

I find my purse and load it up with mini desserts and appetizers for later.

I run through the rain and the mud to the bathroom and as I open the door I see a bride in a gorgeous dress. It’s me! I’m the bride and I look beautiful and I remember that it’s my wedding day.

I toss the bouquet behind my head and The Fisherman’s Wife catches it, except she wants to be the Psychiatrist’s Wife and is almost in tears over catching the bouquet and knowing full well that the Psychiatrist will not marry her. She will be the first woman at my wedding to get married next, but to a Fisherman instead.

My husband tosses the garter. A friend catches it, and he will be the first man to get married next. But we won’t be at his wedding because we’ll be halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles with a U-Haul and no jobs and no money to fly back to London when he tosses his wife’s garter.

My step-sister whispers to me that she thinks my dad, step-mother, and half brothers feel left out and that I should go talk to them. So I do and we take a terribly awkward family picture. Then they leave.

We cut the cake in a gazebo away from the crowd. It’s me and my husband and my step-nieces and step-nephews who are thrilled to spasms with the idea of having the first few guest-slices of cake. (Because they’re the biggest of course! Very, very smart kids.) I look at my husband, his beautiful face, just me and him and some cake and it’s magical. The rain pitter-pats on the top of the gazebo and we’re in love and I think to myself, We’re married.

My in-laws and all of their friends leave before the reception ends.

Our friends cut loose on the dance floor. A few men take off their shirts, start smoking cigars, and will be Photoshopped into soft gay porn spreads by witnesses with cameras for a couple years to come and it’s super funny.

My mom and my step-dad change into jeans and slow dance to fast songs at the edge of the dance floor.

One More Time by Daft Punk plays loudly into the night. It’s only ten o’clock but the wedding is over and none of us want it to end.

Everyone is leaving and I’m on the ground underneath the table with my dress hiked up to my thighs, picking up napkins and forks and other things that people have dropped because I’ve forgotten to hire a cleanup crew, and it’s too much for my mom and step-dad to do alone.

I’m ready to cry because it’s the end of my wedding and I’m picking up crap off the ground, covering my dress in mud.

The Fisherman’s Wife comes to say goodbye and I beg her to help cleanup. She corals everyone, as she always does so well, and we clean up in under fifteen minutes before she puts me and my husband into the limo and sends us on our way.

We open the door to our suite on the top floor of the hotel and they’ve forgotten to give us the honeymoon package. Instead of champagne and roses, there is Chex Mix and bottled water.

My husband runs the shower and we both sit on the edge of the tub, watching the mud on our feet wash down the drain. He takes all of the bobby pins out of my hair one at a time and kisses my bare shoulder.

We sit, in our underwear, in the window seat and look out at the lights of the tiny Indiana city we’ve just been married in and feed each other mini desserts and appetizers from my purse. We admit that it’s the first time we’ve felt bliss all day because we are all alone now, together, with nothing else in the way. And we can’t hardly believe that we’re married. But we are.

And that’s how I became a filmmaker’s wife and he became a writer’s husband, the poor thing.