If Only...

I just finished reading "The Wedding" by Nicholas Sparks, much to the dismay of my beloved husband. If you haven't read the book, and you don't want the plot spoiled, don't finish reading this entry...

You've been warned...

Okay, so you want to know why he was dismayed. Well, the book is about a middle-aged couple who have grown apart over the years. Kids and career came between them and they were practically strangers in their own home... so much so that the husband completely forgot their 29th wedding anniversary.

With renewed resolve, he vows to make it up to her and spends the months prior to their 30th wedding anniversary preparing a fabulous gift of the heart. Unfortunately, just one week before their anniversary their oldest daughter comes to them and says she is getting married and wants to do it on their anniversary to honor them. The wife jumps at the opportunity to give her daughter the wedding she wasn't able to have 30 years ago and immediately starts with preparations.

During that week, the husband and wife -- amidst all the chaos of planning a wedding for their daughter -- slowly reacquaint themselves with one another and begin to remember why the fell in love all those years ago. It all culminates when the husband presents his wife with the gift he made her to celebrate their anniversary.

This is where it gets good.

To present the gift, he sends her on a scavanger hunt, where each location holds a note and a gift. She is then whisked away in a limosine to where the husband is waiting, wearing a tuxedo and preparing a fabulous meal. He sends her upstairs to retrieve something for him, and instead finds a photo album that he assembled of their life together. He said it held all the things he "should have said" and each photo of the two of them together was accompanied by what he was thinking at the time. That alone would have melted me to a puddle... how romantic is that!!!

They renewed themselves and their love. It was beautiful.

The day of their daughter's wedding arrived and the mother and father of the bride were waiting at the bottom of the stairs for her to make her grand entrance... instead, she bounds down the stairs wearing the same bridesmaid dress as her sister. The mother asks incredulously why she isn't wearing the gown they had picked out... the daughter responds: "becuase I'm not getting married today, you are!"

The whole thing had been a rouse by the husband to set up the wedding they didn't have 30 years ago. They had been married on the courthouse steps and the wife had always regretted it a bit. I finished the last 10 pages of the book with tears streaming down my face, and then spent the next half hour relating the whole story to my husband. It was such a beautiful story!!

We celebrated our 14th anniversary last year. Our wedding was anything but glamorous or romantic -- I purchased a dress from Nordstrom's that I would be able to wear again and again at church, and he wore a suit he borrowed from a friend. We were married in the Relief Society room of our church house by a bishop who had never performed a wedding before. Our guests were invited by phone call the night before, and only a handful of them came. It was a short ceremony and there was no reception afterwards... instead we went to my new brother-in-law's home for cake. We had a small open house a few weeks later, but even then it was held in my FIL's back yard and it was a very casual affair.

I know that it's the marriage that counts, not the wedding, but every little girl dreams of the day she'll get to walk down the aisle and recite her vows before her friends and family while wearing a glamorous gown and feeling like a princess. A temple wedding is a bit different, but the desire for the fairy tale is still there.

I want the fairy tale. I would love it for my husband to take the initiative and do what Wilson did in the novel. It would be a dream come true...

Sigh. If only....