It’s Friday again, time for me to share with you another moment of my disaster-prone life. Today’s episode takes place on my honeymoon. For those of you that don’t know, MC and I got married twice. While living in TX and planning our wedding in WA, it soon became apparent that most of MC’s family would miss out on the event because it was just too expensive to fly up there for a weekend. So we decided to have a small ceremony here first. MC’s brother, Coach, was getting married on July 15th and all the family and extended family (aunts, uncles, cousins, etc) were going to be in town for the big event. At the time it seemed like a great idea to just ride on their coattails and plan ours for the very next day while everyone was still in town. 16 years later I look back and think maybe it wasn’t the most considerate thing seeing as how we were stealing some of their thunder–not to mention they delayed their honeymoon so they could not only attend our wedding but also be in it. So for Coach and his wife–thank you so much! It’s always meant so much to me that you were willing to share that weekend.
We had our small little wedding ceremony on a Sunday afternoon. The whole event cost us $300 and that included a dress for me, a suit for MC, fill-in-the-blank invites I bought at Hallmark and flowers I had done at the local florist. Our wedding cake was a gift from MC’s older brother, ManU, and his wife and we borrowed pieces from Coach’s wedding to decorate the auditorium. It was perfect.
We were broke when we got married and didn’t have money for a honeymoon either in TX or in WA. No big deal. I was still new to TX and had never ventured into Dallas so we decided to spend a day or so exploring the Big D and its funky West End. After a night at a Motel 6 we found on the side of the highway, we loaded up our little Blazer and headed out. We parked at the Aquarium and then spent the day watching movies and people, eating, shopping and just enjoying each other.
Eventually we decided to head back to our house, excited to do so as husband and wife. We headed back to the Blazer, MC going straight for the driver side and me for the passenger side. When I got to the truck, I saw a big pile of glass on the ground and for a moment I was sad for whoever’s window had been busted. It took me a moment after looking up to realize that it was OUR window. Someone had busted out the passenger side window. While we had been having fun and enjoying our thrown-together honeymoon, someone had broke into the Blazer.
Did I mention that we had already checked out of our hotel and so all of our things had been loaded into the truck? All of our clothes, toiletries, toothbrushes, even our pillows–gone. MC’s tape collection and car tools–gone. We also had in there our video camera with the only copy of our wedding video as well as all our wedding gifts–all gone. We took our gifts to the hotel with the intention of opening them there but after watching the wedding video we ended up getting, um…a little preoccupied and never got to it. We don’t even know what was in the presents. (So if you never got a thank you note for that wedding gift you bought us over 16 years ago, now you know why. Oh, and thank you.) Anything that had any kind of value (and even stuff that didn’t) was stolen.
Yes, I cried.
It didn’t help that Blazers don’t have trunks. Between having all of our stuff piled on the seats (we had tinted windows but that really doesn’t help), parking in an open lot, and the “Just Married” writing all over the windows, it was like we had a big neon sign pointed right at our truck saying, “Steal Me!”…and they did. We did call the police and report it but there wasn’t anything they could do. They didn’t even come out. And with us being broke young marrieds, we didn’t have insurance to cover a break in. All we could do was mourn our loss and take it as an expensive lesson in how NOT to protect your things.
MC, being the man he is, did manage to pull me away from my tears, even if only for a moment. We finally got into the Blazer to drive home and as we were pulling out of the parking lot, he asks, “Honey, call you roll up your window?” I reached over to the button and started to do just that. Hello? I have no window! I turn around to glare at him but he was already laughing it up. It took me quite some time before I could see the humor in that but he has never hesitated to bring it up as an example of just how funny he really is.
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