You tear, you're toast

As the days draw near and the details emerge, I have to comment on how not-stressful this wedding planning is. Sure, I turned bridezilla once or twice, a detail or two was forgotten and my fiance keeps threatening not to marry me unless he's wearing a Cowboy hat. But otherwise, life is good. Wedding planning is good.

The only part I dread is the wedding itself.

See, as much as I like to write about myself and my relationship and reveal a little too much, standing in front of a crowd, possibly crying, puts me out of my comfort zone. This is why couples elope, people. That and for the price of a photographer, you and three friends can take a Grey Goose and Godiva trip to Las Vegas. Who better to marry you than Elvis? He steals the show, and the attention, anyway.

So I've come up with distractions:

* the bridesmaids are wearing dresses and hair of different styles. Stare at them. Judge them. Envy their matching heals. Anything to take the eyes off me.

* My wedding singer is a natural alto, but her range is so wide, she can hit notes higher than some sopranos. Look at her. Creep on her. Leave your glasses at home because she will surely shatter them. No boring tunes for her. Her one requirement is to "knock everyone's socks off." If she can't do that, she's fired... kind of. :)

* The vows I chose are the "I do" ones, where the pastor says all the words so if my voice cracks, I say one sentence and I'm done. Champagne, anyone?

* If all else fails, I instructed my little brother to light the church on fire. He's good at this. When he was five, he cut the cord to a plugged-in and turned-on lamp. I promised him I'd use the wedding loot as bail money. Fancy a trade, officer? Three mixing bowls and a Longaberger basket for the tall Colorado kid with tan skin and dark eyes who looks nothing like pale, short me.

So I need your help:

No crying at my wedding. Please. No matter the maid of honor, the grandmother of the groom or the groom himself, you tear, you're toast. No five-tier wedding cake for you. If you start crying, then I'll start crying and then I'll cry because I didn't want to cry. And with all the water, North Dakota will flood again. Embarrassing. But what's more embarrassing for you is when a lady in white dress slaps you on the face and says "pull yourself together." No one will ever forget it. You're in the small towns now. :)

In-law insanity: Cowboy meets the fam

Afraid but not alone, I’d driven those miles many times in three years. Five hundred miles to my hometown.... turn south at Fargo and you can’t miss it. 

Cowboy and I were driving to Omaha. A trip my Volvo could do in reverse, but one foreign to the man from Up North.

The journey was one of endings and beginnings. Vinny’s final voyage was Cowboy’s first. First to Omaha, first to the family, first time to meet the in-laws in Iowa. 

Terrified, I’d taught him the card game of my birth. Euchre. Known as the game of bowers where the right Jack is higher than any ace, some in-laws attempt a first game with my uncles, and then never return for a second. 

Don’t let that happen to you, I said to the Cowboy. You have to get to know them. They aren’t going to get to know you.

I’m not worried, he said.

Well I am.

Cowboy’s good with meeting new people. He doesn’t shy away from shaking hands and story-telling, the customary get-to-know-you rituals. But my family is as tough as it is big. (My mom is one of 11 children and I’m one of 39 cousins. We served 60 people that Saturday.) If you’re going to bring someone new into the family, they seem to say, he has to impress us. We won’t bother to impress him. In fact, it’s the opposite. The uncles find it funny to scare future family with phrases like “With which hand do you smoke your crack?” and “Don’t trump my ace, you bitch.”

Without knowing it, Cowboy was under the second-most pressure of any decedent of of Eldora and Paul. My father is known as one of the most vicious. Known for his taunting and teasing, many cousins warn their mates to avoid him.

The only uncle worse is one of three Uncle Bills. For those unfamiliar, you’ll know him by his neck: it’s thicker than my thighs. A two-time war veteran, Jujitsu champion and narcotics enforcement officer, Uncle Bill searches all the boyfriend’s pockets and wallets... in search of paraphernalia of the drug and birth-control persuasion.

Uncle Bill wouldn’t make it for Easter, but I was scared anyway. I won’t baby-sit you, I said. I can’t. You’ll have to make conversation with people you don’t know all on your own. 

Don’t worry about me, Kate, he said. I’ll be fine. 

You don’t understand.

My mom, though, she knew it too.

She and an aunt took me dress shopping, a custom customarily sans-man. 

You’re going to let him meet your grandmother, without you? she asked.

Guess so, I said, shrugging my shoulders like I didn’t care. And when it comes to my grandmother, I didn’t. I cared about their first impression, yes, but was I worried they wouldn’t hit it off? No. 

Play cards with her, I said. And when she tells you to eat something, just do it.

Six hours, 60 wedding dresses, and the one I’d picked out weeks before later, we arrived at a home minus one Cowboy. 

He’s at the boat, Grandma said, gambling with the boys. 

So, what’d you think of him? I asked.

Well, he kept leading trump aces, she said. An evaluation meaning: he’s got work to do. 

*Sigh*

The next morning, grandma’s kitchen resembled an elementary cafeteria with relations eating with their fingers and crowding the center table. The noise level rivaled that of Superbowl Sunday and one child even stood in the corner and covered his ears. Oh wait... that was my dad. And then another child threw jelly beans at my aunt. Oh wait, that was my dad too.

Cowboy didn’t seem to mind. He did OK with names... all except for one. I introduced him to my Aunt Karen, but he called her Aunt Shirley. He learned the names of my cousins and remembered the names of the relations he’d met gambling the night before. 

Signs pointed in the right direction, but the true test was when I left him to his lonesome. Anxious for my bridal shower, another sans-man activity, Cowboy navigated the river of uncles and moseyed over to the big kid’s Euchre table. At the big kid’s table, only experts are allowed, as the number of players double and the speed of play triples. 

My mother, myself and my grandmother at my bridal shower in Manchester, Iowa. Thanks for the photo, Aunt Bev. :)

You’re going to leave him with the uncles alone? my cousins asked. 

*Gulp*

Do you know how many times we’ve walked into places where he knows everyone and I know no one, I answered, nonchalantly. This happens to me all the time without so much as an introduction. This is my one chance to get back at him, I said, wiping the sweat from my brow.

By the time I opened my presents and read from recipes I’ll never be qualified to cook, even if I’d wanted to find Cowboy, I couldn’t. He talked to one cousin about wiring projects and an uncle about cattle. Words like “Cat 5” and “cattle magnet” escaped their lips. Words foreign to me, but cozy to the Cowboy.

I may have driven him 600 miles from his land of origin, but with my family, he was already home.

the engagement story

Hurry up. I’m freaking freezing, I said, one sopping March evening before the North Dakota rain turned to snow. 

We’d just dined with his parents and were headed to our vehicles, nestled next to each other in a restaurant parking lot, just like us, arm-in-arm, side-by-side. At 9 p.m., the hour exceeded darkness by Twilight standards and flirted with my bedtime. My belly was full and my body fatigued.

Seriously! I said beneath a hood so big two Vikings helmets could fit beneath it. Brrrr!

Hold on, he said, holding up his hand like a state patrolman on a closed highway. I have something to tell you.

He bent one knee, genuflecting in his jeans, soaking them in a pavement puddle. He reached into the coat pocket I’d been sitting beside throughout our entire three-hour meal. And I gasped. 

I don't want you to be my girlfriend anymore, he said.

He opened the box but I couldn’t see. He kept talking... something about “Katherine Eileen” and “wife” but the world was aflush with snowflakes, and my vision terminated with wet concrete and dark skies. 

Suddenly, I didn’t feel so cold. 

Put it on me! I said, with the hustle of a mother of triplets on the first day of school. Right now. Right now!

And get up! I said. Get up Get up! I want to see it. 

He slid the ring he'd purchased five weeks prior... waiting for the optimal opportunity. He'd even sought the help of friends to help decide, to make sure this ring was right for my left hand. 

Between the midnight of the sky and the black concrete, I saw nothing but sparkle. 

So, what do you think? he asked.

Inhale.

I thought of the jobs I’d applied for in Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa and the opportunities I thought I’d missed. I thought of my junior-year aspirations to see the world while writing about it, advancing the ranks of the newspaper world city by city, country by country. I thought of my first months, my first winter and my first car trouble in North Dakota and how I vowed I’d never stay.

I thought of our first date, he in boots of leather and hide, and mine of pointy-toe. This will never work out, I told myself back then.

I thought of the flood and the mud and the sandbags and the stories. I thought of how it ripped my insides, watching people lose their homes, their heirlooms and at times, even their minds. Out of all the bad that came from the flood, those people say, he and I are one of the good. 

I thought of our future, our fortune and our unborn children.

Well? he asked. 

It's perfect.