# 6 - I now pronounce you...

The Top 10 Funniest/Best Memories of My 50 years...

# 6 I now pronounce you....

Marriage.  It's a wonderful thing.  I really mean that.  That isn't sarcasm.  I have observed some wonderful marriages.  Take my sister and her husband, for example.  They have been married since 1969 (I was their flower girl!) and despite significant difficulties during those 42 years since, including grief, multiple moves and lots of long hours and hard work, they are still in love.  Truly.  They still like each other.  A lot even.  Like it still surprises me how often they talk on the phone when they are apart.  Cause they want to, not cause they are supposed to or have to.

Or take my good friends, J&B.  He is the pharmacist I made the cake for a few weeks ago.  They've been married 55 years, raised 4 kids, kept track of many more grandkids (some of whom now have spouses of their own) which tends to bring about great grandkids, and have had their fair share of hardships, because life happens.  But he still looks at her with love and tenderness and joy in his eyes every time I see them together.  Like he is thinking, "I am the most blessed man in the world, for this woman is my bride." 

I know - I hear ya.  It's just crazy talk.  But it's all true.

And couples like this inspire me.  Perhaps an old divorced person like me can learn a thing or two - or 47 - from observing and talking to couples like this if the opportunity ever presents itself for me someday.

Which is not to say that I'm not married today.  For I am.  It's true.  The romance leaves something to be desired - ok, a lot to be desired.  But I do reap some benefits, even so. 

My engagement ring, you ask?  Oh, it's lovely.  It "sparkles" with little blue and turquoise lights, telling me of its happiness.  It can spell "facets" perfectly with my help.  It doesn't exactly fit on one finger so much, but it is still quite portable.  I take it with me almost everywhere I go.  And it's been replaced a couple of times in the last 4 years.  Mac lovers and evangelists would say this is because I'm running Windows.  For you see, my engagement ring is a work-issued laptop.  I received it in the Fall of 2007 ready to move to my current job on the SAP project/support team.  You don't need to know any further details at this point; suffice it to say that I make my living as a geek.  (And just for the record, I could have told quite a few stories from that project time in these Top 10 Funniest moments, but they had to be scratched, for they would have fit in that category of "potentially too embarassing or damaging to others to publish."  I would have had to change the names...er...initials of many people to protect the innocent and all that.) 

But back to our story.  My husband has issued many engagement rings to people.  My daughter is engaged to my husband as well, for she works for the same company.  And works off hours or while on the road at times - hence, the need for a laptop. 

But she isn't married to my husband.  No, there is another group of us who share this husband.  We all have a wedding ring, too.  While many of the engagement rings look very similar the wedding rings vary widely in style and color.  These wedding rings can do way much more than the mere engagement rings.  They are far more portable, albeit they still don't fit on one finger, but could be balanced on one finger.  At least it can be on my pointer finger, but my ring finger is a little too weak to balance it well.  Its sparkle comes from a touch screen that takes me to email (Outlook, Yahoo and Gmail), Facebook, a camera, a picture gallery, books, a bubble level,(which I don't use on cakes!) an egg timer, a dictionary, music, news and weather, games and - get this - even a phone directory!  For you see, it even makes phone calls and sends texts. 

Yep, my wedding ring is my work-issued phone, so that I can be reached 24/7. 

While my husband issued it to me rather unceremoniously - no wedding, no reception, not even a "you may now kiss the bride" - my former departement coworkers knew how much this moment meant to me, knew how sentimental I am, so they arranged a full-up St. Louis wedding reception for me during my last week in that department.  If you're not from St. Louis, then you may not know what we mean by this phrase, but it isn't a true St. Louis reception unless there's mostaccioli, fried chicken, italian salad and wedding cake.

And that is exactly what they did!  It was truly a wonderful, fun surprise for me.  They called me into the lunch room and surprised me with this reception.  It was so cool and so fun.  So story # 6 counts as a best moment in my 50 years....

...uh...but it also counts as a funniest...for the wedding cake has its own separate story.  Because I've made so many cakes and brought them into work - even a little tiered wedding cake one time for a couple who both worked for this company at the time and had eloped in Las Vegas - they knew that they had to make me a good, respectable wedding cake for this auspicious occasion.  My then boss and good friend, P, was put in charge of the cake.

She had visions of a 2-layer, 6" square cake stacked on top of a 2-layer, 9" square cake.  How hard could this be, right?  She had a couple of 9" square cake pans, so this should be a snap.  Just trim a few inches off of the sides of two of the layers, and you've got yourself two 6" cakes, ready to frost and stack.  This should be easy enough.  It may not have all of the curly-cues and fancy schmancy flowers and do-dads on it like a Deb cake, but it would be close.  It couldn't be that hard.

So after work, the night before the reception, P stops off at the grocery store for the ingredients.  She sees all of the boxes of cake mix, complete with pictures of frosted cakes on them.  You know the picture I'm talking about.  They all have that same slice of a two-layer cake with frosting between and on the top and sides.  So it seems only logical to think that the box of cake mix includes frosting, too, right?  Absolutely.

Ok, so maybe not, once P opens the boxes of cake mix.  Oh well, she'll "think about that later."  (Extra points given for naming the movie reference for that line.)  But let's get these cakes in the oven.  And out of the oven - only to discover when taking two of the layers out of the pan that they aren't quite baked in the center.  Ok, that shouldn't matter.  These two layers will just be part of the 6" tier.

Fast forward to the next morning.  P has meetings most of the morning, and cakes are still not frosted, much less cut or stacked.  She dashes into a store and picks up 2 tubs of icing.  On her way into the office, she calls one of our coworkers in on the plan and says to go get another one and both of them meet her in a conference room.  J and K are at the ready when P arrives.  She hands off the cakes and icing to them and asks them to finish it off.  It's hard to say whether she communicated her full vision to them of 6" on top of 9" or not, for that isn't exactly the result that came from all of this rush of activity, but J and K spread those two tubs of icing as far as they could across those 4 layers. 

But not to worry.  P had a gift bag at the ready with a beautifully decorated, tiered wedding cake on both sides to set up next to the real cake.  I looked for that bag this morning in my collection of gifts bags to take a pic of it to post here, but to no avail.  It's hard for me to believe that I used that bag to house an actual wedding gift to give away since it was a big bag, and I'm just not that extravagant when it comes to giving wedding gifts, but maybe P took it back home?  Anyway the point is, THAT is what the cake looked like.  By the time J and K were done with those 4 layers and 2 tubs of icing, it looked just like that picture on the gift bag.  Minus the curly-cues and fancy schmancy flowers and do-dads.  Or the difference in sizes between the tiers.  Or the lots of icing.  But otherwise, it was the same.  Just the same.  Almost the same.  Really.  I promise. 

And it's like I told S&K before they got married.  No matter what else happens at the reception or to the cakes, in spite of all of the plans and preparation, in the end you both get married.  As long as you hear the words "I now pronounce you husband and wife" that's the whole point.

And I definitely heard those words.  And I like to believe I've been a faithful spouse.  For even as I type these words, while laying on the loveseat, my wedding ring is resting quietly on my chest, ready to alert me to anything requiring my attention.  And if that isn't love, I don't know what is.