Our "engagement"... what really happened. Part 3

Part 1
Part 2

A few weeks ago I was sitting in church waiting for a youth meeting to start.  One of the Young Women, Mik, pointed at my wedding ring. 
"That's a gorgeous ring."
I smiled, I do love my ring.  "Thanks.  It was my grandma's."
"What does the ring look like that West gave you?"
"He didn't give me one.  I wanted to wear my grandma's ring."
"You said 'yes' without a ring?"
"Well... there wasn't ever an actual proposal..."

West wanted to get married and do it right.  And by right I mean with all the details that he and I wanted.  The beach.  The dress.  Family.  Food.  Music.  Mostly the beach.  And the dress.  And the family.  But he was done living apart. 

"Just come live with me and we'll save for the wedding."

But I couldn't.  It was ingrained into my very being.  I couldn't live with him if we weren't married.  But what if...  what if we secretly eloped and didn't tell anyone.  Then I could move in and everyone would think that we still needed to have a wedding.  If they don't know we're married, they'll be excited about a beach wedding with us and they'll want to come and support us in it... right?

It made sense to us then.

I can't remember the details.  The timing.  I know that we talked about it for a week or two, mentioning it here and there, testing out how we felt about that alternative.  I was for it.  West was unsure.

"You know if we got married by the end of the year we could do our taxes together," West suggested.
We decided to call the court house and see if there were any openings.  It was December 30, 2009.  We had one more day before the year ended.  The court was all booked up, but on New Year's Eve 2009, West and I met at the courthouse during my lunch hour to sign a wedding license.  West called up his neighbor who lived three houses down that we had met a couple of times.  He was the LDS bishop in the neighborhood. 

Are you busy tonight?  Do you have five minutes to help us out? 

He did.

In a matter of 24 hours we went from months of talking about it to just getting it done.

It was almost a surreal experience, standing in that office signing the license with West.  He wants to marry me.  He wants to marry me?  I kept going back and forth in my mind between it being an excited statement to an anxious question.

Was he really ready to do this?  Was I?

After work I got my circus ready to spend the night at West's for New Year's eve.  I loaded them into my car and drove down to meet my... fiance?  I guess he was my fiance for a few hours.

It was like our first date again.  I could barely look him in the eye, and when I did I was searching for reassurance that he really wanted to be doing this. 

He was looking at me and trying to assess the same from me.  He was nervous that maybe I didn't really want to do it.

But we never said these worries out loud.  Not until later, much later.

I was quiet and didn't know what to say.  I couldn't figure out why I was feeling so shy around him all of a sudden, but after we got the kids settled down he took my hand, smiled at me, called me "Mrs. Withers", so he could be the first to say it, and we slipped out of the house and walked three houses down.

We stood in front of our neighbor's fireplace, holding hands, listening to him speak our vows, saying 'I do' to each other.  He slipped my grandma's ring, which I had been wearing on right hand up until then, onto my left.  And then a gentle kiss.  A kiss full of promise. 

We were in jeans.

In five minutes it was done.

I didn't get a single picture.  I regret that desperately.  And in hindsight, I regret that our kids weren't there.  We wanted them at the wedding. The wedding we were certain we would pull off. 

Two and a half years later we still have yet to seriously go for it.  We're too busy living.  Remodeling, vacationing, being a family.

I'm okay with that.

Since we made the decision to get married in a 24 hour time frame, I had yet to make any preparations to move to West's house and we lived seperately for the first month of our married life.  It was odd, not living in the same house as my new husband.  I finally got it pulled together, the house was on the market, the trailer was loaded up with all my worldly belongings, and the move was finally made.

A month after we got married, life with my new husband could really begin.

That's the real story. 

And we haven't looked back.

Part 4

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