Wedding Blog

Inspired by Miss Bluebell’s post on the same topic…

Mr. Blueberry’s family and my family do *not* have a good history of meetings. All three key meetings (him + my parents, me + his parents, my parents + his parents) have been…interesting. It was nothing like the movies, that’s for sure.

Mr. Blueberry met my parents first. It was move-out day at the end of my freshman year of college. Mr. Blueberry and I had been dating for about a month. And the meeting was in the trash room of my dorm. Yes, you read that right–the trash room. So we’re standing there amid the recyclables, and Mr. Blueberry walks up the stairs where my parents and I are in the middle of hauling dorm stuff out to our cars. He’s very polite: “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Blueberry” he says as he sticks out his hand. But right then, some random person comes through with a big box (move-out day, remember) and walks right between us. Awkward? Yeah. Really. Luckily, they’ve moved on and really like him now.

My meeting of Mr. Blueberry’s parents went a little better. We’d already talked on the phone a couple of times. This was during the summer of 2005. I was living at home for the summer; as was Mr. Blueberry. I made the drive from Kansas City to St Louis in my un-air conditioned 1995 Mazda Protege (this is the car I’ll likely be driving for several more years, too):

(that’s a Darwin fish on the back, and the bumper sticker reads “Can’t feed ‘em, Don’t breed ‘em”).

I made the 270-mile drive in that, in 90* weather, no AC, windows down, Decemberists blasting. I was really nervous about meeting his parents and wanted to make a good impression, so for most of the drive I wore a nice cool tank top, though shortly before I got to their house I changed into a fresh summery button-down, redid my hair, freshened my makeup–anything to make it look a little *less* like I’d made a 4 1/2-hour drive in no AC.

I got there, and knocked on the door of the wrong house. Oops. Luckily those people weren’t at home, and Mr. Blueberry saw my car in the street, so he came out and directed me into his house (He’d told me “third house in the cul-de-sac” instead of the house number, and “third house” is understandably imprecise). From there the meeting went fairly well; Mr. Blueberry’s parents welcomed me into their home and the weekend was just fine.

Finally, Mr. Blueberry’s parents meeting my parents. It was Oct. of 2005, and this has to go down in history as one of the worst meetings EVER. Because it was at my brother’s funeral/visitation. Long line of people stretching out the door of the place. I saw them inching their way to the front of the line. They got up to the front, and I tried to take a second to at least introduce them properly, “Mr and Mrs H****, meet my parents, Vic and Kathy M*****” but unfortunately I still had my own long line of people to greet–that, and the sad nature of the situation, nobody was really in any shape to exchange pleasantries.

Next weekend, after over a year of exchanging emails, they’ll be meeting again, this time in St Louis for my bridal shower there. The dads and Mr. Blueberry will have several hours together while the moms and I are at the shower, and then my parents will be having dinner at Blueberry’s parents’ home. Hopefully this will go well–it could hardly go worse than the first time they met, right?