Weddingbee Blog

by Sarah A. 

My second day back to work after the honeymoon, my counterpart at another organization called and asked point-blank what was going on. Apparently a month earlier, he’d called and asked for me, and was told I was “on leave due to a personal tragedy.” Two weeks later, he called again and was told I was on my honeymoon. Both answers were right.

On June 10, thirteen days before my wedding (and seven days before my birthday), my father was killed in a single-vehicle accident. Having lost my mother to breast cancer twenty years ago, and having been “Daddy’s Little Girl” since long before that, it was a huge, horrible surprise. Absolutely the worst thing I could imagine happening. As my tearful fiance called his parents and my boss, I could do nothing but pace around the house, mumbling “Oh my God,” and “I just can’t believe it” and “What am I going to do?”

What I had to do first was call the coroner, then my father’s widow (who had been driving, and I think still believes I blame her for the accident), then his sister, to try to plan out the next week. About four hours after we got the phone call, we cancelled a huge pre-wedding party that had been planned for the following weekend, emailing everyone we could think of, and posting the news on our wedding website. Then I wrote a eulogy because I couldn’t sleep, and went to bed. Still awake few hours later, I emailed a friend whose father had died of a heart attack just days before her planned elopement, and asked her to call me as soon as she could.

Talking to Jen was probably the most worthwhile thing I did in that first 24 hours. She didn’t answer the “what am I going to do” question like I sort of hoped she would, but she did explain what she had done, and why. She told me she’d taken guidance from Jewish tradition, in which funerals are non-events in comparison with weddings. Later, my boss would say something that sounded  awful at the time, but actually made a lot of sense: “At this point, you’re going to get married without your Dad there anyway, so why put it off?” And of course everyone–even me–would have to admit “it’s what he would have wanted.”

So a week and a half before my wedding, I dropped off a pair of “Father of the Bride” socks at the funeral home, and my future father in law called the tux shop to cancel Dad’s order, while his wife warned the florist that we’d need one less boutonniere. We had emailed all the vendors before we’d left for Illinois, explaining we’d be incommunicado and that frankly, they were on their own for all last-minute decision making.

For many, Dad’s wake was the first time they met Greg–we dated for three years, but in another time zone. In fact, since Dad and his wife had moved to another area years after I’d left Illinois, a lot of their current friends had never even met me…but they’d heard all of Dad’s stories. Over and over again I heard how proud he was of me, and how excited he was about the wedding. One couple even mentioned how excited he was to wear a tux, something he’d given me no end of ribbing about. On the other hand, the whole situation left some folks understandably speechless, or hopelessly awkward. One woman, upon hearing I was still getting married, sighed and said “Well, you gotta do what you gotta do.” As a groomsman later noted in his blog, “this left everyone speechless at the time, but later became an unofficial motto for the wedding.”

After the funeral, we spent another day in Illinois before returning to our home in Maryland to continue packing for the wedding in Massachusetts. My fiance received a few more RSVPs for the now-cancelled party, and explained the situation as gently as he could via email, then made contact with the vendors again. We bought a case for the flag from Dad’s coffin, and a tenth small memorial candle (adding to those for my mom and our grandparents), still without a clear idea on how they would be used. I looked online for ideas as to how to honor my parents without getting overly weepy, and decided to put photos of them on what would have been their seats. I very
quickly decided to walk down the aisle alone, but instructed Greg to come and get me if it looked like I wasn’t going to make it.

My June 17 birthday passed very quietly, as no one really knew what to say. The following day, we drove to Greg’s parents’ house (our venue) and tried to focus on the future. His family echoed a lot of what I’d heard at the wake, even though most of them had only met Dad once. We took a lot of time to ourselves during that last week, to Greg’s parents’ endless frustration (especially when we “accidentally” turned off the cell phone), but I knew the wedding-related questions they had were just not that important, and that they could make the decisions themselves if we forced them to.

As it turned out, seeing my relatives and Dad’s friends at the wedding wasn’t as horrifically emotional as I feared it might be, since I’d just seen them a week or so before. We built a makeshift “altar” out of a coffee table on stilts, and placed the flag and candles on it. I got down the aisle just fine, I didn’t break down when the priest talked about my Dad, and I just barely cried during the matron of honor’s speech. My aunt refused to sit in the row behind my parents’ seats, for fear she would break down, but later found out the photos I’d placed on them were kind of silly (apt for them), and a friend’s snapshot catches her chuckling at them. (Photos throughout the day indicate that when the ceremony chairs were moved across the yard to the tent for dinner, my parents’ chairs went untouched; they were still in place the next morning.)

The worst breakdown (so far…) came on the second to last day of the honeymoon, when I realized my dad would still be dead when we got home. After four days at work, I still encounter people who knew about one life event but not the other, so I’m never quite sure why people are hugging me until they say “I’m so sorry” or “I heard it was beautiful.” Because of the timing of the events, we get condolences cards, birthday cards, and wedding cards all at once. I probably did more growing-up in June than I did for years before: suddenly I’m no one’s daughter, and I’m someone’s wife.

photo by Elizabeth Home