...and they lived Happily Ever After...
Getting married in Southern California is fun and easy--probably too easy, but so far, we're okay with it, my new husband and me.
We set off early in the morning on June 5th--two weeks ago today--for the Beverly Hills courthouse, where we had an 11:15 appointment to get married by one of their Deputy Commissioners. We were nervous. We both had new clothes on, me in a lilac ankle-length rayon print dress and shoes with heels, which my then-fiance had never seen on me before, and him in a white linen suit, also heretofore unknown to me or anybody else in California. He had his sneakers on and a very elegant burnt-orange dress shirt and a hat.
We were so nervous that we had made it halfway to Beverly Hills before we realized that we had left the marriage license behind. That's probably why the groom isn't supposed to see the bride till he lifts the veil. We didn't even have a veil, and didn't miss it, except maybe if we had been looking for the license instead of gazing in awe at each other's elegance, we'd have remembered the license.
So, back we went. It was right where we had left it. We hadn't forgotten anything else...yet. But the day was young.
Everything was going well until we hit some big traffic snarl on the 10 freeway, and, thank God for cell phones, I was able to call our dear friend, witness, photographer and general factotum, Michele, and let her know we were on our way but running late. We didn't have the phone number for the courthouse, but we called the one in Norwalk, and were able to get to them that way. Apparently they routinely schedule about 45 minutes of leeway into the arrival times that they assign to marrying couples. And a good thing, too!
We arrived like a couple of cartoon characters, still elegant but a bit frazzled, to find that we were somehow, despite being half an hour late, miraculously right on time. The woman who officiated, whom we had never met before, a Ms. Donna Jones, was very much on top of everything and helped us through every bit of the ceremony, which was very beautifu and touching. Neither of us had expected that; we both assumed that getting married at the courthouse would mostly be a matter of signing forms and raising our right hands. Nope. It was actually very romantic and we were both already walking on air, and that definitely added to the joy and tenderness between us on the day.
Michele was a godsend. She took pictures, witnessed, encouraged, admired, helped with every possible thing, and provided our little mini-reception afterward. The pictures she took will definitely follow at some point, and I will make sure to display them somewhere.
The courthouse has a chapel. It has several neat chairs for family and friends, an artifical flower garland in an arch over the bride and groom, a fake, but beautifully decorated wedding cake on a side table, and a very non-denominational space at the front for the couple (us) to recite our vows after Ms. Jones and exchange rings and share our first married kiss. Who'd have thought?! And I wonder how many other couples have been married in that cute little neat-as-a-pin chapel? It's Beverly Hills--maybe celebrities got married there, who knows? In any case, it did the trick for us.
My husband set down his hat on one of the chairs. I was juggling a huge fake sunflower instead of a bouquet, and somehow we managed to lose all our paperwork. It was in a big brown envelope, so if anybody has seen it, please contact me privately. Maybe that's why other people have guests. We didn't want a lot of fuss, so the only person who came was our dear and much-needed Michele, but if there had been a few hangers-on with nothing else to do, maybe our paperwork would still be with us.
After the ceremony, my darling and I met Michele at the nearest Starbucks for our version of a wedding reception. Michele bought us drinks and a piece of crumb cake for each of us, and Starbucks contributed a sort of grapefruity sorbet sample stuff that was pretty good. Michele took more pictures of us feeding each other our "wedding cake" and we took off shortly after that.
He stopped and wrote "WE ARE GONNA BE BAD TONIGHT WE JUST GOT MARRIED WHOO HOO" on the car windows, and on the back window, he wrote, "WE JUST GOT MARRIED YOU CAN CALL US OLDIEWEDS WHOO HOO", which actually got us a lot of attention, strangers congratulating us and making mildly obscene but celebratory comments and gestures as we drove along. I had no idea it would be such a great thing to do! He had saved that as a surprise for me. I knew he had the markers but had no idea what he was going to do with them. One grumpy old gentleman gave us a disapproving glare, but everybody else that participated at all was happily cheering us on and thrilled to be included in our happiness. I recommend this kind of thing to anybody celebrating something you want to share with the world. It definitely added a lot of fun to our trip. We were a little sad to wash it off at home at the end.
Soon after this, we realized that we had misplaced our brown envelope, and neither of us remembered, even to this day, what was in it, other than some receipts and directions on how to change one's name, and some sort of government pamphlet about, "Now that you're married..." or something like that. So we went back to the courthouse, searched everywhere and questioned everyone. The kind ladies behind the desk gave us a replacement for the name change thing and reassured us that nothing important was lost, so we gave up and left. I would like to have had a chance to read the pamphlet, though.
Next, we headed for home. Our only chance of going on a honeymoon AND staying out of the poorhouse hinged on a check he had been expecting for days, since his work at a piano sale at USC. (BTW, if you are ever thinking of buying a piano, go to a piano sale at any college or university that's having one: the prices are way below retail, and they are NEVER cheaper anywhere else, unless there is some hitch, or something grievously wrong with the piano or its provenance. Just a hint.)
And, by gosh, The Check WAS In The Mail! Whoo hoo indeed! We stuffed a few shirts and underwear and toiletries into our gym bags, and a few other honeymoon necessities, put on our travelin' shoes and took off!
Our plan was to meander pointlessly up the coast on the 101 inland and partly on the Pacific Coast Highway, and wherever else tickled our collective fancy, till we ended up going through Big Sur and finding the Monterey Peninsula. This is about a 6-hour trip, if you really have to be there on time for something, but we took about 4 days. We had some consummating to do, plus there are lots of sights that he'd never seen and a lot I'd never seen or seen in his company. Our whole philosophy for the trip could be summed up by Lao Tzu, who said, " A good traveler has no plans, and is not intent upon arriving," which is just what we did. We were the best of travelers. And there is no better traveling companion than my husband.
We spent our first night outside of Santa Barbara. We had decided ahead of time that we weren't going to spend all our play money on restaurants.
We're very much both Picnic People at heart. Both our cars have permanent picnic baskets in the trunk. Our first stop on the trip was to go to the supermarket and get block ice for our cooler, snacks and sandwich stuff and bottled water for the road.
We wrapped both blocks of ice in a couple plastic bags, and they lasted, like Hannukah lights, for the whole time. We felt very pleased with ourselves, and very blessed.
And we discovered that Tillamook puts out some cheese slices in reclosable packaging that puts all other camping cheese to shame. It's almost like one of those clamshell things you see on the top of people's cars when they're going camping, only they're clear plastic and cheese-slice-size. My hat is off to Tillamook. Trader Joe's had similar packaging for sliced, cooked roast beef and a few other things. (If you've never been to a Trader Joe's, you haven't lived. I could write a whole blog about the place!)
We stayed every night at the nearest Motel 6. I don't know if they were the cheapest accomodation available, but they sure are standardized. They aren't expensive, but they're clean and organized and have everything you need for the night, and they are usually situated right near places where you can buy mustard and pretzels and stuff. Our experience with them was overall very positive. Even though they're all virtually identical, each has a subtle character of its own, probably due to the personalities of the different managers. And we weren't paying extra to admire fancy curtains in our sleep.
Santa Barbara is a very sweet, pretty little town. We bummed around briefly there, checking it out, but we were determined to make Buellton for the Pea Soup Andersen's and Solvang, before they closed. He had never been to a Pea Soup Anderson's before, and it's a good thing we made it this time. There used to be several of them, but I believe the original Andersen sold out and all but perhaps two of them have closed down. Too bad. Where else can you get All The Pea Soup You Can Eat, even for breakfast, plus other delicious and more standard menu items, and all that Danish decor, as well as the history of the Danish monarchy emblazoned on the outside wall? And, as tourist traps go, why, it's a one-building Tourist Trap deluxe! And an excellent precursor to our Solvang trip.
We had to hurry to get to Solvang at this point. It was probably about 5 p.m. or so. Solvang is apparently on Senior and Toddler time: they start closing around 5:30 until nothing but Wine Tasting Rooms and restaurants are still open after 6 p.m. We went into a wonderful cutlery store and picked up an excellent sheathed bento knife (a fancy little enclosed paring knife) which we found we had forgotten to put into the picnic basket. We found an antique store with lots of interesting stuff, and several badly rebuilt pianos. We admired every toy in a nearby toystore, and looked in a few kitchen stores for a few things we were interested in finding, all while the various proprietors were standing, arms crossed, foot tapping, keys in hand, waiting for us to leave so they could have their cookies and milk, put their teeth in the glass and be in bed by 7 or so.
We liked Solvang anyway, and plan to make an early, early start some day, just to see it before the gas prices drive the whole town out of business. Sadly, we weren't there in time to eat an actual Danish made by a Danish person, but we were still too full from our pea soup binge, so it's probably just as well.
We kept moving on up the coast. We saw Hearst Castle, off in the distance, and pretty much bypassed Cambria, though that's another nice little touristy town we plan to go back to, at least to visit my dear friend May, who restores antique porcelain and gives spiritual lectures there.
We saw Elephant Seals, en masse, on the beach a little further on. Elephant Seal Beach is right off the freeway--it's like a little turnout. You stop, park, get out and are immediately besieged by masses of obese California Begging Squirrels, who come right up to you, and give you a demanding look, like a landlord the day after your rent was due, and wait impatiently for you to produce some sort of snack. We didn't give them anything, but everybody else did. I wonder if maybe California Begging Squirrels are the larval form of Elephant Seals. There sure were a lot of both there, though we found, as we moved on up the coast, that the squirrels are everywhere, obese and aggressive, and Elephant Seals seem to be quite localized and of a much more relaxed frame of mind than the C.B. Squirrel population.
I took a lot of pictures of Elephant Seals, and a few of C.B. Squirrels. They will be up and visible eventually, too. I'm still recovering from the honeymoon, so it may take me a little time to get organized and post them.
We stopped for a while in Pismo Beach to watch the sun go down. It's a wonderful little town, a beautiful little beach, and there were some surfers getting some good rides as the sun sank. We think we may have seen a sea otter, but we're not sure. It was small and seal-like, and swimming along on its back, but it was pretty distant, so we can only assume that that was what we saw.
Many, many times, during our slow progress up the coast, we would just stop somewhere to admire, breathlessly, the beauty of the coast, or the rocks, or the forest, or some individual landmark. At one point, we were so overwhelmed by the beauty and majesty that surrounded us that we had to stop and doze off for a little half-hour nap. English is the most versatile language in the world, but we ran out of superlatives. We were literally speechless as we viewed with amazement and awe the wonder of this astonishing state we live in. And we only saw a tiny chunk of it.
When we finally found ourselves in Big Sur, we decided that we needed to find the town itself. As far as we could tell, there wasn't one. Just magnificent trees, winding roads and parklands, a nearly inaccessible beach, a post office and general store, and the Henry Miller Memorial Library.
The Henry Miller Memorial Library deserves an entire blog to itself, too, though there isn't much to it. It's a little wooden shack in the middle of the Big Sur area, right off the freeway, which goes by some local street name there. They have a little outdoor auditorium, surrounded by trees and shrubs and various interesting and/or beautiful sculptures. The Library building, the main shack, is both a library, though not the lending kind, a bookstore (and yes, we bought a book!) and a memorial, with pictures, prints, the books that most influenced Miller during his lifetime, leaflets and brochures and other various and quirky objects.
There was at least one outbuilding, which housed the bathroom and a sort of reading room. We used the bathroom and read lots of educational posters and reprinted Miller works and such while we were in there. There was a bust of Henry Miller that stood about 4 feet high, which had the spare toilet paper standing on its head. I'm sure Miller would have been pleased.
The whole time we were there, we had a sense of the hushed sacredness that you find in ancient cathedrals and other places of worship. Also, most of the time we were there, a young woman was playing a guitar on the porch, a couple with a small child were playing ping pong off to the side amongst the sculptures and shrubs, and the guy running the cash register and minding the store was playing a mandolin, only he was playing it as if it was a guitar. Hmmm. We really enjoyed the whole experience, and have determined that at some point in the future, we're both going to read some Henry Miller or Bust.
We moved on, slowly and circuitously, through what must be one of the most beautiful and majestic forests in the natural world today. I don't really remember what came next, except that we found our Motel 6 sometime soon after and felt vaguely disappointed that we had to rejoin civilization, but grateful for a place to crash and watch TV and take baths and consummate some more.
The weather this whole time was bewildering. Not only did it change from day to day, but seemingly from town to town. We were cold at Pismo Beach, hot at Morro Bay, warm in Big Sur, and freezing cold in Monterey. It kept changing back and forth. We were constantly struggling in and out of layers of clothing, and glad we'd thought to toss jackets into the car on the way out the door. We are such spoiled Southern Californians!
We kept chugging on up the coast toward Monterey, stopping whenever a whim took us, seeing loveliness and fun stuff everywhere, and having picnics in little turnouts here and there. So far, we had only eaten at a restaurant once, (pea soup!) and we were really getting a kick out of seeing the various supermarkets, grocery stores and delicatessens that we'd stop at to replenish our cooler and snack supply. We mostly drank water during the day, and stopped at rest stops and gas stations on our generally northward journey.
When we reached the city of Monterey, it wasn't very late, but we were sort of wrung out from traveling so much, so we decided to make an early night of it. We had ended up at Cannery Row and found it to be just not very interesting--no more canneries, and sort of an antiseptic little park by the bay, and we discovered that we had lost our trusty Motel 6 guide somewhere along the way. So we wandered around looking for it, and finally gave up and called the 800 number on the receipt from the night before. The lady on the phone was very helpful and hooked us up with a perfectly lovely room and gave us very precise directions on how to get there.
We still needed stuff for dinner, so I unpacked while The Man of the House strolled out to find something to eat. He came back with a huge bag of wicked but tasty snack foods which we ate cosily in front of the TV until we fell asleep. The next day we were heading for The Pacific Point, which is the Monterey Peninsula, where you can look both east and west and see the Pacific Ocean.
It was well worth the trip. It was utterly gorgeous. Cold, so we had to put on our jackets, and extremely windy, but we got to see a seal get rescued, and somebody ran over a water fountain which made quite a geyser amongst the beautiful, craggy, huge old Monterey Pines. We looked and looked. And absorbed yet more beauty.
Then went and ate at a silly little restaurant that specialized in breakfasts and decorated with all kinds of bunnies. It was a little strange, and I felt that the waitpeople were a little disgruntled, but the food was excellent and so were our appetites.
We moved on. We reset the trip meter on the car, because this was the downhill side, and we were on our way back home at this point. He had work the next morning, so it was time to head back, and we were determined not only to do it quickly, but to enjoy every minute of it.
Which we did. We drove through more beautiful forestland, with our sweaters on, then came out into farmland and were promptly much too hot. Off came the sweaters, and out came the water bottles. A day or two before, I had bought a ball cap to keep my hair from blowing in my face while we drove on the freeway with the windows open; it was from Morro Bay and had a picture of a scary, toothy blue fish on it. I like it a lot, but it actually helped us get our lunch. We stopped in a town near Morro Bay to get gas, and we happened to be right across the street from a pizza place that looked inviting. We had almost no cash left, but my husband is a pizza freak of no small dimensions. He was pointedly not saying anything, so I got out my trusty cell phone and called all my credit cards and found a few that would definitely be good for buying pizza.
We were going to find a park or someplace to set up the picnic, but as I said, this man LOVES pizza, and when I suggested it, his eyes lit up. It occurred to me that everybody should have their favorite thing when they're on their honeymoon. So we had pizza, and played pinball, and were very happily enjoying the moment.
When I paid for it, the kid at the counter just took a look at us, took the card, no questions asked. I inquired why he didn't want to see my picture ID or something, and he said, "It was the hat. Obviously, you're local."
We had a white pizza, just because it was something we didn't usually do. It had chicken and mushrooms and I think spinach on it. It was LOADED with toppings. We only got a medium and ended up taking a couple of pieces home in the cooler. So we continued our honeymoon the next day, having leftover pizza.
We were seriously headed for home at that point, and continued on our journey with pedal to the metal, still fielding congratulations and comments and encouragement from the populace at large. Once, outside of L.A. County someplace, a couple driving in the lane next to us got our attention and showed us THEIR new wedding rings. We showed them ours and all of us laughed and had a private moment of public friendliness.
We've been clicking our wedding rings together like Secret Decoder Rings ever since. We got home later that same day, collected the mail, in which there were a few small checks to keep us going, and lots of junk.
It was the Best Honeymoon Ever, and I have to recommend the Fuss-Free California Wedding Chapel in Beverly Hills.
It was all just perfect.