Beloved and I were young when we got married. And we must have looked even younger than we were. I say this because when Beloved and I decided to stop at a motel on the way to our honeymoon location the manager took one look at us and refused to book a room to us assuming we were just two young lovers using her hotel for a quick fling. This is despite the fact that we both wore wedding rings. (I guess she’d seen that ploy before.)

We didn’t know where the next motel was and were completely exhausted from planning for the wedding, the wedding itself, and the reception afterwards, and I was in no mood to have to deal with the manager’s efforts to attempt to protect my bride’s virtue from me.

Uh oh! I just remembered another reason we were so exhausted and decided to stop there:

We’d driven many miles in the wrong direction and had to turn around and drive that many miles back.

I’d missed a turn.

But not just any old turn. Did I mention that the turn was to a SIX LANE FREEWAY with lots of highly visible signs practically shouting “TURN HERE YOU IDIOT!”?

That’s how tired we were when I missed the turn. You can imgine how much more tired we were when we made the long round trip just to get back to that point. It was then that we saw the motel and knew it was time to drive no further that night.

Back to the hotel lobby: I went to Plan B and told the manager that the marriage certificate–it’s the one I’d mentioned in an earlier post that I’d accidentally ripped and then like an idiot tore some more–and I’d go get it. (Plan “C” was to call the police. I was getting pretty upset at this point.)

The manager backed down and gave a room to us.

Looking back on it, some of the manager’s reluctance may have been my fault. (So, what else is new?) Time for yet ANOTHER confession related to my wedding. (Sigh.)

I’d been so wrapped up in getting everything ready for the wedding that it wasn’t until sometime after 6pm on a Saturday night–the night before the wedding–that I remembered that I hadn’t gotten a haircut.

And my hair was longer than it had ever been.

It had been cut military length all through high school (due to my USMC Jr ROTC class) when nearly all the rest of the boys had long hair, so when I got out of high school I’d let it grow. And grow. With the intention of getting it cut before my wedding.

Have you ever tried getting a haircut at a barber shop at 6:30pm on Saturday? I have, and I learned yet another lesson the hard way that night. I drove all over town and never found one that was open.

So there I was standing at the end of the aisle with hair that looked like a cross between something out of a disco movie and what you’d find on a man in a VW bus with psychedelic paint all over it.

I can just imagine what Beloved’s relatives must have thought as they saw her walking down the aisle toward me. There were probably some badly bitten tongues that day!