CHAPTER 33

Wedding

She and John settled into a two-bedroom apartment in Harvard Square. He’d found a job at a local start-up. She began doing some after-school tutoring and started the process to reapply for grad school. They’d both agreed that they wanted the wedding to be fairly soon after the engagement. John felt especially strongly.

“I just feel so terrible about the engagement,” he’d say. “I really just want to be married.”

Leda began planning for an early spring wedding. For the most part she was stumped by the interest so many women had in wedding planning. How could one manage to fawn over napkins? Where was the joy in embossed lettering?

And even worse was the hatefully competitive nature many women seemed to adopt for the eight months of their lives when chiffon would become a common word in their lexicon. For entertainment purposes she frequented an online forum called Weddingbee, where women would come to subtly rip each other apart using acronyms and smiley face emoticons.

“Does anyone’s FI watch porn? I found a bunch of porn on my FI’s computer and it’s really disturbing me,” one woman asked.

“Nope. FI thinks it’s gross ” was one response.

“My SO does watch porn but only porn with women that look like me ? It used to bother me but now I just feel pretty proud that he’s still so turned on by me ” another woman wrote.

There were tons of threads about engagement rings, including one where a woman complained that her SO only gave her a .5 carat ring, saying how she’d really been hoping for something bigger. A bunch of women responded and went crazy that anyone would dare insinuate that there was a diamond size (particularly their own) that could be considered small.

“I have a .2 carat ring and it’s super big! A .5 is HUGE. I love my ring ,” one woman commented. Leda imagined that this woman had seen this post and had had a pretty miserable day walking around with her .2 carat diamond ring. Maybe she didn’t even wear it all day. Maybe she took it off and put it away just to stop staring at the reminder that her husband is a failure and her life is a sham, Leda thought. Why, ladies? Why, why so crazy?

On one post a woman had asked whether size matters, and the amount of women who willingly stepped forward to needlessly defend their husband’s tiny penis was astounding.

“My husband has a smaller penis, but I don’t care. It works great for me because I’m small myself .”

“My SO is VERY below average, but I love it!”

“I’ve always been super tight so FI is just perfect for me. Big penises hurt. I’m perfectly happy, no complaints at all .”

Does being married mean you have to pretend that every facet of your life is endlessly enjoyable, including your husband’s small penis? Why can’t these women say, “My husband has a small penis, but that doesn’t change my self-worth. Sure, I wish he had a bigger penis, but I still matter. You may have a husband with a bigger penis, and this is something I wish I had, but it doesn’t take away from all the amazing things in my own life.”

At around the time of reading the penis post, Leda had decided that she and John should have a smaller wedding. Part of the decision was most probably related to their engagement going so horribly wrong, but realistically she never would have wanted a big wedding. It felt strange to perform this intimate ritual in front of other people.

“It’s like everyone is watching us have sex or something,” she’d remarked to John. “All along we’ve had these milestones in our relationship that have been private, and now all of a sudden the most important one my estranged aunt is going to be witness to?”

The funny thing about being engaged was that she’d expected most of her girlfriends to be happy and excited for her, but it actually wasn’t like that at all. Many of them were still single and had little to no interest in discussing wedding plans. Leda tried to be sensitive to it, but it was disheartening. Anne was the worst. She didn’t even want to answer the phone after the engagement.

“I have to organize my garage,” she texted. “I’ll call in an hour, but I’ll only have fifteen minutes to talk because I really need to go through my Easter decorations.”

After that their texting sort of dropped off. Leda wasn’t sure who to ask to be her maid of honor.

“I’ve come to the realization that I hate all of my friends,” she told John.

“What about Elle?”

“She’s worse than Anne! I hear from her once every, like, three months.”

“Then just don’t have a maid of honor.”

“But I have to.”

“Why?”

“It’s a thing you have to do.”

“Who cares?”

“Everyone.”

“But you just said you hate everyone.”

“Yeah, but I still care what they think.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

She asked Anne to be her maid of honor.

Despite all her misgivings, and her disinterest in color-coordinated table settings, Leda did really want a wedding. She too could get caught up in it. Dress shopping proved to be one of the best things ever, and the months leading up to the wedding she’d keep a picture of herself in her dress open on her computer just to admire how linear she looked.

John was also excited and each week brought her home a new bridal magazine. It was sweet and helped ease the still-lingering tension between them.

“It’s the happiest day of your life,” she’d read in an article about losing arm fat for your wedding day, and she thought, Is it the happiest day? Maybe my happiest day is a day I’d hardly remember where I just felt like I was okay and that everything would work out. Maybe my happiest day was the only day I didn’t worry about arm fat.

The other big concern was money. Spending an ungodly amount of money on a party for people, many of whom she didn’t care about, or even like, really, for that matter, couldn’t have felt more wasteful. At one point she had a mini panic attack over little glass swans she’d ordered to have placed on the tables next to the candles.

“Would you like to have glass swans placed beside the candles?” the lady who handled the tables asked.

“I guess so…yeah, that sounds nice, actually,” Leda said.

Two weeks later she received a bill for $325. She called her mom crying.

“Can you return them?” her mom asked.

“Apparently I can’t. I can’t believe this,” she said between sobs.

“Relax, honey, I’ll pay for them. It’s not that big of a deal. Besides, I’m sure they’ll look really pretty on the table. Don’t you think?”

“I guess so,” she said between more sobs.

The night before the wedding she and John stayed together at the hotel. She had refused to spend the night away from him, as was custom.

“It seems fucked-up,” she said when her mom suggested it. “It’s just as fucked-up as penis garb at bachelorette parties.” (Leda had declined to have a traditional bachelorette party even though Anne had offered to throw her one. “Take me to a nice place for drinks or we’re not having one. I do not want to wear a penis necklace. Saying goodbye to the prospect of more penises in my life is the best part of getting married.”)

“This wedding is so stupid. We should have eloped,” she said as they lay side by side in the big decorative hotel bed. They could hear the couple next door to them having sex. As nice as the hotel was, the room smelled like bathroom. I love my dress but could the love of a dress really justify six months of dieting? she thought.

The next morning she didn’t feel any better about it. John went to a separate room to get ready. His mom showed up early and said something bitchy about the weather. Anne was frantic because Dean wasn’t coming after all. The caterer called and said that there would be no mini bagels. Her dress was making her sweat and her hair didn’t come out exactly as she wanted it. Her heels pinched as she walked and her parents had to prop her up so she wouldn’t trip on her train. As she waited for her cue to walk down the aisle, she felt anxious and melancholy and her mind wouldn’t stop racing. But then the music started and the doors opened up and John saw her and it all went away. He started crying. Tears ran down his cheeks and he mouthed the words “You’re so beautiful” over and over as she walked toward him. It was the most wonderful feeling she’d ever felt before. She would never, ever forget the way he looked at her. He was a stranger she hadn’t known from anyone else, and now he was a man who loved her like this, like tears streaming down his face, like “You’re so beautiful” over and over.

She couldn’t have known it then, but as she walked toward him she was aging. The first gray hair emerged from her scalp, small and thin right at the top of her head. A crease in her forehead from years and years of worry and wonder was silently visible. She was past the point of the march toward favorable aging; from that moment on she’d be lumpier and grayer, and the skin on her face would be looser and more and more wrinkled. She was getting old. She was twenty-six. She was more beautiful than she’d ever be. She was married. And it all felt like the happiest day of her life.