AFTER GRADUATING FROM MEDICAL school, I moved to Pittsburgh for my pediatric residency training and then stayed for my fellowship in neonatology at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). My years in Pittsburgh were probably some of the most tiring and amazing years thus far. I worked hard as a resident at Children’s, overnight calls, sometimes thirty to thirty-four hours straight in the hospital. That was before they had work-hour restrictions limiting medical trainees from working more than eighty hours in a week. I fell in love with medical education and neonatology. I realized that I loved the adrenaline of intensive care, but never wanted a critically ill patient to be bigger than me.
Neonatology seemed to offer the best of both worlds. I decided to stay in Pittsburgh for my fellowship in neonatology because I finally felt at home there. I had developed strong roots. I had also developed close friendships and two of my very closest friends from college were also there for their training: Lakshmi was doing her family medicine residency at UPMC and Suketu was doing obstetrics and gynecology. The city of Pittsburgh was not only easy to live in but the people were all very nice. It had a small-town feel without actually being a small town. During my fellowship I pursued a master of science in medical education and fell in love with health-care simulation as a powerful teaching tool. I knew early on that no matter how much I loved clinical care, there was the distinct and likely possibility that my body would not allow me to practice medicine forever. Intensive care is just that, intensive. As much as I loved it, I knew that I needed a plan B in case my body wore out before my mind did. Education as an emphasis in my career made so much sense. I loved it and found out over time I was not too bad at it, either!
I feel as though my years in Pittsburgh were the years I truly became happy with the life I had created for myself. I loved where I was living, had a robust social life, and loved my career and where I was working. The only thing that had been missing was true love. I finally found it in March 2006 when I met Bill, a little over a year before finishing my fellowship, and by 2008 we were getting married!
I was getting married! My dad told me I was a lucky person to have met Bill, and my mother was almost as happy I was. From the day I started fantasizing about getting married, I knew I wanted to be with someone who truly loved me. My future husband needed to be intelligent, funny, handsome, and kind—and of course treat me like a princess! Not too much to ask! Now I had found my prince charming, Bill!
When I first met Bill, he mentioned that he was always a gentleman, but he was far more than a man who opened doors for me. He’d go out of his way for me in every way he could. When he was living in New York and I lived in Pittsburgh, I’d get chocolates or flowers delivered to my door almost every week. Before we got married, he even bought me a new car. While I think some of that had to do with his embarrassment at being in my cute but slightly dilapidated Kia Sportage, the larger concern was my safety. My Kia had died on the side of the road on snowy days in Pittsburgh one too many times for his liking, so he bought me a car—not any car, but a dark blue Audi A4. I went from a Kia to an Audi; he started spoiling me early on in our relationship.
Bill and I initially struggled over a wedding date. He proposed on November 3, 2006. This was during the second year of my fellowship, about nine months after we had officially met. Because I wanted plenty of time to plan our wedding, we decided to wait to get married until after I graduated from my fellowship, which would be in June 2007.
The hardest part about choosing a date was that after I graduated I would need to take my neonatal-perinatal board exam, and I really didn’t want to have to spend the last few months of wedding planning studying for my boards. Because there is only one date every two years that this board exam is given, I had to guess, based on the last cycle, when the next one would be. The last exam had been in the fall of 2006, so I reasoned that if we planned a springtime wedding after I graduated, it would be far enough from my boards for me to be able to enjoy those last four to six months of wedding planning. We choose April 12, 2008. It seemed to be the best day for us, as we knew we might have the wedding in Florida, and not only is April in Florida beautiful, but it is after the craziness of spring break and before the summer thunderstorm and hurricane season. It was also my dad’s birthday, which I thought would make it even more special.
But just to be sure, Bill and I immediately asked my father if he would mind sharing his birthday with our special day, and his response was, “How lucky is that, to be able to share my birthday with my daughter’s wedding day?” So, that was that! April 12, 2008, was going to be the big day.
It probably should not have surprised me, given the frequent ironies of my life, that after we’d finally picked a date and secured the church and reception location, the American Board of Pediatrics decided to move the board exam for the first time ever from the fall to, yes, you got it, the spring. And the date they picked was exactly five days before our wedding date. Of course, it wasn’t announced until we had already booked and announced the wedding date and venue. Being the typical crazy person that I am, I thought to myself, I can handle it—what’s a little more stress to add to the year? That year I was graduating from my fellowship, moving to New York from Pittsburgh, starting a new job as an attending neonatologist, planning my wedding in another state—Florida—and oh, by the way, taking my boards! Another example of how good I am at piling it on.
The second decision Bill and I had to make was where we would get married. Because I was moving from Pittsburgh to Long Island to be with Bill after graduation from fellowship, just deciding which state to hold the wedding in was challenging. I had strong roots in Pittsburgh after having lived there for seven years. However, I would soon be living in New York, which is where Bill grew up and where much of his family still was. But I was originally from Florida, almost my entire family was there, and even some of Bill’s family now lived in Florida.
I had always envisioned a beach wedding—not necessarily barefoot on the sand in front of the setting sun, but at the beach. So Pittsburgh was out. Long Island had beautiful beaches out in the Hamptons and Montauk. We toured quite a few wedding venues there, and the benefit would be that we didn’t have to travel far. Although we liked the idea of the beaches of Long Island, we found the venues very expensive and ultimately realized the beaches did not have as much sentimental value to us as the ones in Florida.
One weekend, Bill and I flew to St. Petersburg Beach, the beach I had grown up on, to try to make a decision. We met my parents and my aunt Barbara and uncle Jack. We both stayed at the Don Cesar Hotel and fell in love with it. I felt that if I was going to plan a wedding remotely, this was the best place, since my mom and Aunt Barbara were there. Bill was in full agreement. He fell in love with the beach I already loved so much.
I wanted to check out the Don Cesar Hotel for the reception not only because it was a beautiful, old-Florida-style beachfront hotel built in the 1920s, but also because I knew it had sentimental value to my family. It had been abandoned for many years in the 1960s, and my mom and her sisters used to play in it. What an amazing playhouse!
Now it was refurbished and beautiful. It was built during the height of the Art Deco era and exuded sleek elegance, with really cool architectural embellishments. It was affectionately known as “the big pink hotel” to the locals, because the entire exterior was almost a Pepto-Bismol pink. If you were driving along the beach in St. Pete, you could not miss it. Many people had their weddings/receptions there, because it offered every kind of option possible, from formal soaring indoor ballrooms to pavilions on the beach.
Because we had such a large invitation list, we choose the grand ballroom for the reception. With magnificent chandeliers and floor-to-ceiling arched windows looking right out at the Gulf of Mexico, the views were truly breathtaking. The room had two tiers connected by curved staircases. The dance floor was on the lower tier. Although many people elected to get married at the hotel or on the Gulf of Mexico right out in front, we decided to have a traditional Catholic wedding, which meant having the wedding in a church. We toured many churches in the area, and ultimately chose St. Mary Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church in downtown St. Petersburg. This meant guests would have to take the bridge from St. Pete Beach to downtown and back.
Bill was very excited to plan the cocktail hour. Since he had given me free rein in almost everything else, I wanted him to choose all aspects of it. He picked a selection of sushi, seafood towers, and cheese platters, as well as an open bar with unlimited Glenlivet Scotch for the guys, Veuve Clicquot champagne, and the signature “starfish fruit” cocktails as the featured drink. For the dinner, the guests could pick from a filet mignon, chicken, fish, or a fancy vegetarian chef’s special. Bill and I had done some of the tasting before we committed to a menu, and we both picked a favorite.
Planning a wedding, there were so many details to address—so many whats, wheres, whens, hows—fortunately, at least I knew the “who.” I also knew the one aspect of the wedding that I wanted—a starfish theme. I love everything about the ocean, and one of my favorite stories is The Starfish Story, a lovely parable about an old man who walks the beach trying to rescue the starfish that have become beached. A young man who sees what he is doing questions his motivation, “You can’t possibly save them all, you can’t even save one-tenth of them. What you’re doing isn’t going to make a difference.” At which point, the old man picks up another starfish, throws it back into the ocean, and replies, “It made a difference to that one.” It was the perfect theme for our wedding, and fortunately Bill was willing to go with it, too!
My mom was truly our wedding planner and organized the whole process from start to finish, although we did hire a day-of wedding planner to take some of the pressure off the big day. With her attention to detail and interior decorating skills, I knew she would not let me make any mistakes in planning my dream wedding.
One detail that we had to take care of, the one that I think all brides get excited about, was picking out my dress and dresses for our bridesmaids. I had been searching the Internet for styles I liked for about a month before I went home to Florida on a long weekend and decided to start shopping with my mom. We went to a local wedding boutique, The Collection, in my favorite shopping area near Orlando, Park Avenue in Winter Park. I brought printouts of all the dresses I had liked online.
At the shop, I couldn’t believe it—they had one of my top three dress choices on sale, 75 percent off, in a size eight. I, of course, had to try it on. Their bridal tailor helped me pin it all up using large clasps that look like chip clips on steroids, and the dress went from a size eight adult to size eight my size—it was amazing. The tailor said she could completely break down the entire dress for me and make it a perfect fit.
After trying on many other dresses, I kept thinking about the first one I tried on that had caught my eye from my Internet search. Because the alterations were going to cost as much as the dress, I realized that getting a dress at 75 percent off might be the only way we could afford one that I wanted. So I decided to buy my wedding dress off the rack. I never thought in a million years that would happen. After many fittings, my amazing tailor created basically a brand-new dress that fit me perfectly! It was fantastic!
We didn’t want too large a bridal party, since we were getting married in our thirties. However, it was our first wedding, and, we hoped, our only, of course. We decided on five attendants for each side. My bridal party included my closest friends, Lakshmi, my maid of honor, Chetna, my matron of honor, and three other bridesmaids who were close friends from Pittsburgh, Manju, Nickie, and Danelle. Bill’s groomsmen included all of our brothers: his two brothers and two stepbrothers and my brother, David. Bill had a crazy insane fondness for his little brothers. Tom, six-foot-four, was a professional firefighter, paramedic, and lieutenant in the Brevard County Fire Department. Joe, a slightly shorter six feet, was a banker and had plans to go to law school, which he later did.
According to Bill, Tom was a man of bravery and selflessness, and Joe, the more buttoned down of the three, was smart as a whip and an enthusiastic get-things-done type. Bill’s pride in “these two clowns” was beyond brotherly, and he loved that he had helped them buy their first cars and find their first jobs. Bill was equally proud of his stepbrothers, Jonathan and James. Jon was very similar to Bill, both academically and professionally. They both loved sciences and had gotten bachelor’s degrees in biology. James had elected to stay in South Carolina, where he had gone to college, and made quite a home for himself, with the sun and sand nearby. He was the last of the five boys to get married, six years after our wedding day.
We asked Bill’s younger cousins from New York, Paige and Patrick, to be our flower girl and ring bearer. We would have asked our only niece, Maddie, to also be a flower girl, but she was still too young.
All the other details slowly fell into place. We picked French blue and silver for the colors. I picked out a designer, Carolina Herrera, and the color for the bridesmaids’ dresses, an almost Tiffany blue, but allowed them to pick out the style dress that they liked, so the dresses went together but each was different.
My mom started gathering all the decorations for the reception in an elegant beach theme with starfish embellishments. My mom and I were back and forth on the phone and sharing pictures of decorating ideas via email almost weekly. We designed our wedding invitations with the help of Bill’s youngest brother Joe’s girlfriend, Karen. He had recently started dating Karen, who would later become his wife. He proposed to her the day after our wedding in Florida. Bill and I even took a few dance lessons. Neither of us has rhythm, unfortunately, but we had a blast doing it.
When our wedding weekend finally came, I had just taken my boards and was so ready for some fun. We flew to Florida and spent a few days staying at my parents’ house in Orlando. We did a few last-minute preparations—final dress fitting, nails (even Bill got a manicure), and looking over all the beautiful decorations my mom had put together. My mom had her close friends she worked with at Walt Disney World helping us, too! Our florist was also a friend and the florist at the Grand Floridian Hotel. My mom’s best friends Gloria and Lulu, both of whom I had grown up with, were going to be there, and although they were supposed to only be guests, they were my mom’s right-hand women, making sure all went well that day. My mom has great friends.
The day before the wedding, we checked into the Don Cesar Hotel. We had a rehearsal at the church, which was when the first bout of drama occurred. As my dad was driving Bill and me into the church parking lot, another car hit us on the passenger side! Fortunately, it was a small fender-bender, but, of course, it shook us up a bit. We had a fabulous wedding rehearsal dinner with all of our immediate family, out-of-town family, and the bridal party, which was hosted by Bill’s dad and stepmom at a local Italian restaurant. Quite a few people made speeches, including Chetna, my matron of honor, and Joe, Bill’s youngest brother.
Bill and I formally thanked all our family for their support and for coming from near and far. We gave out gifts to the bridal party and did all the traditional things you are supposed to do at a rehearsal dinner. After that, we organized a cocktail hour in the Don Cesar lobby for all our guests who were in town and available to get together. Although I was very tired, I was very glad we had added this event to the evening before the wedding, because it gave us much-needed relaxed quality time with all our out-of-town family and friends.
We had about 225 people accept our invitation. There was my family, scattered all over from Florida to L.A., Bill’s family from everywhere, and our friends, mostly from Pittsburgh, New York, Chicago, and Maryland. No one objected to our destination wedding, especially at such a beautiful place.
The wedding day, Saturday, April 12, 2008, began with a Continental bridal breakfast and mimosas for the ladies of the wedding party, but as is typical, it was interrupted by the groom’s party raiding the room and stealing a few muffins and coffees. The wedding itself took place at St. Mary Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church in downtown St. Petersburg. The priest who married us, Father Tom Hartman, was very close to Bill’s mom and had baptized Bill when he was a baby. He was now a monsignor and quite famous for a television broadcast he shared with a New York rabbi, Rabbi Marc Gellman. Together, they called themselves the God Squad, and they were very respectful of each other’s faith as they addressed issues of spirituality and religion on a Sunday morning television show.
We flew Father Tom and his assistant down from Long Island and put them up in the hotel so Father Tom could preside over the wedding mass. He had Parkinson’s disease, but he wanted to marry us, and we couldn’t have been more appreciative.
For the wedding day, my parents had rented a limousine to get everybody in the wedding party staying at the Don Cesar to the church and back. The guys would go first, and then the limo would come back for my bridesmaids and me. Of course, there was another moment of drama—another car accident. This time it was a major accident that resulted in the bridge from the Beach, where we were all staying, to the mainland, where the church was, closing.
The men, who had gone to the church first and had seen the accident happen en route to the church, didn’t think it was going to affect traffic. But the limo could not get back to St. Pete Beach by way of that bridge, so it had to drive all the way back to St. Petersburg, over to Tampa, and across Tampa Bay, which took an extra hour. There was no way the women (the bridal party—including the moms and sisters) could possibly get to the church on time, nor could most of the guests. Everybody was stuck in traffic.
On the morning of the wedding, we ladies were all enjoying ourselves getting hair and makeup done in the salon and getting dressed. Trying to help me relax, my bridesmaids confiscated my cell phone. After we were all dressed and ready to head downstairs, I began to wonder why no one seemed eager to get to the church. I kept asking, “What time is it?” “Don’t we need to get moving?”
All the bridesmaids and the moms kept saying that the limo wasn’t ready for us yet. Finally, after time kept passing, I demanded to know what was going on. My mom and my bridesmaids were trying to protect me from any stress on my wedding day with vague responses. Finally, after more questioning, they told me there had been a bad accident on the bridge, and they couldn’t get ahold of the limo.
Of course, my heart stopped and I said, “Has anyone heard from Bill?” My mind immediately went to the worst possible thing that could possibly happen on my wedding day. Had Bill been in the accident? Was he okay?
I demanded to have my phone back and started texting him. Fortunately, he responded. He was fine, waiting for me at the church, and was so glad to hear from me and that I was not standing him up. He told me that no one in the wedding had been involved in the accident. I was so relieved to hear that he was all right that at that point I didn’t care when or where we got married. At one point, we were joking via text that if the church canceled our wedding because we were too late, we would just elope to Bora Bora, our honeymoon destination.
Fortunately, the church let us proceed with the ceremony two hours behind schedule. As I was standing in the back with my dad, waiting to walk down the aisle, I started to tear up. He looked as if he was about to cry, too. I will never forget the conversation I had with my dad at that moment. He didn’t want me to cry, even though they were happy tears, so he tried to make me laugh by saying, “Just think of dying kittens!”
“What?” I replied. “That isn’t funny at all.” But we both began to smile again at each other! As “Here comes the bride” started playing, and we took our first steps down the aisle, I am pretty sure my dad and I were not the only ones crying. In fact, I later heard that there was not a dry eye in the church.
The ceremony itself was a traditional Catholic wedding with a mass included. We wanted to include the people who were closest to us who had either supported us or brought us together. Our parents gave the readings, and Diane, who had been the first person to have a try at being our matchmaker back when we each did our summer internship with Dr. Kopits, sang “Ave Maria” during the ceremony. I was thankful she could be there, and I knew Dr. Kopits was there, too, watching over us from above.
As Bill and I were exchanging vows, I had one crazy thought flash through my mind, one of those “what a long strange trip it’s been” thoughts. I thought about the chaos of getting to the church—the closed bridge, the circuitous detour, the things that were out of our control, and the way we managed to still get to the church. I thought about the stress we’d experienced, the release from stress I was feeling at this very moment, and how I was staring into Bill’s eyes and knowing we were committing to each other forever. The two hours it had taken to get to this point were like a metaphor for Bill’s and my lives. We had had so many bridges that were difficult to cross, so many detours to get to places the long way, so many stressors we couldn’t control, and so much happiness and fulfillment in the end. I was the happiest bride there ever was.
I probably shouldn’t even mention the third occurrence of drama. We almost didn’t get married, after all! We inadvertently forgot our marriage license at the hotel, so when the ceremony was over and we were supposed to sign our official decree of marriage with the priest, we couldn’t prove we were legally married! Lakshmi’s new husband, Nikhil, saved the day and rushed back to the hotel to retrieve the license for us.
By the time the ceremony was over and we had all our official documents signed, the accident on the St. Pete Beach bridge had been cleared, and we all made it back to the Don Cesar without further delay. Bill and I had taken our dance lessons well in advance of the wedding, so we were ready to kick off our shoes, boogie down, and celebrate our new life with the people we loved.
We started off with a nice slow song by Van Morrison, “Someone Like You.” As we started dancing, all I could think about as I looked into Bill’s eyes and saw all of our friends and family I loved so much around us was how lucky we were. Almost everyone who loved us and supported us was in that ballroom at the same time. At that very moment I knew I needed to burn the memory into my brain, because I doubted there would be another one like it where I felt so much love all around us. I was with my true love I had been seeking my entire life, with everyone else we loved watching us have our first dance together as husband and wife. His family—the Kleins, Croners, and Diecidues—had known him through all the tribulations of his life, as my family, the Arnolds and the Shipmans, had known me. Now, all of these people who had birthed, nurtured, encouraged, and launched us were supporting our union. These were the people who had told us never to let our size hold us back, and here they were, cheering for us now. It was a pretty awesome moment.
Of course, we couldn’t stay too sappy for too long. Halfway through the song, Billy Idol’s “White Wedding” cut in, and that was it, the party was officially started. We motioned for the wedding party, who had been in a circle around us, to start dancing, and before you knew it, everyone was on the dance floor. Time for some fun!
The reception went on for four hours, heated up by the live music of the Land Sharks, who play Jimmy Buffet–style songs and who rarely stopped playing, even for a break. All the guests loved everything—the food was delicious; the cake, Tiffany blue and embellished with starfish from top to bottom, was spectacular; and like all brides, I don’t remember a thing. The headwaiter built plates of food for Bill and me, knowing we’d never sit down, but we never got to those, either. Between visiting every table to say “hi” and thanking each person for coming and the dancing and socializing, the time flew by, and our dinners went uneaten.
There were so many family members and friends to see that there was never enough time, but I tried to spend time with everyone. My aunt Chrissy and aunt Barbara and uncle Jack were there. I had not seen my uncle Jack and aunt Barbara ever have so much fun before! Uncle Jack is a slightly eclectic vegetarian with long blond hair who loves the sixties, listens to classic rock, watches World War II documentaries, and wears T-shirts and jeans every day. He owns his own carpet-cleaning business on St. Pete Beach, so dress wear is not part of his daily attire. I think my wedding day might have been the first and only time I have ever seen Jack wear a suit, and he looked great in it!
Chrissy unfortunately had not been doing so well emotionally, but she was there for me, smiling every time I saw her. She suffered from major depression, and I knew big family events were very stressful for her. Sadly, that was one of the last times I saw her happy. It would be less than a year from that day that she committed suicide. I wish now I had had more time with her that day. I wish I had known life would soon never be the same. The pain of losing Chrissy, especially that way, is something I still struggle with every day. I’d rather have a million surgeries than to have lost my best friend that way. But on this day, my entire family was happy, and nothing can ever take that away.
Of course, my parents were both elated! They had been back together for years and everyone was healthy and happy. I even saw them dancing a few times. Bill and I made a special recognition of my mother and presented her with flowers for all she had done to make my dream wedding come true. We even had a cake for my father, and had the whole room sing “Happy Birthday” to him. After all, it was his birthday, too!
Family members I had not seen in years joined in our celebration that day, among them my uncle Ray, who is my godfather, my half-aunt Sandee, and my cousin Tish, who had even made the trip from California.
Sandee was actually my mom’s half-sister. My papa had a daughter with another woman before he met and married my grandma. Times were different back then, and I don’t think anyone talked about his prior relationship. Although I think my mom and her siblings knew of Sandee, they had met her for the first time only ten years earlier. My aunt Chrissy had actually found Sandee via the Internet, and our families had reconnected!
My brother, David, and his longtime girlfriend, Lisa, who is now his wife, both looked great, and I was happy to see them having such a good time. They were the youngest of all of the sibling couples, with David being a year younger than Bill’s brother Joey. As I saw David escort Chetna down the aisle in the wedding party, I thought it might have been nostalgic for the two of them. I had matched them up in the bridal party line since they had known each other from our childhood. I know Chetna remembers the days of us having sleepovers when we were younger, and David crashing our parties! I never asked David if they talked about some of those memories.
One of the more fun aspects of the wedding was watching Bill’s family getting to know my family! Bill’s mother was with his stepfather, Chuck. They were fairly “newlywed” themselves, having gotten married in 2000, although they had been together for more than a decade. His mother was wearing a beautiful dress she had tailored for the special occasion. She looked fantastic and glowing because she was so happy. I thought about the first time I met her—the day after Mother’s Day, as a matter of fact. We hit it off instantly. She loved telling me she thought Bill would likely be a bachelor, loving work above anything else, but hoped he would find true love some day. Well, I hoped today was that day!
Bill’s father and Debbie, his stepmother, were really rocking it, too. Debbie, who was also dressed in a tailored gown, looked wonderful. On the dance floor, they were really cutting a rug. Bill and I may have been the ones who took dance lessons, but they looked as if they had, too!
Last, all of our friends, who had been some of our biggest supporters through some of the roughest times, had traveled from far and wide to be there. I couldn’t believe the Pittsburgh contingent that made it to Florida!
Lakshmi, my maid of honor, had just gotten married herself. We had been best of friends since college, having studied for boards together, traveled for residency interviews together, and shared weekly dinners together during residency and fellowship in Pittsburgh. I have her to thank for ultimately bringing Bill and me together. If it wasn’t for our commiserating over a bottle of wine one night at my apartment about being single at thirty-two, I might never have logged on to DateALittle and never would have emailed Bill.
At the reception, Lakshmi and Tom, our best man, both gave heartwarming toasts. They had me laughing and in tears. My dad made the initial toast, welcoming everyone, and Diane even made a toast. She told the crowd about how I had called her after I found Bill online to get a “background check.” I did do that, and in fact, that’s how I found out Bill had been the same guy she and Dr. Kopits had wanted to set me up with way back in college. Diane spoke of Dr. Kopits and how he was there with us. Imitating his thick Hungarian accent, she ended her toast with something he said often, “BEAUTIFUL!” There was not a dry eye in the room again.
After the official reception was over, everybody went down to the beach bar to keep the party going. Meanwhile, my bridesmaids had set up Bill’s and my hotel room with tons of candles and rose petals scattered everywhere, and a bottle of Scotch for Bill and a bottle of champagne for me. However, we were having so much fun at the after party that retiring for the evening was not popping to mind. Finally, my bridesmaids insisted we go to the room to be sure we blew out the candles before the hundred-year-old historic hotel burned to the ground!
The next morning, we woke up as a happily married couple—extraordinarily exhausted, but happy and married. We had reserved half of a restaurant down the block from the hotel for a brunch so that our guests could come and enjoy some greasy eggs and coffee as they shook off the cobwebs from the party. The breakfast place I had picked out, the Pelican, was a place on the water that I loved to go to with my aunts Barbara and Chrissy before a long day at the beach. While planning the wedding, I found out that my brother’s soon-to-be-wife Lisa’s uncle actually was the owner. I had been going there for years, long before my brother met Lisa in college. It is a small world!
After the brunch, Bill and I went back to Long Island, took a day to pack for the honeymoon, and left for Bora Bora—so far, so good. But things don’t always go the way you plan in life. Are you sensing a theme here?
Bill and I had come to expect that things did not always go perfectly. We left for our honeymoon on Tuesday morning, right on schedule. American Airlines, New York to Los Angeles. We arrived at LAX and had to migrate to the international terminal, with all five pieces of our luggage in tow. We probably overpacked—we definitely overpacked. We had dress clothes for dinners out, shorts and tees, bathing suits, socks, undies, toiletries, shoes, sandals, flip-flops, snorkel gear, some electronics in case we got bored on the plane, books, and so on. So Bill stacked all of our luggage onto one Smart-Cart, we moved to the international terminal, and checked in for our 11:00 p.m. flight to Tahiti by way of Air Tahiti Nui.
At the gate, we were informed that the flight would be delayed a bit, and the three hundred plus passengers for this fully booked flight began to moan . . . and sweat . . . and grow cranky. Then midnight came. Over the loudspeaker, the gate manager announced that the pilots had gone on strike as of midnight, and the flight had been canceled! Now, three hundred people bolted to the customer service desk, but the news was the same.
“We are sorry, but we don’t have any information about when the strike will end,” was the blanket statement from the representative. “We will gladly put you in a hotel for the night and update you tomorrow with the status of the flight.” I could see Bill was getting frustrated, because we were now losing a day of our trip and potentially the entire honeymoon. Our travel insurance was now useless, as we had already “begun” our trip, so we decided to wait it out.
We went to the first hotel via shuttle, but it was sold out. We got back on the bus and went to the second—also sold out. Because everyone else doing the same thing as us (and our five bags) was quicker, they got to these places faster. The third and fourth hotels were also totally booked. Finally, we got a room at the La Hacienda near LAX, where a negative star rating would have been appropriate. It was totally gross. In fact, it was so bad, Bill and I didn’t even take off our socks.
The next day, we went back to the airport early. The customer service person at Air Tahiti offered to put us on a Korean Airways flight, but that meant going to Korea first! Since I wasn’t as avid a flyer back then, I insisted we decline that generous but insane offer to be in the air an extra eleven hours. We waited for another few hours and, miraculously, by that evening the strike was over, and we were moved to the eleven o’clock flight that night.
We arrived in Tahiti at 4:00 a.m. Tahiti time, completely exhausted. The airline put us up in a hotel called the Intercontinental, which was very pretty and clean. There, we showered and slept for a few hours before the shuttle bus back to the airport for the final leg of the trip. A smaller jet was needed to get from Tahiti to Bora Bora, so we boarded that island jumper and headed to our final destination only a day and a half late.
The wait was worth it. At the airport, we were greeted by a few native Tahitians who were armed with leis and fruity drinks. We also met the captain of the small boat that would take us to our hotel, Le Meridien, which was located on the Motu, an outer band of islands surrounding the main island. There, our luggage was finally handled by someone else, and our honeymoon felt like it was finally beginning. Our room was an over-water hut that was beautiful inside but had a thatched roof to give it that “Island” feel. It had air-conditioning, cable TV, a sound system, a big comfy bed, a deck with loungers to sit out on, and a ladder leading down to the crystal clear lagoon below. It even had a glass floor through which we could see fish, sea turtles, and rays swimming under the hut any hour of the day or night. I was in heaven!
I think our experience in Bora Bora was probably unique. The staff treated us as if we were royalty. At first we thought it was because we were honeymooners, but after a few days we realized it may have been something else. It turns out people with skeletal dysplasia do not end up in Bora Bora very often. In fact, the local news had heard of our arrival and came knocking on the door of our hut the day after we arrived! Mind you, this was before our television show existed, so it wasn’t because of that.
Again, being Little People, we were not completely surprised that we stood out to others, but of course never expected the news to show up. We were nice to the reporter, I think mostly because we were still in shock about what was happening. She followed us on our boat ride to the main island for dinner and then kindly we asked her to leave us alone—we were on our honeymoon.
The treatment we received on our honeymoon went beyond anything we could have expected. Our breakfasts were very special. Every morning, the restaurant’s team would make a special seating arrangement for the two of us. They would adorn our chairs with dozens of flowers, while the other guests ate from the buffet and served themselves. The staff wouldn’t allow us to do that, even when we tried. They would, instead, create a small buffet table in front of us, and then ask us to select from the private buffet they had created—eggs, omelettes, and meats, croissants and pastries, fresh fruits and veggies, cereals and beverages, French press coffee and cappuccinos. It was an amazing spread, every day. And when we had our fill, they would make new plates of fresh fruits and chocolate croissants (my favorite) and place them in our room for us in case we wanted a snack later that morning.
One of the other guests, a regular at that resort, had asked us what we had done to receive this sort of treatment. He went on to say that in the years he had been coming to this resort in Bora Bora, he had never seen any other couple treated with this amount of personal attention. So Bill and I invited him and his wife to come eat with us the next day. It was only fair to share the experience.
Our royal treatment didn’t end with breakfast. The head of guest relations offered to take us for a tour of Bora Bora. We accepted the generous offer and one day sailed over to the mainland and hopped in his car. First stop, his house! We were introduced to his entire family and extended family, all twenty plus people! We next traversed the entire island—winding roads, local hangouts, even the place where, six hundred years ago, ritualistic sacrifices by fire of godlike people, such as those who were short in stature, had been performed! I joked to Bill, softly, “I hope we are not next!” Fortunately, we had an agenda that kept us from “rekindling” old flames. By the time we returned to the hotel, I had been the recipient of more than fifty handmade necklaces made of shells, pearls, and other ornaments only found on the island. The women of the main town, Vaitape, just wouldn’t let me leave without making me look like the Mr. T of seashell necklaces. It was an island shopping spree!
The whole trip was fantastic. We were “swimming” with black tip sharks and stingrays, dining on the water, and lying out on the beach. Even though our ten-day trip had become nine, thanks to some disgruntled pilots, it didn’t get better than a tiny island in the South Pacific with the love of your life. Every day was bliss!