Flight Suits and Wedding Gowns
November 2001
My husband, Eric, has a joke he likes to say: “Ask Jessica to sing about Jesus or America, and she’ll be there. Super Bowl, backyard cookout, whatever you got, she’s coming to sing ‘God Bless America.’ ” And he’s right. Growing up in Texas, I sang that song over and over. From Memorial Day parades to Veteran’s Day pancake breakfasts—I was your girl. When I sang it at the East Room of the White House, I finally found out I had been flubbing the lyrics all those years. I was there to kick off the USO holiday tour for troops fighting in Afghanistan. It was the first time they let celebrities in after 9/11, because, well, they were busy. It was surreal to hear President Bush speak, thanking the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for his service, the transportation secretary for keeping the airlines safe. And then he added, “I want to thank Rob Schneider and Jessica Simpson as well.”
They asked me to sing “God Bless America,” and I gave it my all. President Bush was in the front row, right next to Laura, and I watched him quietly sing along, his mouth moving along with mine. Something went wrong after we got to the mountains, though. I said, “to the rivers,” just like I always did, and, well, he knew it was “the prairies.” I was so embarrassed that I apologized to him and Mrs. Bush after.
“I swear all this time I thought it was rivers!” I said.
“That’s okay, Jessica,” he said. “God blessed the rivers, too.”
Two weeks later, my father and I got on a military cargo transport plane to start the USO tour with six Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, Schneider, and a country singer named Neal McCoy. Every seat on the plane had a little card that read “C-17 Globemaster III: Airlifter of Choice,” which cracked me up. “We know you have a choice when you pick a military airlift,” I told my dad. “And we appreciate your business.” He was so excited to play war and reminded me again he had been too young to go to Vietnam. He had made all this possible, reaching out to the USO as soon as I expressed an interest in helping support service members in any way I could.
Soon we were at Camp Eagle, a U.S. military base near Tuzla in Bosnia. The Tuzla airstrip was in constant use, sending planes to bomb the Taliban. As I talked to the service members there, I learned that before Camp Eagle had mostly been a peacekeeping mission to keep the Bosnian War from being reignited. They talked about having to be careful of landmines left behind.
“I’m staying put with you guys then,” I said. I was mortified that before I came there, I had never even heard of Bosnia, and certainly didn’t know that American troops were there. When I’d reached out to the USO to volunteer to perform for service members, I’d had a vision of these sorts of big brothers and sisters in the military coming in to save the day. I was gonna put on this big show for them, high-octane with lots of red, white, and blue peekaboo clothes that I felt I had to wear for them. I even had a bikini top made from parachute material to go with army pants. But when I met actual service members, I wasn’t prepared for them to be so young. They were all my age or even younger.
I did “God Bless America” as my last song at each stop, a capella, and Bosnia is where things changed. It was right at that first “stand beside her and guide her.” These men and women started to sing along with me, and I noticed they were just bawling their eyes out, so of course I did, too, and I knew that this was more than a song. It was a prayer. They just wanted to be with the people they loved, in the prairies, the mountains, and, yes, the rivers. I was so privileged to share in that moment. I have done a lot of singing at bases and aircraft carriers since, and every time I do “God Bless America,” I ask everyone to sing along. “I don’t care if you think you can’t sing,” I say. “I want to hear you.”
After the Thanksgiving USO tour, I went to Afghanistan for a weeklong Christmas tour on the frontline. Between the two tours, I still had to do two radio-show concerts—the Jingle Jam in Kansas and the Jingle Ball in San Jose—and they felt surreal. The people attending those shows were the same age as the service members I’d entertained.
It might sound silly, but I was afraid I was going to die in Afghanistan, because the military made it clear to me that they could not guarantee my safety. I think I hugged Nick a thousand times before I left Andrews Air Force Base, and he kept telling me I was going to be perfectly fine because I was going to have the world’s strongest military to keep me safe. I told him the hiding spot where I had placed a pile of my journals in case something happens to me.
“Don’t read ’em unless I’m dead, okay?” I said.
He looked at me like I was crazy, but he hugged me harder.
On that tour, we had to land on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Now, I am not one of those cool girls who goes on a roller coaster and throws up her hands. I scrunch my eyes tight, white-knuckling whatever—or whoever—I can hold on to. You think an aircraft carrier just parks, but they are always moving, so the pilot must land the plane on the deck just right and then has a matter of seconds to bring the plane to a stop. There are wires that catch you, and you feel like you’re going to get whiplash. But it’s worth the tough landing because aircraft carriers always have the best audiences. The Roosevelt had been deployed in the North Arabian Sea since early October and had a crew of about 5,500 people. It felt like every one of them was at the concert. By then I understood it wasn’t about a pretty girl in a bikini. I could just be me with them. Put on a Santa suit to get laughs and sang Christmas songs. I tried to meet as many troops as possible, and a lot of men and women would give me challenge coins or take patches off for me to keep. I still have them all.
When I got home, I could tell Nick was proud of me. “Promise you’ll do one with me, babe,” I said. He swore he would, and he kept his word.
AT THE START OF 2002, I KNEW NICK WAS GOING TO PROPOSE. SO DID MY dad. He talked to each of us separately, constantly urging us to wait. He was convinced that Nick didn’t understand commitment, which I didn’t think was fair. “Marriage is about hanging in there,” he said.
I know he accused Nick of making me dependent on him for everything, which is the pot calling up the kettle to have a long talk about being black. My mom loved Nick, but right or wrong, my parents had spent my life making me think that I couldn’t do anything without them. At twenty-one years old, I was still very much a child. I didn’t know how to write a check, but, somehow, I was paying for everything. I knew that I was making money, but I didn’t think of myself as the family breadwinner. I just thought my money was their money. Honestly, what I knew for sure was that it stopped my family from having as many fights, so I felt lucky that I could be the one to help keep the peace.
I was already on to my next album, determined to make it mine this time. I constantly tried to write my own songs, with recurring themes of freedom and taking flight. I didn’t want to have to work to find myself in the songs, I just wanted them to come direct from my heart. When I worried what Tommy would think, I would murmur Colossians 3:23 to remind myself why I wanted to make music in the first place. “Whatever you do, work at with all your heart, as for the Lord and not for men.” I had been called to do this.
That year, the NFL invited me to perform at the halftime show at the February 9 Pro Bowl game in Honolulu. The Pro Bowl brings the best of the best in football together, and Nick tagged along because it was a dream for him to be on the sidelines seeing all the all-stars up close. He was acting weird during the game, and I thought he was just star-struck by athletes.
The next day he told me he’d chartered a sailboat for a six o’clock sunset cruise on the Pacific. That whole day he drove me crazy, asking me the same questions over again because he was distracted, shaking even. When we were finally on the water, I leaned back in his arms, mainly to stay warm. I was chilly, even in my gray Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day hoodie sweatshirt and the USS Detroit ball cap a sailor had given me. The captain gave me a blanket to cover me, but Nick was shivering, too.
“Do you need more of this blanket?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Nick.”
“What?”
“What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, sounding hurt. “I’m just happy to be with you is all.”
“Great,” I yelled. The boat was rocking so much, and when water splashed in, I couldn’t help but scream for fear of getting wet and even colder. Nick kept turning back to look west, checking the sun as it dipped to the horizon. And then something clicked in him.
“Jessica,” he said, “you mean so much to me.” I wish I could remember exactly what he said because I know it was beautiful. I was too busy trying to figure out why he was being so sappy.
Finally, he pulled out a little box, opening it to a reveal a ring with a pear-shaped diamond. “Will you marry me?” he asked.
“Yes!” I yelled. On some instinct, we asked the captain to take our camera to capture the moment on video. “I’m engaged!” I said. “Right here in Hawaii.”
“Nick,” I said. “If I’d known you were gonna propose, I’d have dressed up.”
“You’re perfect,” he said.
I believed him. We kissed, and I leaned further back into him as the boat continued to sail through the rough waters. But I was happy.
WE DECIDED ON AN OCTOBER WEDDING, THROWING OURSELVES INTO wedding planning. I was that girl, and Nick wanted to come to every meeting with our planner, Mindy Weiss, to keep the budget in check. I didn’t think about cost, and I just wanted the whole thing to be epic.
This obviously scared Nick, who was coming into the marriage with much more money than me. As we got closer to the wedding, he casually mentioned that maybe we should talk about getting a prenup. Part of the tabloid mythology of our marriage is that my dad played hardball and refused. No, this was an intimate discussion between a man and his soon-to-be wife. Which is to say that I exploded.
“What are you talking about?” I said. “For when you want to get a divorce?”
“No, of course not,” he said.
“You’re already thinking about how you’re going to leave me?”
“My advisers say it’s for the best.”
“Well, then marry them,” I said, and stormed off.
He dropped it. To his credit, he respected my feelings and probably got a lot of flak about it from his “advisers.” They had no inkling that I was going to leave our marriage with much more earnings than him, and, more important, we knew our marriage would never end. We were in this for forever, and a deal’s a deal.
My father was awful through the whole engagement. There’s just no nice way to put it. He continually told me I was making a mistake and told Nick to his face that I was too young to get married. It was another thing for my parents to fight over, since my mom always took Nick’s side when he would criticize me over some new thing. What you have to understand about my mom is that she is a tough crowd. My dad is a people pleaser, but people have to work to impress her. To this day, I think a lot of what I do is to win her approval. Her backing up whatever cutting thing Nick said to me gave it more weight and gave him license to do it more.
But trust me, I was no angel. I had upped my dosage of diet pills and was eating even less to be super-thin for the wedding. Speedy and hungry, I was easy to set off. Nick and I developed a reliable cycle: he would criticize me for something small, and I would blow it up to make it about something larger in our relationship or the pressure I was under in my career. He would feel attacked and raise his voice, then I would say, “Screw you,” and pout like a child. Nick would then resolve the issue by being the grown-up in the room. Rinse, repeat. I know now that I have an addictive personality, so I am especially prone to falling into patterns. Thank you, therapy.
But gosh I loved him. I could not wait to marry him. I’d always dreamed of getting married in a little white chapel in Texas, and I found it in the hill country on the west side of Austin. It was gorgeously simple, with white limestone walls and dark oak beams inside. When I walked in and I felt His grace, I knew this was where my wedding was supposed to happen.
We kept it small, inviting three hundred people to an afternoon ceremony on October 26. The week before, it rained like Noah was gonna show up, and each day I checked the forecast to see if we would get a reprieve so I could still have my reception outside. It didn’t look like it was going to happen.
My father was a raincloud all on his own. At the rehearsal dinner the night before, my father acted as if the next day was his execution. It was so out of character for him, because my dad was all about appearances and acting like everything was, in his favorite phrase, “hunky dory.” Through the dinner and all the toasts, he moped and kept shaking his head, right in front of Nick’s family. My mother confronted him about being so horrible, so then they got into it in front of everyone. Welcome to the Simpson Family Traveling Show, Lachey folk.
I didn’t want to see Nick the morning of the wedding, so I gave him his present that night. I’d torn a November 1997 page from my journal and had it framed for him with a picture of us. At seventeen, I wrote a letter “To My Future Husband,” telling him that I was waiting for him. “I wish upon the heavens and all the stars for a light to guide me to where you are.” Nick got choked up—he was sentimental, and I loved that about him. He didn’t share my faith, but he understood that I really did dream of him.
“That’s when our first album came out,” he said.
“I’d probably seen a picture of you,” I said, “and didn’t even know you were my husband.”
His gift to me was a music box of white and gold. When I opened the box, it played Shania Twain’s “You’re Still the One.” I played it alone back in my room at the Barton Creek Resort & Club, where we would have the reception the next day. I sang the song, again trying on my Nanny’s ring, my “something old” for the wedding. I stared in the bathroom mirror, certain I would look different the next night. I thought I was finally going to grow up to become someone’s wife, and I needed to say goodbye to the child looking back at me. I went to bed and prayed, thanking Sarah for helping guide me to Nick. I also prayed for another miracle: that it would stop raining.
It didn’t. I threw open the curtains as soon as I woke up, and all I could see was rain and gray. Throughout the morning, I think about ten different people burst into the “It’s like raaaaaiiiinnn on your wedding day,” from Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic.” But honestly, I stopped caring. I wore my “Soon-to-be Mrs. Lachey” sweatsuit and just let my wedding planner, Mindy Weiss, lead me around to get ready, a director and her leading lady. I was in love with my dress, a strapless ivory lace gown custom made by Vera Wang herself. The gown was encrusted with what seemed like a ton of baby pearls and crystals. We kept having to take it in as I went for my goal weight of, uh, weightless. I had borrowed an eleven-carat diamond headband from Harry Winston and pretty much anything my mother could get from Neil Lane. Hair clips, earrings, a pearl pendant, a bracelet . . . more was more. Throw in a six-foot train and you had yourself a princess bride.
Mom and Dad went with me and Ashlee—my maid of honor—to the chapel in a 1937 Cadillac limousine we rented for the day. We all waited until the last possible second to get out in the rain, and they ferried me from the limo to the chapel under two umbrellas like I would melt. Inside, someone handed me my bouquet, a ball of five hundred tiny white stephanotis stems tied together that I later found out, when I got the bill, took twelve hours to build. Worth it.
My mother went in first, then Ashlee, and the doors closed, leaving just me and my dad in the vestibule, with an usher and photographer. I put my arm in his, fumbling with the bouquet. He cleared his throat, his usual signal he was about to say something important. I thought he was going to tell me he loved me or do something to make me feel less nervous.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.
I didn’t answer, and he continued. “I’m right here. We can—”
“Dad, please.”
“You don’t have to.”
I fixed a smile, knowing the doors would swing open at any second. “Dad, I’m walking down this aisle and getting married,” I said through gritted teeth. “You’re giving me away. You have to. I’ll always be your little girl, but you have to do this for me.”
The doors opened, and I saw Nick waiting for me. He gasped at the sight of me. I waited for my father to take the first step down the aisle, a white carpet lined with white rose petals. Instead, I took a step, dragging my father into movement. He briefly got it together but cried the whole way down the aisle. It was brutal. I took step after step down the rose-petal-strewn aisle, keeping my eyes on Nick.
He was standing on a slightly raised platform next to Brian Buchek, our officiant. Brian was a church friend from Richardson, all the way back to the fifth grade. He knew my dad well and seemed to sense what was happening. He started by keeping the tone light, talking about how I’d talked about this day since we were ten. “Is it everything you ever dreamed of?” he asked.
“Yes, it is,” I said, truly meaning it.
I remembered when Brian found Christ when he was sixteen, and now here he was helping me marry Nick. I looked behind me on the bride’s side and saw the faces of friends from all my worlds. My cousins, church family like Carol Vanderslice, and my music family like Teresa and CaCee. My dad sniffed and looked down. He had to stand next to me while Nick stood facing us.
Nick and his 98 Degrees groomsmen—his brother, Drew, was his best man—sang their song “My Everything” to me, and Nick could barely get through it. What I would always love about Nick is that he was sentimental, and as much as he tried so hard to appear tough, he couldn’t help but show that he felt things deeply. I had both men in my life crying. I widened my eyes under my veil, determined not to cry and muss my makeup.
Then came the moment when Nick had to take my dad’s place. It was almost too literal for my dad, who couldn’t look at Nick but, as he turned to sit, let everyone see his face of doom. Nick lifted my veil for our vows. I know a lot of couples choose to write their own vows, but Nick and I used the traditional words, for the very reason that for hundreds of years many people had pledged their love using the very same promises.
When Brian pronounced us man and wife, I felt such a shock of happiness go through me that I almost laughed out loud. Nick kissed me, and we left to a gospel choir singing “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee.” In for a penny, in for a pound, so why not have a twenty-piece choir show up? “Melt the clouds of sin and sadness; drive the dark of doubt away.”
I had no doubts. I swear. At the reception, Nick spun me to our song, Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love,” with my friend from the USO tour, Neal McCoy, singing to us. I was twenty-two, and I had pledged my life and destiny to this man. And I don’t regret it. Nick was meant to be my husband. No one else was supposed to have my virginity. I know that because I had talked so openly, with Nick by my side, about waiting to have sex until my wedding night, that people were curious. I get it. I’m the girl who spent three years doing interviews where everyone asked me about having sex, and I literally named the date it would happen. So, once that day came, all those interviewers found a way to ask me what I thought.
I didn’t know what to tell them, but back then I felt obligated to give them an answer. I’d built up the anticipation in my mind that the first time I had sex with my husband had to be this transcendent experience where the heavens parted. What I didn’t know then is that everyone’s first time is awkward, and that is part of it. And that it’s okay, but at the time, it’s tough to understand. I had joined a long line of virgins in my family who said yes to forever for that one experience.