LIFE WITH MY CHILDREN PART 31

Okay, I kinda omitted details about the wedding and preparations. So, here goes.

With only six weeks to prepare, I was frantic. Joe and I decided to forego invitations, opting to send out announcements after the event. We decided to only invite family and very close friends. As mentioned before, my family were no-shows other than one uncle and his wife. Same with friends...only Al and Marion Kliemann attended. Joe's family and friends made up for it though. And I was so sick, I didn't even want to be there.

Three weeks before the wedding, the kids and I went dress shopping at Hudson's in downtown Detroit. Between us, Joe and I had decided I could pay up to $50 for a dress...which was a lot of money back in 1968. I found the perfect dress in Hudson's third floor...and only $38.00! It was a knee-length, sky blue chiffon that floated around me when I moved. I also found a perfectly matching length of blue mesh that I attached to a floral tiara for a headpiece and a pair of white cloth covered high-heel shoes that I dyed a matching blue. Another chore marked off my to-do list!

After a few instruction classes in the Serbian Church, the kids and I were ready to be baptized.
Two weeks before the wedding, we met Kum Walter and his wife Lillian at the Serbian Church.
The ceremony was short. Father Mijatovich said a short sermon, asked if we had fasted and heard our confessions. Then, with Kum and Kuma stood with me at the baptismal fount while Father liberally doused my head with water. Then it was Tammy's turn. Kum and Kuma's daughter, Pam, stood with Tammy as her Kuma, while she was similarly baptized. Then their son, Paul, stood with Buddy as his Kum. Father really dumped the water on him...saying afterwards he went easy on us girls because of our hair-do's...but Buddy got the works! It was a very solemn, beautiful and heart-warming ceremony.

Afterwards, Kum took us all out to dinner at a fine Italian restaurant and the kids, theirs and mine, felt very grown-up as they ordered their first Shirley Temples, while the adults had a bottle of fine wine...with which Kums toasted our conversion to the Serbian Orthodox Church. More about the Serbian Church in a later post.

Somehow, during those busy six weeks, Marion Kliemann found time to have a personal bridal shower for me. The women in the office as well as the wives of my male co-workers gave me boxes and boxes of lovely sexy lingerie.

After I went back to work after the wedding, Al Kliemann had a dinner-party for the whole office and their guests, as well as many realtors and office workers from other real estate offices, with whom I had worked and become friends with over the years, at a restaurant in Ann Arbor celebrating our wedding. We got many lovely wedding presents...including a solid silver tea service and an original oil painting and several hundred dollars in cash. I must add, I was so moved by all the love my friends lavished on me, I was in tears the whole evening!

A Serbian wedding is a beautiful ceremony. I just wish I hadn't been so sick. It wasn't until I attended another wedding, a few months later, as a Kuma to the daughter of another family friend, that I really understood what a lovely, solemn ceremony it truly is. It began with just Joe and me and the priest, Father Mijatovich, at the "high altar"...where we swore our vows to each other. Then the ceremony continued at the "low altar" with Kum Walter and Kuma Lillian attending us. Mine and Joe's hands were lightly tied together with a while handkerchief. The four of us walked around this table three times while the cantor chanted and spread incense.
Kum and Kuma, for their part, had to vow to help us with our religious growth in the Church.

The incense made me feel faint...and I was scared to death that I was going to pass out. Father thought so, too...and skipped or hurried through the last part of the ceremony. He introduced us to the guests as Mr and Mrs Joe Wussles...and added "somebody help him carry her out of here!"

Because I was so sick, we went back to the apartment so I could lie down for a bit. We ended up being nearly two hours late to our own wedding reception. Of course, there was a lot of catcalls and ribald teasing about us being too "eager" to wait until after the reception!

I was too sick to eat anything..but was told the buffet was terrific. I did take part in cutting the wedding cake and ate a small peice of that. Mostly, I sat at our table and let people come up and talk to me. Towards the end, I did dance with Joe. Afterwards, we stopped at the bar to speak to his Uncle George. Uncle George picked me up in a big bear hug, swung me around, and bellowed for everybody there to hear..."You belong to us, now!" It was a perfect ending for a day that would have been perfect...had I not been so sick.