My 28-year-old daughter Josie is getting married. I'm going to be the mother of the bride. We love her fiancé. She is deliriously happy and we are thrilled.
I was 42 when I got married for the first and only time. I was already a single mother and Josie was 3. I always think of it as our wedding, Josie's and mine. After all, she picked Tony as her father way before we got together. And it turned out to be an excellent choice.
I'd never expected to get married. I hadn't really wanted to. But I'd always wanted to have children so I started on my own. I adopted Josie at birth. She was a very easy baby and toddler; cheerful, social, and just the cutest thing you ever saw. She was so well behaved she made me look like a really good mother.
Tony and I met doing a play. We were instantly drawn to each other but he had a girlfriend and he was a gentleman. However misguided I thought his loyalty was, I was very impressed. Josie was crazy about him. She was 11-months-old. She would come through the back stage door and start calling to him "Nony, Nony, are you here?" She would pull herself up the stairs and find his dressing room and climb up onto his chair and plunk herself down in front of his mirror to be made up. And he would oblige. Any time Tony and I spent together outside of the play we spent with Josie. She was a good excuse and a good chaperone. And it was really fun and sexy to act like a family while pretending there was nothing going on. When the play was over we parted ways and didn't see each other for almost two years.
I think Josie has always expected and wanted to get married. Her preschool teacher told us that she was a relationship genius. She explained that Josie knew how to get her way without making any of the other kids angry. I believe it. That's an ability that will serve her well in marriage. And in terms of a husband, I think she has made another excellent choice. A choice very informed by who her father is. Traver is also very loyal and a true gentleman.
He proposed to her just before Thanksgiving and already, in a matter of three weeks, the date is set, the Church is set, the venue for the reception is set, the caterer, the florist, the make-up and hair team, and the card company are all set. Her wedding dress has been chosen and the ceremony isn't until next October. All the vendors involved had cautioned her that waiting even one more day to secure these arrangements would be risky and possibly disastrous.
Twenty-five years ago I was on tour with a play and I had negotiated to have three months off in the middle of the tour to get married. Tony was doing a play on Broadway so we needed to be near the city. We found an old stone cottage overlooking the Hudson in a town called Sneden's Landing that was 45 minutes from Times Square. It was incredibly romantic. I hadn't planned anything for our April wedding and it was already late March.
I remember sitting in the living room with my 3-year-old daughter trying to figure out what to do. I was stymied. Josie recommended we have the reception in this quaint house we were renting, mostly because our landlady, the "boggle" widow, had stashes of candy hidden in every nook and cranny, Josie thought that made it perfect for the party. But the plan really took off when our next door neighbor stopped by to introduce himself. He was a chef named Joe Hyde and I hired him on the spot to do the catering.
How times have changed. There is the internet, where lifestyles are displayed flagrantly for all to see and envy, and where researching the available choices is made almost too easy. Millennials are used to getting groomed on a weekly basis. I hadn't gotten my nails done until I was in my 30s And I have never gotten waxed in my 67 years.
We are totally invested in helping Josie realize her dream wedding. And because Josie has such refined taste and style, I know it will be beautiful and understated. She will be an exquisite bride and I get to be the fucking Queen Mother. When your child is born you grow a second heart. And now that heart is overflowing.
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