Mary's Almost Wedding

Dear Audrey,

Working on the Mommy album, I tried to capture the trip to Hawaii, but couldn't do it all justice in two pages.

Mommy had been engaged to Marvin Yoder. Grandpa Harold always said that he would pay for our wedding, or he would pay us $2000 cash to elope - he would still come out ahead if we eloped. Well, Mommy and Marvin decided to take the money and get married in Hawaii. Thing is, they invited the family and some friends.

Continental Airlines had just started service from Houston to Honolulu and had great air/hotel packages. So, Grandy and Grandpa Harold decided that they would go. Grandy didn't want to miss her baby's wedding. Maggie decided she would go and take Nanny. Aunt Pat and Uncle Raymond loved going to Hawaii and didn't want to pass up the opportunity to go. And Mommy's friend from college, Allison (the same Allison that you were named for when you were named Audrey Alison) and Gareth decided to join the party. Kathy didn't plan on going because she was moving to Norway the next month and didn't think she could afford it with the move.

About 3 weeks before the wedding, there was a bridal shower for Mommy at one of her friend's house. I think it was on a Sunday afternoon. Kathy and Maggie were invited and we went with the plan that the 3 of us would go out to eat after since it would be one of the last times all of us would be together before the wedding.

Mommy opened all of her presents at the shower, and we were enjoying all the food and talking when Mommy made the announcement that while she enjoyed all the lovely gifts, she couldn't accept them because she had decided to call off the wedding. She had good reasons for doing so. Anyway, most everyone went ahead and gave her the gifts.

Kathy, Mommy and I went to Barry's Pizza afterwards for our dinner. It was early when we got there and the waiter came up to us and said that we seemed really happy and that we must be celebrating. Kathy sings out, "She called off the wedding, she called off the wedding!" Kathy was really happy because she didn't like Marvin. (There was another funny thing - don't remember what led up to the comment, but we were teasing back and forth with the waiter - he was cute - and Mommy said something about she knew about something he was doing or talking about because she was "in the business". Mommy waited tables to put herself through school while working on her Masters.

So everyone had already paid for our trips to Hawaii, so we decided to go ahead with the trips. Since Marvin, wasn't using his ticket, Kathy decided to go in his place. So the running joke was that Kathy was the groom. Everywhere we went, Kathy had to carry Mommy over the threshold. We got lots of pictures with Kathy picking Mommy up.

Love,
Maggie