The First Wedding

Guilt can produce strange results, sometimes. I often wonder If I would have married Paul had the times not been what they were, had the mores been what they changed into several years later. But done is done. It was just done... uniquely.

It was 1967, April Fool's Day, when we met at Hamline University. I was sitting on the front steps of my dorm, Manor, across the street from ATO - actually Alpha Tau Omega, his fraternity house - enjoying a little silly toy a former boyfriend from high school had sent in the mail. Paul, living off campus because he'd dropped out (flunked) and was working, frequently stopped by for the company of his fraternity brother friends. He walked across the street and introduced himself, asking me for a date. I was informed later that he'd gotten an earful from his brothers who had bigger egos than bedroom accomplishments and wanted to see if I was anything like what they said I was. I had casually dated several of them, since this was the brainy fraternity and they mostly seemed nice, but nothing clicked. They, however, bragged that they had scored.

I wonder in retrospect how many of them were actually virgins like I was.

Paul and I chatted a while. It was a mild sunny day, not bad for April in Minnesota. Eventually I agreed to a date, and before long I was lavaliered. This meant Paul gave me a necklace with the fraternity symbol on a tiny pendant. It was a discreet way for those in the know to be informed that we were going steady. It was considered quite a status symbol for the girl in those days, and I got feedback that some thought I had dated Paul just in order to get it. I'd never heard of it before he gave it to me, so that's kinda hard to figure, unless it was a case of projection on their parts.

We both lived within a few blocks of campus, so when summer came, we continued dating. My folks met him and took in intense dislike to him. Since they never explained it, I did the typical teenaged rebellion thing and just got closer to Paul. I saw years later what they saw, but it was way too late then, of course.

Paul and I had the normal hormonal thing going, and those days that caused problems. The whole society insisted on virginity until the wedding night. The pill would shortly be developed and that would change rapidly, but for now birth control consisted of using rubbers, a diaphram which required a doctor and a prescription, and the only Catholic Church approved method, rhythm. (What do you call couples who use rhythm? Parents!) At any rate, our "petting" became rather schizophrenic, having the simultaneous goals of wanting it all and wanting to stop just in time. I, of course, was the one charged with saying, "No." He was the one who promised to stop. It worked well until it didn't. Eventually I said "yes," and he never forgave me.

That sounds weird, right? But somehow, if I never gave in to him, then his fraternity brothers were lying and I was a virgin. If I eventually gave in to him, it was because I already had to anybody else, and then what did he have that was worth anything? Even the old-fashioned "proof" of virginity didn't persuade him, since he'd tried to be so gentle the first night that there was still a little bleeding the second time. So for him, this lack of trust would always be a part of our relationship. I guess he never believed that he could be special enough that he could be somebody's first, and while he was right on the first part of that, he was wrong on the second part.

This must sound absolutely insane to anybody under, say, 35. They'd be right, of course, but it's how it was.

On my part, I was being eaten up by guilt. I wasn't supposed to have given in. It didn't matter that we'd been engaged for several weeks at the time. We weren't married! That was about to change.

That fall, I was a sophomore living on the ground floor in a tripple room with two other roommates. We had windows that opened up at ground level, and with ours facing back, it was simple enough to sneak out after hours. A "good" roommate was one who'd say the missing person was down the hall somewhere if someone came asking. That someone would be the dorm mother, at a time when in loco parentis was the rule and there was a dorm curfew and a sign-in/sign-out book at the front door.

The night of October 13th, a Friday, I left to spend the night at Paul's, so we could both leave early. We had a long drive the next morning. I had what was to become my wedding dress, in an ivory double-knit fabric, actually bonded-knit,the newest thing on the market, long sleeved, above-the knee, form fitted with flared skirt, wide mandarin-style collar, and double row of brass buttons down the front. In the morning, we got up early and drove to Watertown, SD. You didn't need a three-day waiting period there, and they had a regular industry set up in across-the-border elopements. Show up, fill out the forms, pay, get a quick VD test, pay, stand before the justice of the peace, use their witnesses, say your "I dos", pay, and the deed was done.

Best yet, the paper it was published in was never read by anybody you knew. We wanted it kept secret, especially from my parents. Even knowing how much they disliked Paul, we figured we could eventually change their minds and have them come around to throwing a "real" wedding. We just needed the sex to be legal.

The honeymoon was a night at the Thunderbird, a large hotel in Bloomington that no longer stands next to the then Met Stadium, now Mall of America because something more lucrative is taking advantage of that expensive location. We couldn't do a regular honeymoon because I had to be back at classes Monday and he had to be back at work. After the second wedding, we spend a night at a dumpy motel in St. Paul. We didn't go anywhere then because, hey, this was nothing special: we were already married for months.

Sunday afternoon I walked back into the dorm as if nothing had changed.

Our secret added spice to the relationship. It also added pressure from Paul who now wanted his wife to live with him and be accessible to him whenever he wanted, in all ways. That helped push the official wedding up to the following spring break. When my parents balked, I threatened to just move in with Paul. This was such a scandalous idea that they thought it was better to be married to him. I, of course, was perfectly complacent about it because I knew we were already married and I wasn't threatening anything remotely resembling a scandal. They were never informed of the first wedding, not to this day.

Paul's parents were, however. We went down to visit them at the farm that fall, and were put up in separate bedrooms. That lasted a few minutes. In the morning we were awakened to pots banging loudly in the kitchen. They were obviously very angry, and we overheard enough to figure out it was about our sleeping arrangements. Paul and I agreed that we should tell them the full story, and ask them to keep our secret as well. Things settled down pretty well after that, though they were miffed at not being informed right away. Now they could spend more energy wondering why my parents couldn't accept their Precious.

The engagement ring actually helped us keep our secret. It was a slim gold band with a solitaire diamond. At the base of the diamond a gold leaf curled off in each direction, to "lock" over the wedding band. Since there were two leaves, we got a 2nd wedding band, and explained to anybody curious enough to ask - like Mother - that the first band was merely a guard ring and the set wouldn't be complete without the "real" wedding band at the "real" wedding. A bit after the set was complete, it got re-sized and the three bands joined into one solid ring on the bottom. After the divorce, I had the diamond reset into a dinner ring.