A Candlelit Beginning

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24)

…but a woman must leave her father and mother too.  And there I was, on the brink of our forever, clutching the arm of my sweet, gentle dad, ready to walk down a long white aisle, my handsome future waiting at the altar.  With a loving embrace, my dad tenderly gave me to Bill to love and to cherish …

December 24, 1964, a diamond engagement ring was placed on my finger.  A few days later, an engagement party was thrown, then the wedding plans began!

Our wedding was planned for February, 1966.  Why February?  I don’t know.  It just seemed like a romantic month.  Being that we had gotten engaged in December, 1964, we figured we had plenty of time to prepare and we intended to enjoy every minute.  This was going to be my dream wedding: a candlelight service in the Baptist church I grew up in (First Baptist Church of Burbank), complete with organ, bridesmaids, flowers, cake…  And it was going to be BIG!  Our plans were set.

A DARK CLOUD

BUT there was a huge, ominous cloud that was building up on the global horizon, – a cloud by the name of Vietnam.  We weren’t paying a whole lot of attention to the build-up of the war, we were so preoccupied – that is, until Bill got a letter in the mail from Uncle Sam.  He was supposed to report to the medical facility at the Los Angeles Induction Center in May for a physical exam, just in case they wanted to draft him.  He passed with flying colors and emerged with a dreaded 1-A classification!  Oh no!!!  Panic set in.

At that time, the men who were married were exempt from the draft.  So, our plans quickly changed and the date for our wedding was moved to July 31, 1965.  We had six weeks to prepare!

Invitations!  Church!  Pastor!  Marriage License!  Wedding Dress!  Cake!  Flowers!  Bridesmaids!  Groomsmen!  Ring Bearer!  Flower Girl!  Decorations!  Wedding Showers!  Honeymoon!  Apartment!  SO-MUCH-TO-DO!  Mom and I were catapulted into overdrive – while Dad wrote the checks.  And we pulled it off.

WEDDING DAY

July 31, 1965 dawned a beautiful (hot) summer day, a curious mixture of excitement, fear, sadness, joy filling my heart.  The morning was spent in final preparations at the church, then gathering with my bridesmaids getting our hair and makeup done in the afternoon.  It was a lovely day, full of joyous anticipation.

All that day I was imagining how Bill might be feeling.  I envisioned him pacing the floor, dreaming of his beautiful bride-to-be, anticipating his new life with me.  How romantic!  Little did I know that his best man had taken him bowling, where he threw out his back and was writhing in pain.  (Thanks, Tom!)  And before the ceremony was to begin, instead of nervously pacing the floor, he was in the church kitchen, casually eating mints!  (I was only then beginning to learn about the difference between men and women.)

It was 8:00 pm, time for my new life to begin.  The church was beautiful, the soft glow of candles lighting the aisle, flowers adorning the candelabras and a very handsome bridegroom waiting for me at the altar.  My bridesmaids slowly walked down the aisle in their yellow satin dresses, carrying baskets of daisies followed by our adorable ring bearer and flower girl.  I took a deep breath, clutching my dad’s strong arm.  We lovingly gazed at each other through happy tears and hesitantly began that long walk down the aisle.  At last we reached the end where my dad gave me a kiss on my cheek and placed my hand in Bill’s.  Even though I was grown up I knew I would always be his little girl.  That would never change.  But now Dad and Mom were blessing our new life as husband and wife.

Our beloved youth pastor performed a beautiful, heartfelt ceremony and after kneeling at the altar, giving our marriage to Jesus, we kissed and were presented to the congregation, for the first time, as “Mr. & Mrs. Bill McIntyre”.  We triumphantly walked back down the aisle, arm in arm, smiling from ear to ear.  We were married!

The reception followed in the church fellowship hall right afterward, a simple fare, consisting of a very long reception line (I thought my feet would die), a huge, multi-tiered wedding cake, mints, nuts, punch and coffee.  In those days and in our circle of friends, that’s what wedding receptions consisted of.  There were no dinners or dancing (we were Baptists, for heaven’s sake…)  But it was beautiful.

And so it was time for us to leave.  As we prepared to go outside to the car, we fought our way through the cheering crowd who was throwing rice everywhere.  When we got to the car and opened the door, we were faced with a car filled to the top with balloons.  As I maneuvered my huge, cathedral length train, hooped skirt wedding dress into the back seat the balloons set off a deafening racket as they all popped, one by one.  The car was decorated, complete with a “Just Married” sign and cans hanging off the bumper, dragging on the ground behind us.  And someone had put blocks under the wheels.  The guys had to lift the car off of them before we could make our get-away.

But then the fun began as we had a whole caravan of cars chasing us back to my parents’ house.  We even drove through a gas station, the bell ringing as each set of tires drove over the cable.  That poor gas station attendant!  He must have had a headache by the time all the cars had driven through.

We finally arrived at my parents’ house where we changed clothes and got ready to go on our honeymoon.  As I undressed and took off my long-line bra, I had to wipe off all the grains of rice that had embedded themselves into my skin.  They had probably started to absorb some of the sweat that had accumulated on my body that hot July evening.  (Thankfully they weren’t totally “cooked” yet.)

HONEYMOON

An hour later, there we were, on the 11^th floor of the Disneyland Hotel.  The entire wall of our room was one gigantic window, overlooking the Magic Kingdom and all its twinkling lights – a romantic setting for our first night together.  As we unpacked our suitcase, we discovered that my dear mother had scattered 2 pounds of rice throughout my clothing, which we had to shake out.  What to do with 2 pounds of unwanted rice?  It went down the toilet.  We never did find out if the Disneyland Hotel had any plumbing problems after that but if they did, we hoped they wouldn’t be able to trace the problem back to Room #1144.

The rest of the night?  Welllll … you know …

The next day we took the monorail from the hotel right into Disneyland where we spent a fun-filled day – our first as husband and wife.  The day after, we went back to my parents’ house, opened myriads of wedding gifts, then left for our ultimate adventure so far:  a 2-week road trip to Yellowstone.  We threw our suitcases in the trunk of our 1965 Yellow Ford Fairland, rolled the windows down and headed north.

What a wonderful, carefree trip!  We drove through some beautiful country.  Yellowstone was amazing – complete with bears, bison, bubbling mud pots and geysers shooting high into the air. 

Outside of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, there was a chuckwagon restaurant, complete with stew and beans and peach cobbler bubbling in big iron pots cooking over an open fire.  With the majestic Tetons in the background, we gorged ourselves in a teepee.

On our way home we visited some of my cousins in Denver who were avid water skiers.  They took us to beautiful Granby Lake for a day filled with water skiing in the sun.  We returned to Denver late in the afternoon.  My cousins asked if we wanted to stay there for the night.  We politely declined (we were on our honeymoon, after all) and opted to drive down the road for a while and get a motel near Colorado Springs.  When we got to Colorado Springs, we began to look for a motel to stay in.  Apparently, there was some kind of convention in town and there was N-O-T-H-I-N-G available.  The same was true in the next town and the next town and the next town.  By 1:00 am we were too exhausted to drive any further, so we finally pulled over in a wide spot in the road.

Our dreams of a romantic honeymoon night were ruined as Bill tried to sleep in the front seat of the car, unsuccessfully evading the ever-present steering wheel poking him in the back.  I curled up in the back seat.  Our muscles were aching and our sunburned skin stuck to the vinyl seats in our vain attempt at sleeping.  Morning couldn’t come soon enough and when the sun finally peeked over the mountain, we peeled our sunburned skin off the seats and proceeded down the road, trying to pry our eyes open.

That afternoon as we pulled into Mancos, Colorado, a little motel beckoned us.  It was brand new and not quite finished but they did have a room available.  The clerk asked, “Is $6.00 too much?”  Even though the baseboards were missing, it looked beautiful to us.  The shower was heavenly and the bed … well …

THE CLOUD DARKENS

On our way home, finding radio stations as they faded in and out, we were listening to the news through the static.  The Vietnam war was continuing to build.  Guess what!  The draft board had changed the rules and were now drafting men who were married!!  The cloud on our horizon had just gotten a little darker.

As we drove back into Burbank, instead of going the old familiar route to the only home I had known for my entire life, we drove to our brand new apartment.  Then reality hit me – I truly was leaving my father and mother and was now joined to my husband and it was good – so very good.  It was the way God had planned our life from the beginning.