Patty and I both dreaded the very idea of a circus wedding. At the newspaper where we both worked at the time, the photographer and his fiancee got involved in planning a great big splashy wedding–and as more and more people got into the act, the two newlyweds-to-be were fighting like Greeks and Trojans.
We didn’t want that, so we eloped. We went to Elkton, MD–sort of the elopement capital of the eastern U.S. in those days–and got married there.
What a lovely time we had! We did a lot of fishing on Chesapeake Bay. Platters of steamed crabs at the Howard Hotel, with Billy Bob’s Kung-fu School on the floor directly over our table. Crabcakes at Your Family Restaurant. Lovely little town, with polite and friendly people. A lot of them remembered us when we came back the next year.
We got married in The Little Wedding Chapel and then did some more fishing. No squabbling, no fighting, no new grudges formed and old ones rekindled, no eruption of money, nobody falling down drunk at the reception. I’ve been to weddings that came very close to breaking into fistfights. We avoided all that and are much the better for it.
All you really need for a wedding is a bride, a groom, someone to read the service–and God.