25 Songs for 25 Years, no. 25

One more from our wedding.

When we were making our wedding plans, we were pretty much on our own financially; we were paying for or doing just about everything ourselves, with some very generous help from a few dear friends. I did the (incredibly tacky) wedding invitations; our friend Sara came over and baked the cake and we decorated it together; our friend Kevin wrote a song and the processional music for us; other people helped prepare food and a thousand other things, all so we could start off our marriage without being thousands of dollars in debt.

About a month before the wedding, we took my mother out to the place we would be getting married (Orcutt Ranch in Canoga Park, a horticultural preserve and historic landmark) to show her around and share some of our plans with her.

She promptly began to drive me nuts, telling me all the things that we "simply must" or "absolutely must not" do at our wedding, lecturing us on the wedding etiquette of Boston circa 1956 and how incredibly tacky everyone and everything in California is by comparison.

By the end of the afternoon, I turned to Terri and said "I am by God going to give that woman a stroke!" I immediately began thinking about things I could do at our wedding that would be appalling to her and appealing to everyone else. We tossed a few ideas around, and finally hit on one we liked.

On the day of our wedding, after all the singing and poetry reading, candle-lighting, vow-taking, praying and finally kissing, the minister presented us to the audience.

As soon as she said "I now present Mr and Mrs MacQuarrie," the speakers thundered to life and we made our way down the aisle to the roaring guitars of Bruce Springsteen.

My mother was heard to remark "Oh, for God's sake!"

Later, she asked us about it. "Born to Run?" I explained. "It's a love song. A dangerous love song, but still..."

Born to Run