Runaway Bay - Chapter 10
Pivot Point
Awww … it’s our wedding! One of the things that I like about this picture Amy chose, is that we actually had edible pictures of ourselves as children printed and put on our wedding cake. We thought of this as a cute touch, but now I see the symbolism of it. You bring into a marriage, the experiences you had as a child. (See next chapter - Fear, Part 2!)
Another thing that you can’t see in this picture is that the air-conditioning is out in the room. In Texas. In July. We were trying to savor each moment, while all our family and friends were urging us - “Cut the cake! Now leave and let us throw rice!” They were just so hot!
This is just a lovely picture. It was taken on the front porch of the home I grew up in, the famous “Cogdell-Belmont” 31st Street house.
My dad and I made the columns that we are leaning against. (Well, mostly my dad to be honest.)
There is also a story behind this picture. We definitely had an epic wedding. It was two hours long. We didn’t know any better! One of our ideas was to have balloons fall down around us as we kissed at the end. So I enlisted the help of some friends, and the night before we put up a net in the skylight and filled it with balloons. My good friend Scott, who was my best man in the wedding, attached the net with velcro and ran a fishing wire down to the floor. When he tested it by pulling the wire, the net came loose and the balloons fell. All was good.
Until, that is, we showed up the next morning for the wedding. The weight of the balloons had pulled the net down overnight and the entire church was covered in balloons. We quickly found the large ladder and formed a balloon chain gang, reattaching the net and refilling it with balloons. Scott sensibly doubled the velcro, so that it wouldn’t collapse during the ceremony.
Well … we hadn’t tested it with *double* the velcro! When the time came for the kiss, Scott tugged on the line and it promptly broke. There is a picture someone took of us kissing, and everyone else looking up at the balloons instead of watching us. Not what we had intended!
We laughed, and headed down the aisle as husband and wife. Behind us, Scott grabbed a mic stand and used it to pull the net aside. The wedding photographer then captured this wonderful image of us looking back at the falling balloons.
And as a fun follow-up to the above story … when our oldest child Noah got married, he told us: “We’re going to do it right!” And sure enough, they had balloons in their wedding as well, which was in the same church! And of course *their* balloons fell at the right time during the ceremony.
A couple of words about this website of “bonus material” for Runaway Bay:
Amy didn’t create it … Thomas did. You may have already guessed that the “I” in the captions isn’t Amy, but me - her husband.
( She doesn’t really like websites. Or QR codes for that matter. Or bulleted lists like this one - a dead giveaway that she didn’t write this part. )Therefore I don’t mind making the shameless plug - if you are enjoying her phenomenal book, would you be willing to put a review on Amazon? As Amy’s “publishing partner” the one surprising thing I’ve seen is this: people love her writing, and even volunteer their time to email or text her with their responses … but getting them to post a quick review on Amazon is a whole ‘nother level of hard.
( Here’s the link, if you’re so inclined https://a.co/d/9BbaoX2 )
Thank you so much!
Amy and I celebrating our 35th anniversary in Phoenix, Arizona.