by Karin Butts

Created on: March 08, 2009

My Wedding

The Colorado River, like Yellowstone Park, and other American wonders was just that to me, one of the country's attractions as seen in a travel catalog. That is, until my wedding night.

Allen and I had met briefly in Denver, Colorado while I was visiting with my sister. We went on a few dates within the span of two romantically turbulent weeks before I returned home. Just between you, and me there was an interval of a week unaccounted for, I called it the seven lost days, when he and I met in Little Rock, Arkansas....I'll leave it at that.

Home, for me, was two thousand miles away in the southeastern part of the states. Three months and a hundred or so phone calls later, I packed my bags, kissed Mom goodbye, jumped in my brand new, white with red interior, '62 Covair, and took off to 'marry' the man.

It was this and that-finding an apartment, settling in, his work schedule and such that interfered in setting the date for our wedding. A month had passed when my mother, bless her, threatened to come to Kansas and drag me back home if I didn't come up with a wedding and pronto.

Allen had a Bonanza, a four-seated plane with which he flew to army bases making bids on jobs. He asked me to accompany him to Rapid City, South Dakota.

On the spur of the moment he decided we could take a few extra days, get married there and make things right at least for my mom. I was content to just live with him. In those days living together wasn't the in thing but I wasn't really sold on the idea of marriage. I did think about having children and since I had just turned twenty-five, that was the deciding factor when I agreed to marry him.

It was noon on the 11th of March when I sat in the diner waiting for him to buy me a wedding band. While I watched him through the window coming toward the diner a voice inside me warned, run! And again. Several times, it urged me to get up and run away. I didn't run.

After the blood tests we made it to the courthouse to get our license just before it closed. Night was setting in when we found a notary who invited us into her home to marry us in front of a fireplace. As the minutes ticked off my heart beat wildly; my insides trembled with excitement. The older woman stood reading an excerpt from a book, her hands shaking, her book trembling, her mouth quivering as she spoke. Fascinated I watched her, wondering what she was so nervous about, while forgetting my own emotional upheaval.

We were married as darkness set in outside and with it the cold of winter. We hurried back to the hotel, had a light meal and a glass of wine and that was the end of the wedding. Of all things to happen on a wedding night-it did- so, we ended the night by watching a documentary on the Colorado River in a motel in Rapid City on our wedding night.

From that night forward the mere mention of the Colorado River conjures up the story of my not so glamorous wedding. I must say, however, my marriage lasted till death did us part.

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