"Here's a dollar, why don't you two elope?"

The title of this post is a quote from my father.
Most of the time his quote was "Here's a quarter, why don't you_______?"
My sister and I could fill in the blank with whatever chore he wanted us to do.
He also probably thought that because our family rarely had any expendable cash that a quarter or even a dollar was inticing.
It was not.
We usually just chuckled and went on our way because my father was a kidder.
The only time he was ever serious was after he and my mother were in a motorcycle accident.
He was serious for about 4 months before reverting back to his usual silly self.
Which leads up to the 2 points of this post:

1) Weddings are hard.
2) Seriously.

And I am not the one getting married.
Even for the mother of the groom the magnitude of getting ready for a wedding is tsunami like.
My father must have understood this magnitude instinctively.
"Here's a dollar, why don't you two elope?"
It was his wise way of being comical and serious...sort of like a warning, because my sister and I heard it repeatedly as soon as we were old enough to date.
Now, my son is getting married.
His marriage is a long distance wedding so I offered my son ALL the money he needed to elope and he wouldn't take it.
His fiancé really wants a wedding.

Now don't get me wrong, weddings are enchanting and lovely and expensive and fun and full of endearing details and expensive and memorable and yummy and a lovely time for the family and have I mentioned expensive?

Having just the one son gave me no previous experience with the true magnitude of the grooms family responsibilities, which are, as I have mentioned, extensive, expensive and much more expanded than from when I was growing up which, if I recall, was only to pay for the minister and the rehearsal dinner which isn't so bad but now includes lodging, gifts, extra food, spouses or significant others and enough beds and towels for everybody all of which wouldn't matter so much if someone had just told me these things with enough lead time that I could have sold a body part to help financially because my son didn't know and quite possibly didn't try to know because I think he is now thinking with another part of his body other than his brain if you know what I mean plus the fact that I am soooo much older now that I can barely handle the stress of boiling water for tea in the mornings which makes me think that this destination wedding stuff is a made up thing to give humans something to do on any given weekend because Netflix is entirely too slow in producing their good quality binge watching stories if you know what I mean?

And I think we all agree that we all know what I mean.

Don't get me wrong though.
There is no doubt in my actual brain that the wedding will be beautiful, meaningful and come off with very few hitches (thanks to the brides extremely organized mother) but my fathers words sound off in my head at least 5 times a day because, besides weddings, stress is hard.
"Here's a quarter, go see shrink."


My father in all his wisdom...and whiskers.


Thanks for being here.