part three: no matter how many times we get married, i’m gonna cry every freakin time

part 3 of a multipart series about our 3-weddings-3-states-1-day BFGW anniversary extravaganza (click here for part 1)

well you can blame holly for my shameful tardiness on part three. she got a cold that basically shut down Planet Earth and our entire household b/c i was making her tea every 5 to 10 minutes. then i got a cold. then it was christmas. then it was new year’s. then i was in a bad mood and didn’t feel funny or like doing anything, including writing.

my last post detailed our whirlwind trip to brooklyn & the anderson cooper show, home of lispy anderson cooper psychofans, one of which said i was just like his bitch sister-in-law (whatever, i’m sure she’s not actually that much of a bitch). the post before that was about our first stop in northern new jersey for my BFJHSR (Big Fat Jersey High School Reunion) where i actually managed to convince my former classmates that i invented post-its. (actually, i didn’t mention it b/c i didn’t want to make everyone jealous. between that and how good i look in jeggings–yes i wore jeggings to my reunion–i figured i might start to alienate people and really, who wants that?)

so we wake up the day after the anderson cooper show on our three-year BFGW anniversary riproarin ready to go get married THREE times, starting in new york, new york at the brooklyn municipal building.

we skip breakfast (lattes only; bad idea). we didn’t do research on parking (another bad idea). so we’re not actually first in line like we thought we’d be and in a city of 8+ million people i guess november 15th–or any other day, for that matter–is a pretty popular day to get married.

before we even get in line we hit a snag: despite holly’s online research to the contrary, we need a witness. we look around and zero in on a friendly-looking woman about our age. she’s accompanied by just about the cutest little button of a girl i’ve ever seen. blinded by hunger (that was only mildly eased by an overly sweet chocolate milk i bought downstairs while holly stayed in line) and the need to get married as fast as humanly possible (after all, we have to make it to three courthouses in three states–before 5pm. and the last courthouse is in vermont. and at that point it was almost 10am) i blubber out: hi! would you be interested in being a witness for our wedding?!

without hesitation–and with a thousand-watt smile–she immediately says yes, she’d love to. you gotta love new yorkers.

here they are:

mary & daughter: best witnesses ever.

so we finally get to the front of line and we’re praying we get the nice lady at the window, but of course we got the grumpy one. WE ALWAYS GET THE GRUMPY CASHIER LADIES. it doesn’t even matter where we are. we could be on the freakin moon and we’d get the grumpy cashier lady. the kind that don’t even bother answering you when you ask them how they’re doing.

me: hi! how are you? 

grumpy cashier lady (GCL): mmm-hmmm. 

me: we’d like to get married today!

GCL (sighing): can’t get married the same day you apply for a license without a waiver from a judge. 

both of us: what??

GCL (louder sigh): can’t get married the same day you apply for a license without a waiver from a judge. 

holly: but we didn’t see that on your website.

GCL: (blank stare) (goes to get equally grumpy supervisor)

equally grumpy supervisor (EGS): how can i help you?

holly: we’d like to get married today. we have all the necessary paperwork. we’re already legally married in washington, dc.

EGS: you can’t get married the same day you apply for a license without a waiver from a judge. 

turns out, we’d need to go to another building to get this waiver–if we could even get it signed. and it wasn’t just any judge. it was a supreme court county judge.

good luck, said the equally grumpy supervisor. they almost never sign them. 

nice!

so we run out of the building, run across the street and go up to the fifth floor of this other judicial-type building where we wait in another line to present a form to another front-desk person. except this time it was a guy and he was really nice.

he tells us that he’ll need to tell the judge why we want to get married today. we explain that we’re celebrating our wedding anniversary by getting married in three states in one day. and all before 5pm.

he says he loves the idea and starts typing up the form. then we wait some more. my blood-sugar is already low and i’m starting to panic. then i start getting emotional b/c i’m so happy we’re doing this. holly takes a photo of me as i wipe away tears with a crumbly paper towel from the ancient ladies room, then tells me she’s posting it to facebook. the lighting is exceptionally bad & the photo makes me look pale and blotchy. i threaten to elbow her in the teeth if she posts it. she tells me to lighten up. i threaten to divorce her in multiple states and she does it anyway. it never uploads and i tell her that she’s lucky b/c it was a close call.

the nice man comes back before she can try uploading it again and gives us a form with instructions on where to go next. good luck! he shouts after us. happy anniversary! (you really do have to love new yorkers.)

we get to the room, open a heavy wooden door and…it’s a big, scary courtroom. in session. with incredibly high ceilings and a very serious looking judge sitting at a huuuuuuuge wooden desk.

the judge looks at us. the lawyers turn around. the trial stops and the clerk motions to us to come up to her desk. it was kind of like the movies except for there was no jury, no popcorn and i was feeling kind of scared. was our wedding blitz about to end before it even got started?

holly hands the form to the clerk lady, who looks at it, nods and tells us to please sit down.

we walk back to the seating area–they’re kind of like church pews–and the trial continues. i look around the cavernous courtroom, wondering how long this is going to take and if i could make it to lunch w/out fainting. the trial has something to do with medical malpractice. something about x-rays and fingers and bones. just as i start to panic that we might be here til lunch, the judge stops and asks us to approach the bench. gulp.

the clerk hands her the form. she puts on her glasses and reads it, then looks over her glasses and down at us and asks us what the hurry is. she’s a distinguished, middle-aged african-american woman that looks like she has more important things to do than stop a supreme court trial to listen to a couple girls who want to celebrate their anniversary by getting married a gazillion times in one day.

holly and i explain quickly. we both hold our breath. please say yes please say yes please say yes, i repeat over and over in my mind. i’m sure holly’s thinking the same thing. every second feels like an hour.

the judge pauses, then breaks into a huge smile. why that’s a lovely idea. of course i’ll sign the waiver. congratulations on your anniversary!

yes, you really do have to love new yorkers.

we thanked her, sighed a huge sigh of relief and ran back to the municipal building, waiver in hand. the grumpy supervisor actually broke out into a smile when we handed her the waiver. and there was mary and her daughter, still waiting after all this time to be our witnesses.

we paid our marriage license fee and holly, mary, her little daughter and a young couple we befriended in line earlier all filed into the little chapel. and who turns out to be the local judge that marries us? the grumpy supervisor! and she even gets a little bit friendlier.

the other couple goes first. holly’s offered to be their witness. mary and i both snap photos of them. here they are, post-wedding, outside the municipal building. i wish i remembered their names! they were adorable.

how cute are they??

we’re up next. we take off our wedding rings and give them to the judge. as we’re standing there in the official chapel, i feel the waterworks coming on. and i fear it’s going to be bad. mary is beaming. this makes me want to cry even more.

this is what i’ve always wanted, i think. just a plain, legal ceremony. nothing fancy. just the two of us, a judge and a witness. and here i’m finally doing it.

the judge asks holly if she’ll take me as her lawfully wedded spouse.

i do, holly says, putting my wedding ring back on my finger.

the judge then asks me if i’ll take holly as my lawfully spouse.

i do, i say, finally breaking down in a blubbering pile of tears.

i don’t remember what the judge said in between, i don’t remember what she said before and i don’t remember what she said after. but it was exactly what i always wanted to hear. just like the the movies. except real life.

me, attacking holly, blubbering with tears, newly married in the brooklyn municipal bldg chapel. mary, our witness and new friend, beaming.

officially married in the state of new york (and washington, dc), we said goodbye to our new friends, ran out of the municipal building, grabbed a couple sandwiches and jumped in the car, connecticut-bound, for wedding blitz wedding #2. HOLLA!

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part two: it’s cold & bright on the set of the anderson cooper show

"hi, i'm anderson. i know it's cold here, but my smoldering eyes will keep you warm ."

part 2 of a multipart series about our 3-weddings-3-states-1-day BFGW anniversary extravaganza (click here for part 1)

we determined the most sensible thing to do after my big fat jersey high school reunion was, of course, go to a taping of the anderson cooper show.

i mean, what else are you supposed to do after an evening saying things like oh yeah! i totally knew that was your identical twin! (twice!) and yeah yeah! i totally meant to wear jeggings while the rest of you beeotches had to wear GOWNS.

the next morning, before getting on the road to nyc, we hit the ritz diner, where we ate unnaturally large, fresh cheese blintzes (delicious) while holly joyfully discovered taylor ham. (as a non-pork-eater, i’d never tried it.) no one at the diner could actually explain what taylor ham was, which, personally, would worry me a little. this did not bother holly one bit, as she announced to the cashier that she’d like to get some for her family for christmas.

anyway, yes, anderson. anderson cooper is holly’s gay boyfriend. as soon as his new show hit the air and she found out it taped in manhattan, she decided we needed to go. being a planner, i.e. the one in our relationship who’s able to plan beyond what’s for lunch that day, she got free tickets like a month in advance. we were pretty  psyched.

we rolled into the park slope neighborhood of brooklyn, i.e. the place where almost everyone i’ve ever known from every facet of my life–i’m talkin jewish sleepaway camp, middle school, college, first jobs, you name it–lives, sunday afternoon to stay with our fabulous friends meredith & tiffany, who are basically famous for being one of the first same-sex couples to marry in new york. they also both have great hair and seem too attractive to actually be gay. (sorry to go there but i’m gay and i’m totally going there)

to add insult to injury they’re able to run up to their fifth-floor walk-up with vegan-food-stuffed reusable grocery bags, laundry and bikes all strapped to their backs while holly and i basically had small heart attacks every single time we went up there while each carrying a single ikea pillow.

whatever. we live in baltimore. we dodge bullets. we feed stray pitbulls. we…oh hell. we stay inside hiding all day. that’s why we’re both out of shape and i have a vitamin D deficiency.

so of course i wake up monday morning, holly’s big day, w/a five-alarm migraine–the kind where i can’t even eat or look at a ray of sunlight–and we get to the building where his show tapes just as the last elevators went up.

“sorry, ladies,” the fancy elevator guy told us. “you just missed the last elevators up to the show. you’ll have to wait on standby.”

it was like i could hear holly’s heart literally breaking. i felt so bad. i obsessed over how bad i felt until anderson’s psycho fans came along and then started obsessing about how the hell i could get away from them while staying in line.

first, a disheveled looking lady came up to the surprisingly friendly elevator guy to tell him she had “a message” for anderson. and that she needed to go upstairs to give it to him since she couldn’t find his email address on the website anymore. i kept wanting someone to tackle her bc she was holding a lot of bags. (hello! bombs!)

then a lispsy gray-haired guy came up to us and asked us 10 million times how we got tickets for the show even tho he said he had tickets for the next day. then, while holly was in the bathroom, he had me take a photo of him standing next to a photo of anderson. then he asked the elevator guy if the fact that he worked on a cruise ship would get him up there while i covered my hands in antibacterial gel bc i had touched his camera.

then the crown jewel of psycho male anderson fans came along: this mustached middle aged dude with an on-and-off-again yarmulke (i.e. the little skullcap jewish, mostly orthodox, men wear on their heads). he immediately honed in on holly as a friendly bystander and started loudly singing to oldies to her. i was rude to him, of course, i don’t even remember what i said, i just wanted him to go away. then holly got mad at me bc i’m always freaking on the crazies.

you only make them crazier, she hissed thru her teeth. even tho i told her she was wrong, i knew she was right. but it was too late. the damage was done and, to be completely honest, he really did just get crazier. in the meantime, bc of my pounding headache, everything seemed very loud and very bright. things were not, as you might say, off to a great start.

our luck changed fast tho. the elevator doors opened–DING! “ok, they have room for four more,” the elevator guy said. “you guys are in.”

YES. things were getting better.

we got into the elevator and crazy mustache yarmulke man asked the poor anderson cooper lady that happened to be in there already a million questions until we got up to the 5th floor.

we wound up sitting in a balcony above and off to the side of stage for the first segment while mustache man stood not sat two inches behind me, breathing on my hair while simultaneously waving to anderson like he was on a navy ship about to set sail for five years.

despite the little voice in my head that warned me not to freak out on him, i finally turned around and whisper-yelled, directly into his face, can you move back??? then he loudly mumbled about how i act just like his bitch sister-in-law and then i prayed for the remainder of the segment that he wouldn’t hit me on the head with a chair.

we moved down to the main area for the rest of the segments. i should note that the set of his show, like all big television sets, i suspect, is outrageously cold. i’m usually five to seven degrees warmer than everyone else around me so this is really saying something. it’s also pretty much the brightest place on earth. not the best place to have a migraine, is all i’m saying.

and of course! of course anderson had to stand right next to us for what felt like half of the damn penn state show (it was a special on the penn state sex abuse scandal). i kept telling myself to keep my head up so i wouldn’t have a double chin on air but i knew it was useless so i focused on the view outside and my relief that psycho mustache man wasn’t behind me breathing into my hair and comparing me to his sister-in-law who probably isn’t as much of a bitch as he says she is.

we had a pretty good time, all things considered. kathy griffin (LOVE HER) showed up for a new year’s segment and they practiced slicing champagne bottles open with knives. and his fabulous mom, gloria vanderbilt, suddenly appeared. i kept wanting to tell them all we were getting married three times the next day but i figured i’d hold it in bc anderson would be reading it here on my blog anyway.

anyway, if you happened to see the penn state show, that zombie girl with the ponytail, double chin and massively dilated pupils next to anderson is me. and i was totally wearing the sweater i wore to my big fat reunion, so if you were there and you saw me on tv i don’t want to even hear about it.

lady gaga’s going to perform on the today show

lady gaga: in need of a more supportive bra. also underwear and pants. (it's totally unsanitary to be sitting on that booth like that. i'm just saying.)

what time you think she’s gonna get up?

srsly! while i’m excited to see her perform on one of my fave shows (yes–the today show is really one of my favorite shows; shoutout to my peeps meredith, matt, anne and al! hey guys!) this friday, i’m even more excited to see her up early. for some reason, i am getting the biggest kick out of the thought of none other than lady gaga dragging herself out of bed at, like, 6am, maybe even earlier? to get to the show, get her makeup/get-up (omg what is she going to wear? i will get to that in a bit.), do a sound check, etc. and perform by, like, 8am.

i mean, there are some ppl you just can’t imagine getting up early. lady gaga is one of them. i can imagine her staying up until 6am. not getting up at 6am.

also: it’s going to be fun seeing her dressed in something really outrageous so early in the morning. and…in a heat wave, no less. i think if she wears one of her orbiting headgear type things, it’s going to get condensation on it.

it’s funny how rock stars have license to, you know, wear an orbiting headgear hat (ok, now i’m going to have to include a photo of that ) at 8am. but then again, meredith, matt, anne and al get to eat all the dishes celebrity chefs make–lasagna, salads, ice cream, chicken; you know, all the stuff your mother told you wasn’t “breakfast food” (i always hated that! still do)–at 7am so i guess it all evens out.

lady gaga, can i borrow your hat for my science project? i'm making a solar system and that would be *perfect*!