I'm starting this blog as a way to chronicle my journey as a bride-to-be! I will be posting my experiences, inspirations, DIY ideas, and process throughout the way..
We will be getting married in the NYC area next Spring-Fall. I love mansions, vineyards, and rustic outdoor venues. We're looking primarily in the NYC, New Jersey, Connecticut, Long Island, or Upstate NY areas to make it convenient for our guests..
We are combining our honeymoon with a second wedding in Indonesia, the place where I grew up. Javanese weddings are other-worldly--I'll be sure to chronicle that too.
Come along on our voyage..
MAPPING THE HISTORY:
My parents were odd soul mates--transformed my the alchemy of their shared love. With stolen plane tickets on his lap, my father closed his eyes and traced his finger over a topographical map. Indonesia. The word sprawled. He landed his destiny there when he met my mother. Glances, gestures, and subtext had to suffice; they didn’t speak the same language. Their eyes met for the first time at an Independence day parade in Jogjakarta. Too fixated on the moment, he asked his friend Jono to let him know if he saw her again. Jono thought he saw her at the bird market one evening in a becak. He waited thirty-one days atop a broken-down castle in Jogjakarta in hopes of seeing her. As he waited to no avail, throngs of children joined him night after night.
Then, one evening, my father--downtrodden and depressed--walked along Plankung Gading bridge. Jono said, "Gordon, you can meet other women."
"No, Jono, those who seek for love never find it. Only the loving find love and they never have to seek it." A few moments later my father looked up at the bridge and saw my mother's sister--the same woman who had been next to her at the parade. He chased her and asked for my mother's name and address. "Nanies. Brontokosuma," was written in scrawled handwriting on a folded receipt. In the days leading up to his visit, he stared at the piece of paper, carrying it around and tipping off kaki lima vendors to get any information he could gather about my mother. When he knocked on their front door with a traditional Javanese offering in hand, my father caught my mother's silhouette slither behind a curtain. "Nanies is not home," my grandmother lied. For the next two months, my father visited her every day. As time passed, my grandmother allowed my father to go on dates with my mother--always chaperoned by her two brothers.
One evening during the monsoon season, they whooshed on motorcycles, snaking around sodden ruins and drenched passersby. He stepped on the pedal and escaped from my mother's two brothers for their first stolen kiss.
My father dressed in a velvet tux--sweating profusely in the heavy tropical heat--and asked my grandparents for my mother's hand in marriage. My grandmother broke every plate in the house. "Over my dead body will my daughter marry a foreigner!"
My father returned to his house empty-handed. The following day, my mother's two brothers came over to listen to rock music. They smoked and drank black coffee for hours, but did not speak of my mother. When they left, my father remained confused and full of adrenaline, not knowing what to make of their visit. The very next day, my mother came to the house with a veil covering her face. For three hours, she sat alone in his living room, not saying a word. Later that evening when she left, my father told Jono about the visits, seeking advice. "In Javanese tradition that means she will marry you!" he exclaimed, hugging my dad ferociously.
Before planning their wedding, my father said, "I have to do one thing. I have to tell my parents! I want them to fly to Indonesia." He sent them a telegram and waited at the office for eighteen hours as dozens of peasant eyes stared at his white skin.
"Dear son, we love you dearly. Please come back to the States. You will, under no circumstances, marry a woman who is not Jewish. If you decide to go against our wishes, your mother and I will have to cut you off. I advise you come back to New York and claim your seat at the stock market. Love, your parents." My grandfather had forged my grandmother's signature (which led to my grandparents' impending divorce).
My father had to do what was best for him. They went along with the wedding plans and married on July 21st, 1975. Thus I was born in Indonesia to odd soul mates: a Javanese countess and palace dancer and a quixotic, Jewish, New Yorker, poet/activist dad--by a random poke at the map.
My mother died in a tragic car accident in 1993. My father died, after a long battle with cancer, on July 21st, 2007--on the date of my parents' thirty-second wedding anniversary.
As for my own soul mate, Mark, we met four years ago, on a balmy summer night just weeks before my father died--at a local midtown Manhattan bar right around the corner from my home and his work. That particular night, my father insisted that I leave the hospital. "You've been here every day and night. Go home, go out, and enjoy yourself." On July 7th, 2007--Mark insisted on meeting my father. That was the one and only time that they met. I can only amount my encounter with Mark as pure serendipity.
Sometimes you have to travel across the world to meet "the one," other times, they're right there on that street you pass by every day.. and I couldn't be happier
