A Side Story of Me ~ The Wedding

All along I've planned on adding side stories but I was going to wait till I told my entire story so far. I've reconsidered that and have a side story that should actually be told along the beginning story of Richard and I.

I told you that Richard and I got married one year from the day of our first date. That's true except I left off the part where it was actually the second marriage for us. This will be the first time some of my relatives are learning of this but we had a very good, albeit sad reason. Once we decided to make our union legal, we originally decided to wed in the summer (of 87). Unfortunately before we could tell anyone our plan, Richard's father passed away quite suddenly. He had been in poor health for quite some time but his death was still very unexpected.

 Anyway... we knew that we needed to postpone our wedding. There was a problem with this though. You see Richard was born in Venezuela and due to circumstances beyond his control (that's a side story to this side story) he was here in the US illegally. With our marriage, we would be able to quickly and legally remedy that situation and it was becoming necessary to do just that. Richard was working for Sony at the time and had to go to Japan on a business trip. That's hard to do without a passport, especially for an illegal alien!

The solution was for us to get married privately by a Justice of the Peace now and plan a public wedding for later. So, on August 7, 1987 we were married with two of our friends (sworn to secrecy) as our witnesses. We didn't tell anyone for years. We didn't even tell Jen for many years and trust me ~ she is still bitter although she knows that at the tender age of 7, secrets stressed her out and she could have never kept our secret.

So we celebrate two anniversaries. August 7th is the day Richard and I wed each other and December 5th is the day Richard, Jennifer & I became a family.

Now for those of you who might think that Richard married me just for his citizenship (and believe me, it has been said) we are still here, stronger than ever and more in love than ever and we are approaching our 23rd anniversary! So there!