MORE EXCERPTS
The End Was Only The Beginning
OUR MARRIAGE IN MALTA
After a couple of days of getting adjusted to the timezone and attending to pre-wedding paperwork, the big day finally arrived. On Saturday, October 16, 2010 Mary Alice and I were married by a lovely civil servant by the name of Marta. We had met with her two days before the wedding, and she was so moved by our obvious love and devotion she created a special ceremony for us. Added to the usual vows was a reading for each of the six participants: bride, groom,and four guests.
When the wedding day came and brought rain, we weren’t bothered a bit. The beautiful blue Mediterranean still swept out before us, and we simply moved the flowered wedding arch to a breezeway so everyone could stay dry.
Not surprisingly, the ceremony was fraught with emotion, and the special reading created by Marta — “TheArt of Good Marriage” — added to the beauty of the moment.
Through the wedding planner (and in honor of my Italian roots), I had hired an accordion player and sent him the list of songs to be played when the ceremony ended —“The Yellow Rose of Texas” and “Tennessee Waltz” included.(Unfortunately, he was unable to find the sheet music for “The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi”). And to the strains of accordion music Mary Alice and I did “the dance of joy,” that extra-special moment of closeness for newlyweds everywhere.