Tropical Storm Hanna
James and I met in Williamstown. Our junior year of college. Highly intoxicated. At a college dorm party.
God, it is so damn romantic it hurts.
Nearly 7 years later we’re still kicking, so I’d say that PERHAPS there’s something to this whole college romance thing – or maybe we’re still drunk. Possibly.
James proposed in July of 2007 and I knew instantly that I wanted to be married in the town where we met, among those rolling mountains (a term I use loosely – HILLS is perhaps more apt) where our relationship began.
Go ahead, vomit in a corner. I sure did.
James’s parents met here. My dad went here when it was just one giant sausage fest, so he road tripped to the local women’s college where my mom attended school, and she in turn spent many happy times on this campus. Ask her about that time she snuck wine into the Homecoming game under her poncho.
My lil sis had just begun her freshmen year the weekend James and I met. And she was present for said drunken encounter. And has been by our side the following six years plus.
We have grandfathers, cousins, aunts and uncles who called this Purple Valley their stomping grounds.
So, it was inevitable. We were to be wed in the Berkshires.
More vomit.
We planned a stunning ceremony on the crest of a mountain top with breathtaking views of the area. We were to say our vows with the echoes of the valley.
It was going to be fucking magic.
Then a lil ol’ Hurricane decided to stir up along the eastern seaboard and travel inland as the hours counted down to our big moment.
At 5pm on September 6th, 2008, (now) Tropical Storm Hanna opened the floodgates across Williamstown, exactly thirty minutes prior to the OUTDOOR wedding ceremony.
There was a mad scrambling for umbrellas, and people were soaked and sweaty and 200+ bodies were packed into a tiny living room of the house atop the mountain to witness our rain-drenched vows. It was an “intimate” affair – B.O. and all.
But I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
NO ONE will forget that wedding, if not for the vows and the love and the magic of the mountains than for the sweat and the stink. Ah East Coast humidity.
I am grateful every damn day that we decided to hold the reception inside an art museum rather than under a tent among the storm.
Getting down the muddy, rainy mountain in a Vintage Rolls Royce was a bit of a challenge (read: manual, as in our hands, wiping down the windshield). But we survived and danced our brains out and then swum drunk and married and half-nude in the hotel pool among the drops of Hanna.
Everyone said that we had to name our first child after this momentous occasion – but given that James and I have planned out our children’s names for a Baker’s Dozen, we decided Hanna would fit lovingly among the canine pack we hoped to make a part of our family.
Twenty months since that rain-filled, glorious day, we welcome Hanna.
Prepare thy heart lil pup, this house is full of the love and the crazy!
