Chapter VII: The "Civil Wedding"

As I mentioned before, no matter how much planning you do, everything that could go wrong, can go wrong. I am so glad that I was the one “pushing” for a weeding, I must be grateful that my wife Carolina did not have that compulsive need of a having a “Perfect” wedding. She just wanted something simple and not expensive, otherwise, I would still be paying for therapy and another wedding.

After we booked the day for the religious wedding, we had to work backwards to make sure that everything was in place. In Venezuela there are usually 2 weddings: the official one or “Civil Wedding” and the one that counts or “Church Wedding”

The day of the religious wedding was booked for April 13th, 2002. Some people would think that the number 13 has a reputation of bad luck, however, in my family that number represented good things. My mom was born on a 13 and they also got married on a 13. In our case, we not only had the number 13 on the day of the month, but we later found out that it was all over the place: In the Government Act, were our wedding was registered, was the Act or Book # 13, on the page 13, and the request for our marriage was made on a 13 !!! At the end of the day, we still got married and what I like to think is that if it wasn’t because of the good luck of that number, I might be telling a different story.

For the Civil Wedding normally only family and very close friends are invited. Not to many things to plan for this one, but just make sure the witnesses, the person who was getting us married and my future wife and I made it on time to the ceremony (which almost did not happened because of the events that day).

I must say and my wife agrees with me, that the Civil Wedding was the one were we had must fun and with less “events”. The only thing that happened that day was that somehow a rumor of a strike from the Oil Companies was circulating, and that most likely the supply to the gas stations was going to be affected.

That was like telling people the end of the world was coming soon. It was not even the fear of the gas prices to rise (they are controlled by the government and it was and still is VERY CHEAP: around 4 cents a liter!. Imagine having your SUV’s tank filled with $3.50), it was the fear of not been able to use the cars. So…. that day of our Civil Wedding, when we had to be at my place for the ceremony at 7pm, EVERY single gas station had enormous lineups of cars trying to get gas (eventually some gas station ran out of the precious liquid, which made things worst and rumors true). That just jammed the traffic in the city. If you imagine that every gas station had a line up of at least 1 Km. long, and as every big city, we have a lot of gas stations; this combined with the rush hour became in a huge solid traffic jam nightmare. From work to my house without traffic (3 am) would take around 10 min. During the day at rush hour, will take me around 1 hour. That day took me 2.5 hours and almost ran out of gas!!!!

The other funny side of the story is that the person who was going to marry us, was the boss of my mother ! This guy was the mayor of a Municipality were my mom used to work, and he kindly offered that he could do the ceremony. Some women might say he is very handsome, so much, that when they were taking pictures, it seems that my wife was marrying him. To this day I still make fun out it with my wife, and she still denies she wasn’t looking at him “all the time”. Anyway, here is a picture, you be the judge.

By the end of the night, we were all drunk and happy. We were officially married (she would still go and sleep at her place and me to my moms) and still had to much to celebrate, In 10 days we were having our real & true WEDDING DAY.

How little we knew of what was going to happen. The events of that day were just the beginning of one of the most terrible set of events of Venezuela's modern history.

Chapter VI: The Proposal

Before beginning this chapter, I wanted to first thank those who are still following my blog. Hundreds of people from more than 20 different countries have visited the blog and even recently the blog won its first award ! THANKS !

One of the upcoming chapters I want it to be from people that want to share their stories & anecdotes of the events that occurred that April of 2002. If you would like to share your story, just send me an email to: myweddingday2007@gmail.com



Some breaks will last hours, some days, even months. Our break was a little longer than usual: two years ! It is so true when the say "You don't know what you have until you don't", but I guess I was lucky enough to have it back again.

I still remember that very special day, the day we gave ourselves another chance. Very few people have the opportunity to have their dreams come true. I once had it, I lost it and for some incredible reason, destiny perhaps, that special night happened.

I remember it as if it was yesterday. I took her to a very special restaurant, with an amazing patio and the most incredible lights surrounding it. I will never forget her words when I asked the question if she wanted us to be one again: Actually, I don't have the nerve to write it. I will let Carolina decide if she wants to share it or not. She was never really proud with her answer and I used to bug her with it (never was to happy about it), but at the end of the day, doesn't really matter what she said. The one thing that only matters is that her answer brought us to where we are today.

Another year had passed and plans of getting married were sometimes a topic of conversation, as we were waiting for our Canadian papers to go thru. I always thought I was going to still have that outbreaking surprise moment when I proposed her out of the blue, but I guess it was never meant to happen that way.

As I mentioned in Chapter I, things went a bit different. It was a Monday afternoon and I was supposed to pick-up Carolina from her work and drive to my parents for our every Monday night dinner. However, that day, she called me earlier than usual and starts bombarding me with questions: "At what time are you picking me up? do you have any plans for afterwards?, can you leave work earlier?". I answered every single question the way any well "trained" boyfriend would do, except that I forgot the silver rule: never ask the Why's. It slipped my mind and with no brain filter I asked her: "Why are you asking me these questions if you know we have dinner tonight with my parents"

That is when she would have KO any experienced husband, boyfriend, significant other, etc with her answer:
- "I was thinking that we should drop by the church near your place before going to your parents"...

And as if I never learned,I asked again "WHY?!"

- "Rey, we need to go and find out when we can get a day reserved for the church, for our wedding. You know how difficult it is to get a date”

And that was it, still in shock we went to the church near my place and the gave us a date: April 13th, 2002. How little we knew the troubles of that day. Anyway, and without having the fact that we already have date to get married bothered me, I still went with my plan to surprise her when I "pop the question". So I took her for a romantic weekend to Valencia, had dinner in this very special restaurant and asked her: "would like to marry me?"

Thankfully she said "Yes" !