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.
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.
