Christie Craig’s Pamper Me Like a Bride Contest

In honor of her June book Weddings Can Be Murder, Christie Craig offered readers the opportunity to submit their own heart-warming and amusing stories of weddings and love as part of her “Pamper Me Like a Bride” Contest.  The winner received a “Pamper Me Like a Bride basket including a promotional Sexy, Suspenseful and Seriously Funny T-shirt, chocolate, candles, sensuous lotions and soaps, and a pack of Craig’s own note cards.  Read below to see the contest winner and the honorable mentions.

WINNER:

I hadn’t known Rob very long.  We’d met when his Cupid’s Arrow computer dating sheet matched mine and he tracked me down.  (I’d moved twice since filling that sheet out.)  I wanted to impress him with my cooking, so I invited him over for an All-Shore dinner of Little Neck Steamers and lobster, topped off with my Pound-for-Pound cake special.

He’d taken a wine tasting course and showed up with a few bottles of white, all of which we downed while enjoying our feast.  While playing backgammon, we both fell asleep. The cat pawing my face woke me.  That’s when I noticed my date was no longer passed out beside me on the couch, but huddled and retching.  I struggled to rouse myself from a drunken stupor while this guy I barely knew continued to toss every cookie he’d ever eaten.

The thought occurred to me that maybe I should run him over to the emergency room, but still half out of it, I couldn’t find my car keys.  With my date still crouched on the bathroom floor, the cat trying to push him out of the way so she could get to the litter box, and every pillow and piece of furniture upturned, I called an ambulance.  Took an extra half hour to find my keys and follow.  Seems Rob is allergic to iodine and can’t eat lobster.  A small fun fact to know that he forgot to tell me.

Fortunately, I didn’t kill him.  I married him, instead.  Lobster for one is a lot cheaper, anyway.

Robin

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Honorable Mention:

My first (and only) wedding took place in October 1996.  I could write about the loud voice in my head screaming that I was making a horrible mistake, but since I ignored it, I'll write about something else.

I choose bees.  At some point during the ceremony, a bee made its way into the church and eventually to the front where myself, the groom, and the priest were doing our best to be solemn.  This was serious business after all.  The bee landed on me, which meant I had to do two things at once: try not to freak out and get rid of the dang thing without causing a scene.  I managed to do the first and the priest took care of the second.

Without missing a beat, the priest squashed the intruder with the prayer book right on top of the kneeler thingy.  He proceeded to sweep the carcass onto the floor and never lost track of what he was saying.

My maid of honor, into angels at the time since her mother had died less than a year before and spoke of the angels there to take her away, said it was my recently deceased grandmother letting me know she was there, which makes me feel terrible that she was squashed.  But the worst part may be that she was squashed before she could sting the groom.  Maybe she was the voice in my head and the bee was her plan B.  
 

Terri

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Honorable Mention:

A bit of a funny when I met the man whose bride I wound up becoming.  I was taking a ballroom dance class at Arthur Murray Studio, having been dragged there by a lady friend that I worked with, to meet men in other places beside bars.  There was a sign-in sheet where you had to list your name to prove that you were in class and so I wrote my name Juanita on it. This guy named Bob was taking the class also and had a liking for things Spanish—his family had Spanish roots. So he was looking over the class for the hot little Spanish girl named Juanita. He was puzzled because he didn’t see anyone who fit the picture. I am actually Irish and have auburn hair with blue eyes!  I am a Southern Juanita not a Spanish one!  So during class we get partnered up to practice a step and he questions me as to where this Juanita is.  I start laughing so hard he feels embarrassed about it and then I explained the reason that I was cracking up—I am Juanita!  He starts to laugh as well.  That broke the ice and we have been dancing ever since.  For 20 years now.  He married a Juanita but she was Irish not Spanish!  To quote Shakespeare: What is in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Juanita

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Honorable Mention:

It happened years ago when my soon-to-be husband failed to listen to me (of things to come). The night before our wedding I reminded him to put gas in our new car. Here I am at the church waiting while his uncle mentions something about telling him he could still change his mind. There he is pushing the new fancy TR-6 English sports car down the street in his tux with his best man. He finds an open gas station and the mechanic scratches his head and says he knows nothing about this kind of car and he can’t help him. Then comes the boy who saves the day—“Hey, mister, you got any gas?"  Light bulb moment for him.  Finally, he makes it to the church half an hour late, music starts, and he is telling his mother in his booming voice that he ran out of gas as I am walking down the aisle to peals of laughter.  Maybe the uncle should have told me I could have changed my mind.  We have been married 39 years now and next month our oldest daughter gets married—I’m going to remind her fiancé to check the gas!

Jeanne

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Honorable Mention:

I never got a proposal.  He called me at night before bed like always and just before hanging up the phone he says, "I love you, we ought to make this legal."  I spent the entire night awake thinking I had heard him wrong because he had said at the beginning of our relationship that he was never getting married again.  The next morning when having coffee with my mom before I left for work I told her what he said and she believed that he had meant that we were getting married.  That night after he picked me up to go out I asked him if what I heard was actually we should get married and he says, "Yes."  We got married a month later and are still married 19 years later.  Not exactly a romantic proposal but it got the job done.

Susan