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My Best Day

My bride and I giggling after I accidentally tried to marry the priest

One year ago to this day, I found myself kneeling before God praying that I wouldn’t pass out in front everyone I’ve ever known and the most beautiful girl in the world. I had made the unfortunate mistake of ordering a five-cheese omelette that morning at breakfast. The quintet of cheese was making monstrous noises in my stomach and the holy altar at St. Paul of the Cross was strangely hotter than hell...

So I looked up to the giant wooden Jesus on the cross above and prayed that I could stay conscious long enough to make it through the ceremony. Although a sweaty groom who foolishly ingested 100 times his daily dairy intake was likely not #1 on God’s to-do list, I hoped he’d spare my wife the embarrassment of watching her soon-to-be-husband take a swan dive on the same altar where she received her first communion.

The night before, friends and family had gathered at Carlucci in Rosemont for a rehearsal diner party hosted by my parents. The past four and half months had been a total whirlwind of photography appointments, list making sessions, DJ meetings, and in-depth wedding day discussions –most of which I was completely uninvolved in. Shannon had done it all. Making my way through all my Irish relatives and red-faced groomsmen and ushers, I was amazed that in only a few hours I would have my wife for keeps.

It was eighty miles north and four years prior that Shannon and I had our first real conversation in her brother Brendan’s dirty Marquette dining room. My first thought when she began talking to me and smiling that gorgeous smile at me was 'what is wrong with her.' Why on God’s green Earth would a girl this lovely give me the time of day? Nevertheless, we chatted the night away amongst a blur cheap beer and playing cards. She even let me share a part of seat with her at the crowded party. We talked about music, our families, people we knew, and I’m sure many more things, but all I could think about was how big and blue her eyes were up close. Sauntering back to my house on 19th street that night, I couldn’t help but feel that something monumental had begun in my life.

I still had my doubts about my chances with Ms. Sullivan. Although some may believe that one shouldn’t place romantic limitations on oneself, I strongly believed she was out of my league. Shannon was a daughter of a Chicago politician and carried herself with such elegance that I assumed she would only date the classiest of guys, not a guy whose wardrobe mainly consisted of cargo shorts and Bruce Springsteen t-shirts. I needed to find out if her flirtatious smiles and willingness to talk to me for more than hour was the real deal or just a momentary lapse in sanity on her part.

So I did what any hopeless romantic would do. I stalked her. OK, so I didn’t like stalk her in the creepy hiding behind the bushes sense. I would go eat lunch everyday in the cafeteria at Schroeder Hall in the hopes that we would run into each other by “accident.” I would look out across the cafeteria and scope the crowd for Shannon’s curly head of hair. I loved the fact that she had the kind of hair Irish dancers would have killed for. You could pick her out of crowd anywhere.

I eventually spotted her one day getting up to get another bowl of tomatoes and quickly set my bowl of jello aside and ran over to her. Acting like I just so happened to be finishing lunch at that moment, I gave her an awkward hug and said we should have lunch sometime. We began to talk more and had a few cafeteria lunch dates chaperoned by her brother Brendan.  At parties we would sneakily hold hands when no one was looking like a pair of toddlers who fell in love in the sandbox.

I had already told most of my friends about my ongoing courtship of Shannon and received tons of solicited and unsolicited advise from the gang on how to win her heart. My roommates suggested everything from asking her out while wearing a chicken costume to arranging a middle ages-styled meeting with Brendan to negotiate his sister’s hand. Instead, I just waited for Brendan to go out of town and invited Shannon over to a party at our house. We danced to eighties music (the only kind of music Shannon listens to) and finally I got up enough courage to kiss her. It was easily the best decision of my life. And although there’s much more to our journey to the altar, that magical night in Milwaukee felt like yesterday as I awoke on our wedding day.

Upon my waking at the Courtyard Marriott, I immediately realized I had failed to pack many of the basic essentials necessary to make myself appear to be a respectable groom. I had to rely on my best man, Bill, for: a razor, shaving cream, deodorant, socks, and tooth brush. I even needed to borrow a pair of his boxers. Apparently, not everyone wears their own underwear to their wedding.  I felt like I was in second grade again at St. Edith’s, fumbling through my desk for my homework. Nervous, excited, and overwrought with hope that my bride would get everything she ever wanted on her wedding day, we set out for the ceremony.

My brother Terry, his wife Jamie, and Bill made me calm my nerves by telling me jokes as we rolled through the familiar images of downtown Park Ridge. Over the past two years since I had graduated from Marquette, I had spent countless hours in Shannon’s suburban hometown. Working all day at the Park Ridge Library on various freelance writing gigs and besieging her parent’s refrigerator at night for make-shift dinners, Park Ridge had almost become a second home to me.

Seeing my brothers, soon-to-be-brother-in-laws, and friends dressed in tuxedos when we got out of the car settled down the butterflies moshing in my stomach. I had never seen Terry, Tim, Brendan, the Sullivan Brothers, Cradick, March, Kearney, Bill, and Big John more dressed up in my entire life. I was so accustomed to seeing my friends wearing ill-fitting jean shorts and hoodies that I couldn’t help but smile at the change in our attire. We took pictures outside the church cracking jokes until everyone was rushed off into their designated pre-wedding posts.

Inside the church, the sweat began forming on my forehead as the music played and each of my groomsmen walked out to greet a bridesmaid along aisle. Eventually. I was left at the altar to await my bride. Eternity seemed to pass while I waited for the big doors of the narthex to open. Shannon had absolutely forbid me to see her before our wedding. I smiled a big smile for everyone as the seconds passed as I awaited my first glimpse of white. Finally the music stopped and the pianist began playing “Canon in D.”

The doors of St. Paul opened and there, smiling like a saint, walked my bride.  Wearing a classically beautiful dress of white and her cheeks as rosy as the day I met her, Shannon glided toward me in arm with her tearful father, the most honorable Dave Sullivan. It felt like all the faces in the church washed away and I was left with this radiant beauty starring at me with her perfect smile. People later said I looked like someone had punched me straight in the stomach when Shannon walked down the aisle. She, literally, knocked the air right out of me and again I wondered how I had tricked this babe into a lifetime of love.

In the end, Jesus came through. I preserved through the hot lights of the almost sixty year old church to make it back down the aisle and into the forgiving June air. I had married my dream girl and my dream girl had married me. Despite my flirtations with blacking out, I will look back on that day as my best day. A man couldn’t have a more caring, more beautiful, more wonderful wife than my Shannon. She loves me and all her close ones with such a ferocity she can barely contain it.  This past year with Shannon has been the best year of my life. Thank you my love.

Happy Anniversary Shannon,

Sean