The trip home from the honeymoon.

We get in line for airport security in Santorini. Without a word of explanation another traveler pushes and shoves through the entire line until he reaches the front. A woman in line behind him starts shouting at him in another language. He starts shouting back. Two security guys just stand there.

More shouting. The security guys decide to step in. They send the guy to the back of the line and they take the lady into a closed room. We resume moving through security. My hair is piled on top of my head in a ballerina bun with a million hair pins. I set the metal detector off. The security guy motions for me to take my hair out.

Take my hair out? I just spent 15 precious minutes early this morning putting it up. I stare at him. He motions again for me to take it out. I really don’t want to. He sighs. Comes around from behind the scanner machine and scans my entire body with one of those wands, muttering to himself,

“Tall lady. Very tall lady.”

He never scans my hair.

We make it to Athens, but for some reason I wasn’t able to select our airplane seats online for the flight home. They were randomly assigned: 50E and 50F for an eleven hour flight. Doesn’t sound great. I approach the counter at our gate.

“I’m wondering about our seats.”

The woman takes our tickets and grimaces,

“Looks like the back of the plane.”  She types on her computer for a minute. “Yup, last row in the middle.”

“Is it possible to move them?”

“Not if you want to stay together.”

I walk back toward Captain. He asks,

“How’d it go?”

“Not great. We’re in the last row, in the middle of the plane.”

We board and now I understand the airline counter lady’s grimace. Not only are we the last row of the plane, but we’re sandwiched between two bathrooms. We sink into our seats. I ask a flight attendant about moving seats. She tells me,

“This is a very full flight. You’re lucky you’re sitting together.”

Two things:

One: A full flight is a full flight. What’s a very full flight?

Two: Maybe I don’t need to spend the next 11 hours with my husband and two toilets. Maybe 11 hours with no husband and no toilets should be considered.

We end up staying together. I glance at the back of my seat. There’s no individual movie screen. I look down the length of the plane, there are no screens anywhere. What sort of bargain international flight did I book? No seat selection, no movies… there better be food.

There ends up being a minimal amount of food for “free” and no food for purchase even though I’m starving and they’re being stingy with the pretzels.

One bathroom breaks, so a line starts for the remaining toilet a foot away from Captain. Every once in awhile a flight attendant goes in the bathroom and sprays some air freshener, but that combined with farts, combined with the airplane meatball sandwich smell, is not pleasant.

Several people around us have taken to covering their faces. The flight attendant asks them,

“You can smell that?”

Everyone nods. Why does the flight attendant think we couldn’t smell that? The only way to be closer to the toilet is to be sitting on it.

We land in Toronto. We have just under two hours to make our connecting flight to Boston. Seems doable, but we are in the back of the plane and I have a sinking feeling we need to go through immigration.

We arrive at Toronto airport’s passport control for the US. There’s a giant board that says this is a 3 step process. I see huge lines for Step One and Two and I can’t even see Step Three. What is this? I’ve been through a lot of bad border control situations. This is shaping up to be one of the worst.

We scan our passports and plane tickets and proceed to Step Two. We’re supposed to wait for our names to come up on a screen and then proceed to Step Three. Our flight leaves in one hour. I drag Captain to Step Three. We wait in line for 15 minutes. The guy checks our passports and his computer screen. He tells us,

“You have to go back to Step Two. Your names aren’t up on the board yet.”

“Our flight is boarding soon.”

“There’s nothing I can do. We’re waiting for your bags to clear customs. Air Canada might be able to declare your bags missing and then you could go.”

I’ll declare my bags missing, I don’t need Air Canada and their smelly bathroom seats to do that. We rush over to Air Canada. We get permission to go to Step Three.

Now finally we’re in line to go through passport control. Our flight is boarding. I go to the front of the line and ask a security woman,

“May we cut the line? Our flight is leaving soon.”

She looks at my ticket and says,

“No. You’ll be fine.”

Another lady comes rushing up to the security woman. She seems even more desperate than I am to catch her flight. The security woman shouts at her,

“Get a direct flight next time.”

Wow. I get back in line with Captain. We make it through passport control, only to be stuck in line for security again. Our flight is departing in 15 minutes. I leave Captain and his bad knee behind and sprint for the gate. I’m hoping I can convince them to wait for him and if not, then he can get on a flight tomorrow with our bags.

He lucked out and made it and amazingly enough so did our bags and the pink stuffed turtle I bought in Greece. Don’t worry, I declared it.

The wedding reception was not all roses and free cocktails, although there were plenty of free cocktails.

While Captain and I were busy being blown away/getting our photos taken, things were heating up in the cocktail tent. But not really, because the heater the hotel staff promised wasn’t heating.

My friend tells me,

“One lady said to another lady, ‘keep your f–king opinions to yourself.’ And walked off.”

I have no idea what that was about, but hopefully there’s some video footage.

Captain and I are ready to enter the reception hall and do our 3 minute long choreographed first dance. Huge success. Dance competitions here we come.

The toasts were perfect. My maid of honor went into detail about my food foraging skills and mentioned the time when I asked for and ate some stranger’s pizza crusts.

I know a good deal when I see one and that’s food scraps on someone else’s plate. Captain’s face in the photo below shows he’s still processing what a good deal food scraps are.

The honeymoon is over.

What a whirlwind! I’ve read that the wedding ceremony can be transcendental. My ceremony was special, but it veered off the transcendental track before I even walked down the aisle.

My mom puts my blusher veil over my face and I follow my bridesmaids down the long hotel corridor toward the outdoor ceremony overlooking the beach. We reach the end and line up behind the door to go outside. Music is playing and I catch a glimpse of everyone seated and waiting. It’s 2 seconds to go time. The hotel fire alarm starts blasting.

Really? The ear piercing bell removes any sentimental thoughts I thought I might have. The bridal party proceeds down the aisle. It turns out you could barely hear the alarm at the ceremony site, but nobody told me.

My mom and I step outside. We start to walk toward everyone. The wind swoops up and my blusher is gone. I shout,

“Mom! My blusher!”

“I don’t think there’s anything I can do.”

What she didn’t tell me at the time, was that it was so windy my blusher was standing straight up in the air and there was nothing anyone was going to be able to do. Not such a big deal considering Captain has seen my face before.

I walk up to Captain with my sobbing somewhat under control. I slip under the chuppah (Jewish wedding canopy) to join him. It’s a chuppah made for 5 feet tall people. I’m 6′ and Captain is 6’3″. Never mind that the florist upsold us on some chuppah greenery that is hanging down and slapping us in the face every time the wind blows, which is the entire 30 minute ceremony.

Something wet splatters me. There are so many things happening. I’m not processing much. Captain points at my shoulder,

“A seagull pooped on you!”

I look at my arm and shoulder. Yup. Covered in bird poop. I look back at Captain. I tell him,

“It got you too!”

There’s bird poop down the front of his suit. I’m clutching my great-grandmother’s handkerchief, which until now I’ve been using to wipe my nose. Do I use this to wipe up bird poop?

“Mom! I need a tissue.” Keep in mind the wedding ceremony is still in progress. If you ever need a Rabbi, I highly recommend ours. She was wonderful and hilarious. Plus she spent a good portion of the ceremony promoting my blog.

There were almost 100 people standing/sitting around outside with no cover and Captain and I were under a canopy. The seagull still decided to poop on us.

Five minutes later I glance down. There is bird poop the entire length of my gown. Now I want to cry for real. Someone tells me to let it dry and it’ll flick off later. Note to anyone wearing a wedding dress who gets shat on by a seagull. Let it dry; it will flick off later.

We’re pronounced husband and wife; Captain kisses me and we’re off for 5 minutes by ourselves. We planned on this before the ceremony. We enjoyed it, but good luck finding all the family members and bridal party people you want photos with after you’ve let them get away.

Between trying to round everyone up and keeping my veil from pulling my head off into the wind, I was over the group photos. The photographer can see my frustration, he asks,

“Do you want to take your veil off?”

NO WAY! When else in my life will it be acceptable to prance around in public in a ball gown and veil? This is it. This was our very special, windy, fire alarm, bird-poop filled day.

I’d like to dedicate this post to my newest reader: The wonderful Rabbi who is going to marry Captain and me.

I don’t know when the last time is that you went to the Boston City Hall for an intention of marriage certificate, but it’s not a romantic experience. Boston City Hall is a concrete monstrosity with limited windows and no discernible doors.

I researched the Massachusetts’s marriage instructions online. Both people must appear in person, together, to complete an intention of marriage certificate. Then 3 days later one person may return for the required paperwork and then any day within 60 days later somebody can sign that paper and it’s official. Kim Davis types are not welcome. The wait is already long enough as it is.

I manage to sneak Captain away from his work. We approach City Hall. Where is the door? Why is our city hall the least welcoming building in the city?  Some people appear to be going toward a part of the building that is either a parking garage or a bunker entrance.

We squeeze in the side of the building and head upstairs to a sign that reads “Births, Deaths and Marriages.” There’s a pad of paper and pencil in a window. It looks like somewhere to sign in. I pick it up. A lady barks at us,

“What do you need?”

“An intention of marriage certificate.”

“Come back here.”

We enter the windowless concrete cave of an office. She sits us down at a computer and we fill out a form with our names and our contact information. We click complete. So far this doesn’t seem like it should be a joint in-person operation. When one of us needs a death certificate, we’ll have to be able to complete the form on our own.

The lady directs us to a line of many soon-to-be newlyweds. Everyone looks morose.  Somehow the bunker like atmosphere has sucked away all the love and googly eyes.

We make it back to the window. We raise our right hand and swear that we’re the people we say we are. We go to another line to pay $50, then we get back in the original line and we get a receipt to bring back in 3 days for more paperwork. If we can file taxes online, surely we could let people fill out their names to intend to get married.

We find an above-ground door to exit from and now we’re one week away from being married, paperwork and all.