Even when couples elope, there's at least one person who sees the couple get married--the Justice of the Peace or whoever conducts the proceedings. That didn't happen when when my husband and I got married. Here's the strange, but true, story...
We were young, in love and working in television news, where getting time off together was pretty tough. We wanted to get married on Valentines's Day, and we didnt' want a big wedding. In fact, we really didn't want a wedding at all. Our parents knew we were getting married, and my Mom and Dad said that, if we didn't have a wedding, they'd give us the money for a really nice honeymoon. We took them up on the offer and headed to beautiful Savannah, GA for a noon Valentine's Day wedding on a Tuesday.

I wore the wedding ensemble I had always dreamed of--a black silk blouse, blue jeans and black knee boots. We had made an appointment with a judge and showed up at his chambers at least 20 minutes before noon, when we were told by his assistant that he was still in court and running a little late. So we took a seat on one of the benches in the hall outside his office. Sitting on the bench across from us were two women, one of whom had had the ever-loving bejeezus beat out of her--cuts, bruises, black eye, the works. The woman with her happened to be the ex-wife of the man who had assaulted the poor woman. Both were smoking non-filtered Camels and vowing to put this man where he belonged. They were there to press charges. My husband-to-be and I sat quietly while these two women graphically discussed what they were going to do to this man the next time they got their hands on him. From what we gathered--and we gathered a LOT--he was not a nice man. No, it wasn't funny, but at the time we did have to hold in a laugh or two. It wasn't easy.

Finally, about twenty minutes past noon, one of the judge's assistants stuck her head out the door and called out our names with the word "wedding" at the end. We stood up, and instantly the scowls and anger disappeared from the women's faces. They looked at us and smiled. "Oh, you're getting married," said the ex-wife of the batterer. We said yes, and she congratulated us. As we walked into the judge's office, the battered woman shouted out the last bit of pre-marital advice I would hear as a single woman. "Don't let him beat ya up!"

We went in, signed the papers and the license, and the judge's assistants signed as witnesses, but when we were shown into his chambers, the "witnesses" stayed outside in their office. It was us and the judge--and he was blind. Seriously. He was a very well-known and well-respected judge in Savannah, and he had lost his eyesight a number of years ago. There was no book--he knew the ceremony by heart. It was short and very sweet. We were pronounced husband and wife, we kissed and we left. The biggest moment in our lives, and no one--not one living soul--saw us get married.

We're still happily together 24 years later, which proves that it's not the size or scope of the wedding that leads to longevity, but the size and scope of your commitment and love for one another--and the fact that I've never let him beat me up.