Memoir installment #18

In which, years later, I confront my therapist

My ex-husband Ben proposed one snowy Saturday afternoon in Prospect Park, with a Marquise-cut diamond ring that I had instructed him to ask my mother for a month or so previously. It had belonged to my grandmother, and it was bigger and nicer than anything he could afford on his teacher’s salary, and at the time—it bothers me more than a little to admit now—having a nice, big diamond was important to me. So many of the married and engaged women at Conde Nast had sizable rocks. But I also wondered if choosing that ring was the wisest move. My grandparents had not had the best marriage—the true love of my grandfather’s life had probably been his secretary Sally, with whom he had an affair that lasted until her death at 77.  Some people believe that precious stones hold energy, and if that is true, then this heirloom’s vibe certainly wasn’t good. But that, too, was a red flag I was willing to ignore.

It had taken Ben longer than I might have liked to propose, but once he did, he was all in, and got far more excited about wedding planning than I’d ever have imagined he would. He got jazzed even about the aspects that bored me, like seating at the reception, and the font size on the invitation. We had decided to get married in or around Sag Harbor, and hired a wedding planner out in the Hamptons, Jill, to help us out.

Happily, Jill didn’t match the image I had in my mind of a wedding planner: I pictured a manicured and ultra-groomed hyper-ambitious alpha-dog, but she was chill and easy to be around, and projected an it’ll all get done calm, which I liked. She also had fun ideas, like having pony rides for all the kids in attendance at the wedding, and I liked that too. 

We set a date for the last day of June. All winter long, we’d drive out to Long Island early on a Saturday morning, then spend the day with Jill taste-testing caterers, meeting florists, and checking out venues, finally settling on a vineyard just a few miles from my family’s house. Ben became obsessive about  the most mundane details: the color of the napkins, the species and quantity of flowers, the size of the tent. And I was delighted that he was so involved.