Ezinne, you and my first wife would get along well. Engagement only lasted a few days, most of that time being spent getting paperwork through the system. No engagement ring (she asked me to marry her, and this was pre-Web so we had no way to look up the protocol for such cases). Justice of the peace at the local courthouse (okay, only courthouse — this was Guam, where Linda was stationed at the time, and it is not a large island). No guests — hell, we borrowed witnesses from the couple getting married just before us. The “reception” was happy hour at the officers club on the Navy base, and the “guests” were whoever happened to be there who knew Linda (pretty much everybody, because of that small island thing and my new wife being the gregarious sort).

Okay, sure, we never made it to our second anniversary, but the wedding was not the cause of that. I still hold it up as an example to my nieces and nephews (my nieces think I’m nuts, but then, they always have).