Love In San Diego

Allison and Adam got married today. Originally they said that they were getting married "to get into the married students housing"...but they're already in the married students housing. (Shhhh.) That might have been the cover story, but this was no legal arrangement -- this was a party among friends in order to celebrate their love.

I left LA at 9, because Tiffany had told me horror stories about traffic between here and there. I got into San Diego at 11, having hit no traffic whatsoever. I wandered around for a while, but at 12:30 I couldn't take it any more: I went to the parking lot of the restaurant where the reception was being held and catnapped. Well, I'm not absolutely sure I fell asleep, but one moment my watch said 12:40 and the next moment it was just after 1. I either caught a few winks or was abducted by aliens or maybe both; I rule nothing out.

I went into the restaurant and changed in the bathroom. I slid into this year's wedding dress: a tight red satin number. I fluffed my hair and put on lipstick. Basically I was a totally different person walking out than the one who walked in.

I walked the two blocks down towards the park where the wedding was being held but got held up by two things: a)the park wasn't right at the bottom of the street, where I expected it to be and b)that dress was not made for walking. I consulted the canary yellow map that had come with the invitation.

A Lexus pulled up. "Lost?"

The driver was another woman named Allison, with whom I became fast friends. She offered to drive me to the park ("I see you have the yellow paper"), and I accepted: turned out we were half a block away. We hung out and talked. Turns out she's just bought a house too.

The wedding was held in this park. The judge stood with his back to the Pacific Ocean. The guests sat in rows with an aisle down the center. A pair of guys (one of them was Adam's brother) rolled a bolt of white fabric down the aisle. The music was Gamelan, played by some fellow music students of Allison's.

Allison was escorted by her bridesmaids, Tiffany and Nicole. They wore similar but not identical straight-line blue dresses and Tiffany had a whole 60s thing going: straight hair held by a hairband, pale lipstick, and lush (and noticeable -- but not unattractive)false eyelashes. Tiffany and Nicole scattered rose petals out of baskets as they preceded Allison, who wore a beautiful outfit (I coveted the lace jacket). The ceremony was short but very nice (kind of reminded me of mine, to be honest, and I was very fond of our ceremony). The judge surprised them at the end by saying, "May I present Mr. and Mrs. Adam K______," because Allison isn't changing her name to K_______. Or to Adam, now that I think about it.

Allison-my-new-friend drove us the whole two blocks back to the restaurant and we were there first so a)I signed in the reception book first and b)we got to the hors d'oeuvres first. (Cool.) We were sitting at the same table too -- the table of Chicks Without Dates. It was a fun table: no hassles of having to make small talk with guys.

This restaurant, called Maitre D', was one of the funkiest places I've been to in quite a while. "I just bought a place," I said. "Think they'd decorate it for me?" The restaurant wasn't one particular style: it was all of them. Over the top with baroque fixtures and tactile wallpaper and disco ball over the bar. Modern Rococo Garage Sale. Posters from New Orleans, a book on orchids in the bathroom (along with a tray of perfumes), gilt-edged mirrors.

Also, they had very good food.

The best part was the part of the menu listed as "The Art of Love." We kept joking that this was the part of the reception during which Allison and Adam proved that theirs was a true marriage. What it turned out to be were small dollops of a wonderful strawberry sorbet served in carved ice swans that had tiny flashlights inserted into the base, so they were lit from beneath. (I hope I'm not spoiling this treat for anyone who might be having a reception there.)

The whole shindig was a lot of fun. Nice toasts, nice people, good chat. I was exhausted by the time I left, and I did not have any champagne, thankyouverymuch. (If I was able to catnap in my car, God only knows how tired I'd be if I'd had a bit of alcohol as well.) Allison-not-the-bride and I left at the same time, because I knew how to find Highway 5 back to Los Angeles.

But I wasn't driving back in that tight red dress, so I changed back into my t-shirt and shorts. And something interesting happened: some people gave me looks like, What are you doing here? The same people who'd given me admiring looks before. I immediately became a nobody. Clothes do make the woman.

The drive back was longer, mostly because there was an incredibly amount of traffic on the way back. (The most fun was when the freeway kept narrowing down to fewer and fewer lanes.) It was too tough a drive to do by myself both ways in one day, but I wouldn't have missed it for anything.