How NOT to do a honeymoon

I was reading through some of my old posts and one of them mentioned our honeymoon ..... of many moons ago.  I described it as disastrous.  It wasn't THAT bad ..... well, yeah, it was bad.

Husband-to-be had been home from his LDS mission for five months when we got married in October of 1975.  At 20 and 21 years old, we were ridiculously young.   He had an entry level job as a pattern maker, making $3.75 per hour, in a manufacturing company in which he would eventually rise to responsible positions over the next fifteen years.  I was working as a receptionist for a finance company, earning even less.  We had a small convertible Fiat that he bought a few months prior, for $300, and we were still making payments on my ring.  A very humble and drafty apartment waited for us in our home state of Oregon, after we spent what little money we had to travel to Utah to get married.  In those days, there were no LDS temples within 700 miles of home and a wedding anywhere else, for us, was not acceptable.

Did I mention that we were young?  Add to that ..... we were naive and inexperienced in travel and other things of the world, much less planning honeymoons.  We figured it didn't really matter as long as we were together.  Which, in hindsight, was true.

We were married on a Tuesday morning in Logan, Utah, in the temple that sits on a hill overlooking the town.  I had only been in a temple once before that, when I was in college.  This was my first time in the inner sanctuary of one of these holy edifices and I received the ordinances needed prior to being married, right before our wedding ceremony.   Our families were with us and I remember feeling awed that they had come all that way.  I don't remember much else.  After the temple, we attended a lunch that was hosted by New Husband's grandmother in her home.   A few hours later we left to begin this thing called Marriage, heading towards Salt Lake City.  Our plan?  A day in SL, then a visit to Provo, and then head home.  We had made no reservations, because hey, it didn't matter ......

Inserting a reassuring note to our kids -- Relax.  No need to close your eyes, cover your ears and hum loudly ..... Nothing gross here.

As luck would have it, there was a convention happening in SL and motel after motel was full.  We finally found a simple, non-memorable room somewhere near downtown.  (Let me reemphasize simple.)  The next morning we attended the stunningly beautiful, historic Salt Lake Temple for a bit of a review of what we had experienced in the Logan Temple the day before.  I quickly learned that I was no longer the bride and center of attention, but instead just one of the crowd.

As it started to get dark later that day, just before we planned to head for Provo, our $300 Fiat quit working.  Fortunately, Husband's aunt and uncle, who lived nearby, came to the rescue.  We managed to get the car to their house where Husband spent the evening pulling out the transmission and diagnosing a broken clutch lever.  They loaned us a car to go find a room for our second night.  The next morning he found a welding shop and had the part repaired and I again spent several hours in Aunt and Uncle's living room watching snow lightly falling outside, while Husband shivered under the car in their driveway, reinstalling the mended part.  Thankfully, since we didn't even carry a credit card back then, the repair only cost $7.

After that we no longer trusted our $307 Fiat, so we scrapped our Provo plan and beelined for home.  We stayed in our third humble motel room in Brigham City, and then landed in my sister's home near Boise, for night number four.   Did we realize that we broke all honeymoon rules by spending a night with relatives?  No.  We were THAT naive .... and nearly out of money.

Shortly after crossing into Oregon, still very far from home, the car started to sputter again and we nervously pulled into a rest stop.  But miraculously, it restarted and gave us no more problems.  We like to attribute that to a merciful God, who must have been chuckling at us, knowing as only He can, that all would be okay, in spite of our worries.

We arrived home to Humble Drafty Apartment late that night with less than $20 in our pockets, only to find it had been semi-trashed by my new in-laws.  I'm sure they had fun, confident that we'd both laugh at the joke, after we dragged in from our long and stressful trip.  Yeah...... right.

So there it is.  Our honeymoon.  In our defense, our options were few if any.  The trip was mandatory, the car was what it was, and ditto with the budget.

Afterthoughts:  We determined that, when our own kids got married, if needed, we would at least help them with their first night's arrangements.  No one deserves a drab little motel room like we had, for their wedding night.  That said, we figure it's all relative.  We both came from humble circumstances and had never really experienced "posh".   So, in other words, we were fairly clueless anyway.  And in the 39 happy years of our marriage, we have more than made up for it.   Besides.... when you start at the bottom, the only way to go .... is up.