Chapter 5

I hadn’t wanted to admit it to Alicia, but I was nervous. Walking into the Lottery Headquarters to collect a fortune was new to me. Granted, I had read the process on the Lottery Commission’s web page, but reading it and doing it were two different things.

It took a lot longer than I had thought. First, I had to fill out several forms. Then I had to wait while the lottery official reviewed the forms. When he said everything looked good to him, he congratulated me, and told me it would take at least five weeks to process everything and cut a check. He also told me, the Lottery Commission would contact me when the check was ready for pickup. He said to call, if I hadn’t heard from them in six weeks.

That surprised me for I thought I would be getting the check that day. Bummer! They explained everything else on the web page. Why didn’t they mention that? Maybe I just missed it.

We had lunch before we headed home, and during lunch, I explained what happened to Alicia when I submitted my ticket. On the way home, we tried to relax, and we talked about our next few weeks. We decided to have Alicia’s Mom, Phyllis, come over for dinner the next night. We also decided to start planning our wedding, and Alicia believed her mother would want to be involved. She also said that Phyllis wanting to be involved would prove to be an understatement.

Phyllis, Alicia, and I were having a pre-dinner drink the next day. Alicia and I let Phyllis know she was welcome to help us plan the wedding. That was when the wedding planning started.

As we enjoyed our drinks, Alicia told Phyllis that she and I had decided we wanted a fairly small, simple ceremony. Phyllis told us we should go all out because getting married was something we would want to look back on later in our lives. We discussed what she meant by all out.

What I figured out was, Phyllis had a very large, fancy wedding that she loved. A large wedding was what she had always thought Alicia would have. At first, I thought she wanted a large wedding for Alicia, because it was Phyllis’s dream for Alicia. I came to realize that a fancy wedding was what Phyllis believed Alicia actually wanted, but would not admit to wanting.

To resolve the issue, I told Alicia that I was okay with a large wedding, if she was. I made that suggestion because it occurred to me that if Phyllis was right about us looking back and being glad we had a big wedding, we would be thankful. If she was wrong, then it really didn’t matter to us one way or the other.

During dinner, I basically sat, listened, and kept my mouth shut. I was more than willing to support their planning, but I did not want to get into a contentious discussion between my future wife and future mother-in-law. Alicia and Phyllis had different ideas about what constituted a nice wedding. They eventually created a basic outline of the wedding and what had to be done before the ceremony. Early in their discussion, Alicia left the table to go get a notepad and pen, so she could list what they decided needed to be done. When she returned, the planning slowed down so Alicia could record their decisions. When asked, I concurred with their decisions. Prior to their coming to a decision, I would only say that I would be happy with either approach to what they were discussing. Their main disagreement was when.