were not marrying Americans… which appeared, to my eyes, to be very little.
When, defeated, we finally agreed to do all that they re quired of us, thesecretario, looking very official, rolled a sheet of paper into his typewriter and began filling out our request for acertificato di matrimonio .
“And when,” he asked, “do you want to be married?”
We replied promptly, “April first.”
The secretario began typing, then suddenly stopped, looked at us over the rim of his glasses, and asked, “This is a joke. You are—who you say?—kidding us,si? ”
I shook my head. It had been Benjamin’s idea to get married in Italy. It was my idea to do it on April Fool’s Day, playing on Benjamin’s belief that only fools get married in the first place.
I will admit that there was a delicious irony to the fact that, when we sent telegrams to our families afterward, they wouldn’t know until we returned from Europe whether we’d actually been married, or if it was all a prank.
Hey, at twenty-six, that seemed excruciatingly funny to me.
“You are not kidding,” the secretario said. He looked back down at his typewriter keys, trying not to smile.
The mayor eyed us suspiciously, then gave us another lecture on how in Italy, marriage is taken very seriously, unlike in America.
Then he picked up his sandwich and announced he could only marry us at nine o’clock in the morning on April first, since he was refereeing the Diano San Pietro boy’s football (soccer) game at ten (Non- Fabrication Number Six).
We assured him we’d be at the city hall promptly at nine. He looked as if he was thinking,Yeah. Right. The secretario, typing steadily, continued to smile to himself. It was clear neither man believed he would be seeing us on April first.
But the Comune di Diano San Pietro was sadly underestimating how tenacious a pair of young Americans in love can be.
We received only two speeding tickets on our way to Milano at five the next morning.
Non-Fabrication Number Seven:The wait in the Consulate General’s office turned out to be almost longer than the drive itself.
Non-Fabrication Number Eight: While we sat waiting for our certificatos, we listened to a young American woman as she tried to convince her older brother that marrying Paolo, an Italian auto mechanic whom she had met the week before, and who sat broodingly beside her, clearly not understanding a word of English, was a good idea. She was still arguing persuasively as we left, four hours later.
Non-Fabrication Number Nine: We really did eat at the Amici Amore restaurant, and the toilet really was just a hole with two footprints around it.
Fortunately, we received only one speeding ticket on our way back to Diano San Pietro.
Non-Fabrication Number Ten: The only CD in the car during this eight-hour drive was a collection of songs by Queen. “Fat-Bottomed Girls” really WAS our wedding’s theme song.
The translator was much easier to come by than our certificatos . Word of the impending marriage of two crazy Americans spread like wildfire throughout the village.
Non-Fabrication Number Eleven: The eighty-year-old woman from whom we were renting our charming, two-storied house in the hills overlooking the sea, insisted upon going down to the Comune and yelling at the mayor for us, to assure him that we were very serious about being married, and that he had better not wear his referee uniform to the ceremony.
Touched by this gesture, I asked her to be my maid of honor.
Meanwhile, a German tourist staying in apensione a few houses away introduced himself and said he would be happy to translate for us—his Italian was flawless, and he was a translator for a living.
The mother of another young neighbor boy—who regularly volunteered to ride his motorino into town each morning to fetch us breakfast rolls (Non-Fabrication Number Twelve)—insisted upon acting as official wedding photographer, claiming that our parents would be furious if we didn’t at least photograph the big event.
And the night before our wedding, some of the village children came to our house and decorated our front gate with flowers and hung two pairs of bedroom slippers from the wrought iron spikes, an old Italian tradition promising connubial bliss (Non-Fabrication Number Thirteen). They also presented me with a beautiful wreath of flowers to wear in my hair on the Big Day… garlic blossoms, I found out after I put it on (Non-Fabrication Number Fourteen). But it was the thought that counted.
These same children were the ones who, at seven in the morning of the Big Day, tapped on our door. Since I was further dressed than Benjamin, I answered. Two little cherubs looked up at me and explained in broken English, their big eyes soulful, that they were very sorry, but the mayor had telephoned and the soccer game had been moved up an hour, and so there could be no wedding that day.
Gasping in horror, I clutched the front of my wedding gown, my eyes filling with tears.
Then both children burst into giggles and shrieked, “April Fool’s!”
I brought my hands down from my heart and asked them to pull the same prank on Benjamin, whose reaction was far more satisfactory to them than mine, since he said a lot of American swear words, to the kids’ endless delight.
An hour and a half later, our wedding procession, consisting of our landlady, the translator, his wife and daughter, our self-appointed photographer, her husband and their son, Ingo and two of his friends from Bonn, Benjamin, myself, and assorted village children and their dogs arrived at the Sala Consiliare of the Comune di Diano San Pietro.
Clearly surprised that we had actually shown up, the mayor quickly stripped off his referee uniform and donned jacket, tie, and mayoral surplice (Non-Fabrication Number Fifteen).
Our marriage took place with much more solemnity and pageantry than either of us was expecting. Ingo, the best man, presented me with a bridal bouquet and my maid of honor with a matching corsage before the ceremony. Then Frau Schumacher and Ingo witnessed our signing of the Diano San Pietroregistro degli atti di matrimoni.
According to the translator, Benjamin and I promised, among other things, to live always together and see that our children attended decent schools. No wedding ceremony I have attended since has seemed quite as sweet—and to the point—as our Italian one.
After rings and kisses were exchanged, the mayor announced us husband and wife, and cheers and applause rang out. We were then beseeched by the mayor to pose for photos with him, and by thesecretario to make a one-hundred-thousand lire donation to the Comune di Diano San Pietro Children’s Fund. In theregistro for the Children’s Fund, my husband wrote, “Isn’t it a good thing we decided not to get married in Las Vegas like normal Americans?”
Then we all went across the street to the postino’s office to send off our telegrams, then to enjoy a wedding brunch at a restaurant that had agreed to open its doors early just for us.
It was at this brunch that we discovered Non-Fabrication Number Sixteen: Our landlady had worked for the SS, and had a son who was in jail for robbing all of the homes neighboring hers. Yes, the Nazi mother of a felon was the maid of honor at my wedding. And she’d been so nice! How was I supposed to have known?
Every Boy’s Got One ends with missives from the bride and groom’s families, expressing their eagerness to throw a party for the young couple whose marriage they’d initially been so vehemently against.
Non-Fabrication Number Seventeen: In real life, our parents’ reaction was not much different. At first puzzled as to whether or not the whole thing had been an April Fool’s joke, they soon came to believe the event had actually taken place, and began planning a wedding celebration on my mother’s back deck in Indiana.
Of course, the morning of the party, a tornado ripped through town, pulling the roof off a nearby church and causing the temperature to plummet and the yard to become strewn with leaves and branches, so that the guests, including myself, were forced to wear sweaters and step over bracken in order to get to the cooler holding the beer.
But then, I’d given up expecting anything to do with my wedding to go right, so I wasn’t the least surprised.
