Why We Didn't Get Married in Las Vegas Like Normal Americans

Maybe it's because I also write books for younger readers, and so most of the 200 or so emails I get a day are from kids. But the vast majority of the emails in my inbox contain this question: "Where do you get your inspiration?"

Inspiration seems to be a big thing for my readers, but I have to say it's not something I ever think about. Whenever anybody asks, I always have to pause and think, "Where DID I get the inspiration for that story?" The truth is, I usually can't remember. To me, the story is generally the important thing, not how I thought it up.

My book Every Boy's Got One is different, though. I got the inspiration for the story —a tale of love and elopement in the Italian countryside —from my own marriage, which was… well, an elopement in the Italian countryside.

a tale of love and elopement in the Italian countryside

I didn't think writing a story about a bride would be all that interesting, though, either to me or my readers. It seemed to me that the story of how a woman came to BE a bride in the first place would be the more interesting tale.

So when I decided to write a novel based on my own wedding, I chose for my main characters the best man and maid of honor of the couple who are eloping, basically telling the story of my elopement (with, I'll admit, numerous fabrications) from the point of view of my maid of honor.

Fabrication Number One: I didn't actually have a maid of honor for my Italian elopement. The girl who was supposed to be my maid of honor —the best man's girlfriend — bailed on him the week before our wedding.

Fabrication Number Two: In Every Boy's Got One, the elopement takes place in Le Marche, in the village of Castelfidardo, the accordion-making capital of the world. My own wedding was hundreds of kilometers from there, in a town near Monaco called Diana San Pietro, in Ligeria. I changed settings because it's been eleven years since I was last in Ligeria, and I was in Le Marche less than a year ago, so I felt the details would be more authentic.

Fabrication Number Three: In Every Boy's Got One, the characters spend a lot of time emailing people on their Blackberries. I did not actually have a Blackberry, or access to the Internet, while I was getting married. In 1993, when my wedding took place, the Internet was not yet that widely known or available. At least to me.

These are, however, pretty much the ONLY ways in which my real-life wedding differed from the one in my book. And here's the blow-by-blow to prove it!

"You kid me, si?" The secretario eyed us suspiciously over his typewriter.

My husband-to-be and I exchanged glances. The fact was, we were not kidding him. We wanted to get married in Diano San Pietro, a sleepy village on the Italian Riviera, just a few miles from Monaco. A popular beach resort in summer, the Ligurian town was relatively deserted in March, except for the natives, who farmed the olive groves that dotted the steep, climbing hills, and ran (when you could rouse them from their afternoon naps) the many restaurants and cafés that lined the beautiful shore.

Considering how deserted the town was, the secretario's reluctance to marry us seemed odd. There certainly didn't appear to be much going on in the Comune di Diano San Pietro, the city hall. With the exception of ourselves, the white-haired secretario, our translator, and would-be best man, Ingo, the building was empty. It didn't look to me like there were a lot of people banging down the doors of Diano San Pietro city officials demanding to be married.

And yet the secretario looked extremely unwilling even to entertain the idea of two Americans being wed in his village.

"You do not understand," he entreated us in broken English. "We here in Italy take the institution of marriage very seriously. There is much to be done. There are many forms that must be filled out."

That was when we handed him the Stato Libero we had filled out in the office of the Consulate General of Italy back in New York before we'd left for Europe. Signed by four witnesses unrelated either to us or to one another, we had been assured by the consulate that this declaration was the only form we would need in order for us to be married on our vacation in Italy.

But for good measure, we also relinquished our birth certificates, which we'd had translated into Italian, and our passports. Italians, we explained, as nicely as we could, were not the only people in the world who took the institution of marriage seriously.

The secretario took the forms from us with an expression of bewildered chagrin. This was clearly not what he needed an hour before his lunch break —his three-hour lunch break.

Non-Fabrication Number One: In Italy, everything really does shut down from twelve to three, just like in Every Boy's Got One: banks; shops; grocery stores; you name it, all in an effort to allow employees to enjoy lunch with their families.

Muttering that he was going to have to speak to the mayor, the secretario disappeared into an inner office. When he returned moments later, it was in the company of a large man in a jogging suit, who was eating a somewhat messy salami and onion sandwich. This gentleman, it appeared, held the office of mayor of Diano San Pietro. He took one look at our paperwork and inquired, with a sigh, "Why can't you just get married in Las Vegas like normal Americans?"

Non-Fabrication Number Two: He really did say that, just like in the book.

I'll admit it: I'm wedding-phobic. I have nothing against marriage. It's the shower-gown-register-bouquet-cake stuff that gives me the heebie-jeebies. I'm often beseeched by readers to write sequels to my contemporary novels that feature the wedding of such-and-such a character. The fact is, I can't do it because I've never actually planned a wedding myself, and have no idea how one goes about doing so.

Eleven years ago —when our trip to the Comune di Diano San Pietro took place —I was twenty-six, and my husband-tobe, Benjamin, was the ripe old age of thirty-two: certainly old enough to know what we wanted —which was not a big wedding. And certainly not one in Vegas, the wedding capital of the world.

Non-Fabrication Number Three: Like the bride and groom in my book Every Boy's Got One, Benjamin and I had decided to elope in Italy —only not because our parents disapproved of our relationship (like Holly and Mark), but because:

Copyright © 2005 by Meggin Cabot