Six Letter Word [Kaylor]

September 2016 (Part 4)

You would think that after such a momentous day in our lives, that it would be late at night when we left the hospital, but it was actually only about 1:30 in the afternoon. A good thing, too, since I had about thirty messages and missed calls from Tree, members of my team, my parents, my brother, Karlie's sisters, and several friends. The most important one came from Tree, reading "YOU HAVE TO GO TO RI TO GET THE MARRIAGE LICENSE!!!!"

Karlie and I had been planning to go to a courthouse in Manhattan together. She's an official New Yorker and I both own and rent property here, although my official state of residence is still in Tennessee, so we thought New York would be the place to apply to get married. Turns out that only works if we intended to also get married here. Since we're getting married in Rhode Island, we have to get a license IN RHODE ISLAND. We were planning to road trip it to the house up there later today. It's only a two and a half hour drive, and we thought it would take us back to Big Sur and all the lovely memories from that trip. That trip got a journal of its own, complete with the original lyrics to the song I tacked on to the deluxe version of 1989 just for Karlie, after she woke one night on the trip to find me up and writing, gave me a sleepy gaze, told me 'you're my best friend' and then went back to sleep. That neither of us had a stitch of clothing on at the time is mostly irrelevant.

If we drove straight there, we probably could have made it before the Town Clerk's office closed at 4, but we didn't want to take that risk. Neither of my planes was even in New York. They're housed in Nashville and I had one flying all over the country gathering Klosses (plus Austin, since he was in California and so was Kristine), the other was picking up the rest of my family, Abigail and Brit. The rest of our friends were making their own way to Watch Hill. So I may have pulled a diva move. I rented a helicopter. And then I asked a couple of my guys to drive our stuff up to the house so Karlie and I, along with Sean, could fly up right away. Thank God Tree had done her homework. Eloping is a lot harder than you might expect when you actually want your friends and family to be there, and you actually want to have a ceremony, with white dresses and flowers and everything.

Tree was already in Westerly and met us at the airport. We'd put her in charge of the details because she knows me better than anyone outside of Karlie. Maybe even better than Karlie, because when I'm planning to surprise Karls, she's usually the one I tell, and enlist to help me. I knew only that I wanted Karlie to be at the end of the aisle when I got there. Normally, I would be in charge of every detail of something as important as our wedding. If we'd tried to plan ahead, it probably would have taken years to get it all put together. Instead, I had less than forty-eight hours to invite guests, find dresses, get flowers, get a license, get someone to marry us, and get someone to play music. At that point, I wasn't sure I would never know how she made it happen, but I was overjoyed to get out of that helicopter and see not one but two gingers standing there.

I squealed and threw myself across the tarmac into Ed's arms. I will never know how Tree managed to get hold of him on his stupid flip phone and get him to the house in Rhode Island on such short notice, but I was ecstatic to see him. Wedding music, check. Not only that, but one of my best friends was going to be there and be able to be part of my wedding. I was a little concerned that the wedding party might be larger than the guest list, at this point, but I didn't care. I just wanted as many people we loved to be there as possible. The moment I released him, Ed hustled over to Karlie to give her a congratulatory hug and a very brotherly lecture about her intentions with me. Given what he walked into immediately after the Victoria's Secret fashion show in 2014 when all three of us were part of it, his attempts to protect my virtue were entirely facetious, but somehow he managed to present it with an entirely straight face. An impressive feat, considering how much his face resembled a tomato that night two years ago. I'm not sure he'll ever be the same. Karlie, for her part, tried valiantly not to laugh. She failed, hard, but she tried.