The Plan was half-assed. I can admit it because hindsight is 20/20. Didn’t really need hindsight though to conclude that my efforts in planning our wedding weren’t exactly 100%.

The funny thing is, I am a total control freak. I thought I’d be this ridiculous bridezilla about stuff. So not the case. I basically cared less and became less stressed as the wedding approached. Don’t get me wrong, after the kinda proposal, I did buy a bunch of magazines and grabbed a binder, but I think I just knew some things were going to be out of my hands and it was what it was. As long as Clifford was there and I was there and we were saying “I do”, well, sometimes you have to be happy with that.

Anyway, I was engaged. It was time for the The Plan to be formulated.  After When was decided, the next issue was Where.

Clifford hates people. He was all about a small wedding. I am a cheap person who was also broke. So I was all about a small wedding, too.  I wanted a religious ceremony. Clifford deferred to me on that. Though I wanted a religious ceremony, I didn’t want to get married in Indiana or in my childhood church, nor was I feeling particularly attached to Georgia at the time. We did discuss what we were hoping to achieve with a wedding. We’d basically been together for 6 or 7 years by that point, so it was a fair question to ask.

I wanted a religious commitment, a union blessed by the Church. Clifford just wanted it to be over with. We both agreed we wanted the event to be a celebration, and we wanted our families to get to know each other better. Of course they’d met a few times at things over the years, but we looked at our marriage as the unification of not two individuals, but of two families. It was settled. We were getting married in the mountains and it was going to be a four-day affair. Everyone in our immediate families would be staying under one roof and we would live it up like Reagan just got reelected. Except there would be no cocaine. There was a lot of cocaine in ’84.

I started searching rental listings on the internet near Gatlinburg, Tennessee. We needed to accommodate around 30 people overnight. I have four siblings who had spouses and in some cases a couple of kids. I had my folks, my grandmother and one of my uncles as well. This was my immediate family. Clifford was an immigrant so he didn’t have much family here. He had his mom, his dad and his sister, but also what I always considered his adopted family in the States – the Orffs. Three boys, Mr. and Mrs. Orff and Aunt Lee and Uncle Bob. It was going to be a pretty big house party.

I found Tanasi Lodge on VRBO. It is technically in Sevierville near Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. When I was younger, The Great Smoky Mountains was one of the places we’d vacation to as a family, so I always loved it there. Clifford loved it, too. The house was gorgeous and fairly new. It had probably the steepest drive I’d ever seen and hadn’t even been paved at the time. We were the first to have a wedding party there. It was three stories and had porches on the East and West sides so you could watch the sunset and the sunrise.

Tanasi Lodge in Sevierville, TN

Back of the house.

The house at night.

It was truly breathtaking. The Where was official.

Time to get us a minister. I was torn between an outdoor and an indoor ceremony. We knew the reception would be back at the lodge. We could set up chairs there to do the ceremony outside or look for a church. I am Methodist, so that was my preference even though Clifford had been raised Catholic, he wasn’t practicing, so the pastor to perform the ceremony was up to me.

I had called a few places, been put in touch with a man of the cloth or two… My favorite was the Baptist minister who told me he could absolutely marry us but just so I knew, Clifford would ultimately burn in Hell. I am SO not kidding. I didn’t go with that guy.

Clifford’s one contribution to where the ceremony would be held — I don’t remember where we were, but I remember his words, “I always thought it’d be nice to get married in a little white church.” Wow. Never thought I’d hear that from him. It made me smile and it was his only two cents about the whole thing, so I ran with it.

I had researched all of these chapels in Gatlinburg only to find when visiting Tanasi Lodge, that at the base of the mountain, before heading toward the house, there was a little white Methodist church.

The little white church.

I contacted them, and though it was irregular for them to wed and rent the church to people from out of town, they made an exception for us. It was kismet. Ceremony booked.

The Plan was coming together.

We would arrive on a Thursday. The Bachelor and Bachelorette parties would take place then. Friday would be the rehearsal dinner and not just for those involved in the wedding, but we would have a lamb roast for everyone in town at that time. The ceremony and reception would take place on Saturday, and Sunday would be spent with family and friends before saying adieu. 65 people would be invited. I believe 60 showed up. It would be small and intimate and a blast if I had anything to say about it.

Next up – the Bachelorette party and the rehearsal day. Here’s a little tease …you know Gatlinburg has like one bar, right? (or at least back in the day it did) Best.Bachelorette Party. Ever.

I’ve been travelling through Florida over the last week and a half, staying in a mix of hotels and stopping at a variety of kitschy cool tourist traps along the way.

Example:

The Fountain of Youth in St. Augustine, Florida

As I had a chance to really appreciate my surroundings on this trip and take in the unique flavor of each, I noticed how every hotel has a mood. Every room has a certain feel to it when you open the door. The air is thicker or thinner, or has the faint smell of 20 year old cigarette smoke (even in a non-smoking room) mixed with Pleadge. And we all know how smells can evoke memories of days gone by…

I walked into my room in Boca Rotan and suddenly I was six years old walking into a room near Silver Dollar City (now Dollywood) in Pigeon Forge.  This was a Marriott, but it smelled just like my Dad’s favorite Howard Johnson nestled in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. If I’d closed my eyes, I would have sworn it was 1985 all over again.

See, I was a HoJo-Cracker Barrel kid. This meant whether it was King’s Island or Cedar Point, Gatlinburg or Gurney Mills, my Dad was always seeking our stay to be at a Howard Johnson Inn. I don’t know why, but we all knew that’s where we would be staying if there was one nearby. Of course all we kids cared about was whether or not it had a pool. We were always cramming at least six of us into a double room. The limit was four, you know, without incurring extra charges. Purposely or not, my Dad would always request a room on the ground floor. This allowed two of us to grab our sleeping bags and quickly sneak in ahead of the others without being seen.

We also ate at Cracker Barrel for breakfast if it wasn’t included with our stay. Since I can remember, pretty much every disaster that could go wrong in a restaurant has happened to us at a Cracker Barrel somewhere or other along the way(i.e. dirty dishware, hairs in the grits, terrible service, you get the idea). Yet every vacation, without fail, my siblings and I would inevitably find ourselves fighting to play that wooden triangle mind game that declares who’s a genius and who’s a total moron. (Don’t believe them if they say they were geniuses. I know for a fact that that’s not true.)

Anyway, entering these two establishments declared we, the Gross Family, were on a journey. Our vacations were always road trips and reminiscent of something out of the National Lampoon’s latest flick. We piled into the station wagon and drove off to exotic places like Disney World and Texas. We stopped at underground caves and Presidential birthplaces. We had run-ins with bears, rode world-record breaking roller coasters and crashed head first in to waves from the Atlantic sea.

Four of us in front of a well somewhere. I’m so sassy in this one.

Three of us a King’s Island in Cincinnati, Ohio. One of our favorite stops. I’m the cute one with the pigtails everyone would want to take home.

Three of us and a cousin visiting Cherokee. This was another favorite stop.

It looks like four of us at a zoo. The one in the stroller now has a kid of her own doing the exact same thing to her. Karma, man. It always comes back.

Dad and three of us on our favorite log ride at Silver Dollar City.

Mom and four of us, again, on our favorite log ride at Silver Dollar City. We rode that thing a million times.

My siblings and I shared in some of the best memories a mind can make, thanks to our folks and their dedication to an annual getaway, no matter how tight times would be. We also shared in teasing, screaming, pinching, shoving, biting, hitting, pulling, and wet-willies (yeah, I know). But we always felt home when we stepped inside that HoJo.

I swear my parents avowed every year “never again” after safely returning home from our crazy escapades, yet, like clockwork, the next summer we’d find our Dad looking at that road atlas and our Mom pulling out those Howard Johnson brochures. And when we eventually walked into that hotel room, wherever it was, no matter how musty or ragged a room it may have been, that smell let us know we were ready for our next adventure. HoJo – our home away from home.