Night Wedding

I had a dream about our wedding last night. Which is strange because I don’t usually even think about weddings. But you were there, and we were going to get married I guess. It was in another country, somewhere I’ve never been, in a hotel with wide empty hallways.
Maybe it’s because I’ve never dreamed of weddings before, but things weren’t going as I expected. There were no fancy parties, no gatherings of friends or people getting excited, just these hallways where people in church clothes milled about sparsely, sipping drinks with ice in them from clear plastic cups.
And you went off to do your hair and get ready for the wedding and I wasn’t sure what to do. I rather like wandering around with a drink in my hand; it lets me feel like I’m doing something important without actually having to do anything but slowly finish the drink, and then maybe get another one and just keep on exploring, talking small talk, critiquing the wallpaper, but this apparently was my wedding?
And without you there, I don’t know what I’m doing. I couldn’t call up your face or your shape, and I didn’t remember anymore what sort of jokes you would laugh at. When I was younger, whenever I met someone new my sister would always ask me, “are they nice?” and I knew that you were nice, if nothing else; I was marrying you, afterall. But I hardly knew you, and I didn’t know why or when or where or even how we were getting married, just these hallways and some short amount of time, a deadline, before we would be married.
And I figured that I should at least make sure that I would look good for the ceremony. I looked at myself in a mirror, deep eyes, dark sports coat, lost with a drink cup for a compass. I guess somehow I hadn’t shaved in a week and I looked nothing like a man about to be married. In jeans and red sneakers I dashed down the hallway.
I found my parents wandering around and told them that I looked like a hooligan. My dad pointed me to a concierge’s desk where they’d have extra razors. In the end I wound up borrowing one form a little kid who was practicing shaving for when he got older.
I went into the dressing room to shave and you were there, just finishing with your makeup, still in street clothes. We crossed paths only briefly, as it’s bad luck to see the bride before the ceremony, but when I saw you I knew who you were again, small, soft and gentle. You looked beautiful, although I don’t remember if you smiled at me or not – we shouldn’t have seen each other yet.