Have you ever gone to a wedding in Gondor, and because you were close to either the bride or groom, you were allowed to watch the preparations for everything? Have you ever fallen asleep, bored mindless because where you expected hectic servants running around with platters of fresh food, and a half mad bride trying to make herself as lovely as humanly possible, instead you find calmness and an eerie silence in its stead? That is how you would find most little farm weddings. Calm, simple, with a remarkable silence. That is not how you would find a wealthy, powerful noble's wedding, let alone a prince's. I learned that the hard way. I only had one sister, ten years older than me. I was not allowed in the wedding because 1) my parents thought I would ruin it. Where I had accepted my own fate, I was a very big romantic at heart and wished nothing but happiness for my sister. Unfortunately the man was short, stubborn and fat, and when my sister tried to tell me, she was indeed in love with the man, I started sobbing about the cruelty of sisters who repeatedly lied to their little eight-year-old sisters. Now a days though, for all I know she really did love the man. As soon as she was married, they disappeared never to be seen by either of my parents again. I wished them luck, from my position in the festivities I was the only one who could see them sneak off. I wished them luck silently. But that was ten years before my wedding, and since then I had had no experience with marriage, whether it be my own, a family member's or a friends. I literally had no experience. So I became the hectic bride you always expect to see and here wild stories about. At least I wasn't a horrible bride. I wasn't cruel or mean or ugly, I repeatedly told myself as the servants spent three hours pinning up my hair. Or pretty I admitted to myself later. I was horrified, of marrying a man I had never met. What a fool, I'd been played for.
It wasn't until late at night that the servants finished. It was the custom for a bride, the night before her wedding night, to spend all night in a small forest or glen and pray for a son. The idea was that the Valor were always in nature, and so they were more likely to grant favor there. Instead it often muddied the wedding dresses of the would-be brides and made them smell horribly of earth and mud. For that reason, my sister hadn't done that. I could have probably gotten away with not doing it too, especially since orcs had just started to cause trouble in the out skirts, had it not been tradition for every would-be queen to perform the ritual. Just for safety though, the king sent me a servant to watch over me in case we were attacked. The only problem there was, the King hadn't bothered to see which servant was sent. It is sad to say, that had orcs came across us in that little glen, they would have surely avoided me, and gone straight to the big blubbering idiot, my "protector". He weighed close to four times me, and was nearly half as short. Well, somehow I managed to stay awake the whole night (I suspect the nice serving lady who had done my hair had slipped some sort of drug into my drink to keep me awake), with out killing the mumbling drooling, ASLEEP jerk who was, again I say, "protecting me".
The next morning I awoke, and the ceremony immediately takes place, we were not supposed to take showers until much later. I started walking, more like stumbled down the little path to the priest and future husband with his back to me, as was custom. When I got there my face turned white. I imagine the hundreds there, watching he wedding had thought it was nerves. It was really because I had seen Isildor (a/n: Was that spelled right? Huh? With my luck, no) before. The monk. Realization dawned on me. He had played me for an idiot. I even raised my hand to smack the smirk off his face, except I realized at the last minute, that half of Gondor was there watching. So instead I bent down to whisper something mean in his ear (whatever they had put in that drink it really had a lasting effect on my actions) when he kissed me on the cheek. People started smiling and cheering in he crowd. What was I supposed to do, I was blushing furiously, when he slipped his ring on my finger, mine already securely on his wedding finger, somehow. We were married.
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