I was already on to my next album, determined to make it mine this time. I constantly tried to write my own songs, with recurring themes of freedom and taking flight. I didn’t want to have to work to find myself in the songs, I just wanted them to come direct from my heart. When I worried what Tommy would think, I would murmur Colossians 3:23 to remind myself why I wanted to make music in the first place. “Whatever you do, work at with all your heart, as for the Lord and not for men.” I had been called to do this.
That year, the NFL invited me to perform at the halftime show at the February 9 Pro Bowl game in Honolulu. The Pro Bowl brings the best of the best in football together, and Nick tagged along because it was a dream for him to be on the sidelines seeing all the all-stars up close. He was acting weird during the game, and I thought he was just star-struck by athletes.
The next day he told me he’d chartered a sailboat for a six o’clock sunset cruise on the Pacific. That whole day he drove me crazy, asking me the same questions over again because he was distracted, shaking even. When we were finally on the water, I leaned back in his arms, mainly to stay warm. I was chilly, even in my gray Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day hoodie sweatshirt and the USS Detroit ball cap a sailor had given me. The captain gave me a blanket to cover me, but Nick was shivering, too.
“Do you need more of this blanket?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Nick.”
“What?”
“What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, sounding hurt. “I’m just happy to be with you is all.”
“Great,” I yelled. The boat was rocking so much, and when water splashed in, I couldn’t help but scream for fear of getting wet and even colder. Nick kept turning back to look west, checking the sun as it dipped to the horizon. And then something clicked in him.
“Jessica,” he said, “you mean so much to me.” I wish I could remember exactly what he said because I know it was beautiful. I was too busy trying to figure out why he was being so sappy.
Finally, he pulled out a little box, opening it to a reveal a ring with a pear-shaped diamond. “Will you marry me?” he asked.
“Yes!” I yelled. On some instinct, we asked the captain to take our camera to capture the moment on video. “I’m engaged!” I said. “Right here in Hawaii.”
“Nick,” I said. “If I’d known you were gonna propose, I’d have dressed up.”
“You’re perfect,” he said.
I believed him. We kissed, and I leaned further back into him as the boat continued to sail through the rough waters. But I was happy.
WE DECIDED ON AN OCTOBER WEDDING, THROWING OURSELVES INTO wedding planning. I was that girl, and Nick wanted to come to every meeting with our planner, Mindy Weiss, to keep the budget in check. I didn’t think about cost, and I just wanted the whole thing to be epic.
This obviously scared Nick, who was coming into the marriage with much more money than me. As we got closer to the wedding, he casually mentioned that maybe we should talk about getting a prenup. Part of the tabloid mythology of our marriage is that my dad played hardball and refused. No, this was an intimate discussion between a man and his soon-to-be wife. Which is to say that I exploded.
“What are you talking about?” I said. “For when you want to get a divorce?”
“No, of course not,” he said.
“You’re already thinking about how you’re going to leave me?”
“My advisers say it’s for the best.”
“Well, then marry them,” I said, and stormed off.
He dropped it. To his credit, he respected my feelings and probably got a lot of flak about it from his “advisers.” They had no inkling that I was going to leave our marriage with much more earnings than him, and, more important, we knew our marriage would never end. We were in this for forever, and a deal’s a deal.
My father was awful through the whole engagement. There’s just no nice way to put it. He continually told me I was making a mistake and told Nick to his face that I was too young to get married. It was another thing for my parents to fight over, since my mom always took Nick’s side when he would criticize me over some new thing. What you have to understand about my mom is that she is a tough crowd. My dad is a people pleaser, but people have to work to impress her. To this day, I think a lot of what I do is to win her approval. Her backing up whatever cutting thing Nick said to me gave it more weight and gave him license to do it more.
But trust me, I was no angel. I had upped my dosage of diet pills and was eating even less to be super-thin for the wedding. Speedy and hungry, I was easy to set off. Nick and I developed a reliable cycle: he would criticize me for something small, and I would blow it up to make it about something larger in our relationship or the pressure I was under in my career. He would feel attacked and raise his voice, then I would say, “Screw you,” and pout like a child. Nick would then resolve the issue by being the grown-up in the room. Rinse, repeat. I know now that I have an addictive personality, so I am especially prone to falling into patterns. Thank you, therapy.
But gosh I loved him. I could not wait to marry him. I’d always dreamed of getting married in a little white chapel in Texas, and I found it in the hill country on the west side of Austin. It was gorgeously simple, with white limestone walls and dark oak beams inside. When I walked in and I felt His grace, I knew this was where my wedding was supposed to happen.
We kept it small, inviting three hundred people to an afternoon ceremony on October 26. The week before, it rained like Noah was gonna show up, and each day I checked the forecast to see if we would get a reprieve so I could still have my reception outside. It didn’t look like it was going to happen.
My father was a raincloud all on his own. At the rehearsal dinner the night before, my father acted as if the next day was his execution. It was so out of character for him, because my dad was all about appearances and acting like everything was, in his favorite phrase, “hunky dory.” Through the dinner and all the toasts, he moped and kept shaking his head, right in front of Nick’s family. My mother confronted him about being so horrible, so then they got into it in front of everyone. Welcome to the Simpson Family Traveling Show, Lachey folk.
I didn’t want to see Nick the morning of the wedding, so I gave him his present that night. I’d torn a November 1997 page from my journal and had it framed for him with a picture of us. At seventeen, I wrote a letter “To My Future Husband,” telling him that I was waiting for him. “I wish upon the heavens and all the stars for a light to guide me to where you are.” Nick got choked up—he was sentimental, and I loved that about him. He didn’t share my faith, but he understood that I really did dream of him.
“That’s when our first album came out,” he said.
“I’d probably seen a picture of you,” I said, “and didn’t even know you were my husband.”
His gift to me was a music box of white and gold. When I opened the box, it played Shania Twain’s “You’re Still the One.” I played it alone back in my room at the Barton Creek Resort & Club, where we would have the reception the next day. I sang the song, again trying on my Nanny’s ring, my “something old” for the wedding. I stared in the bathroom mirror, certain I would look different the next night. I thought I was finally going to grow up to become someone’s wife, and I needed to say goodbye to the child looking back at me. I went to bed and prayed, thanking Sarah for helping guide me to Nick. I also prayed for another miracle: that it would stop raining.