It didn’t. I threw open the curtains as soon as I woke up, and all I could see was rain and gray. Throughout the morning, I think about ten different people burst into the “It’s like raaaaaiiiinnn on your wedding day,” from Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic.” But honestly, I stopped caring. I wore my “Soon-to-be Mrs. Lachey” sweatsuit and just let my wedding planner, Mindy Weiss, lead me around to get ready, a director and her leading lady. I was in love with my dress, a strapless ivory lace gown custom made by Vera Wang herself. The gown was encrusted with what seemed like a ton of baby pearls and crystals. We kept having to take it in as I went for my goal weight of, uh, weightless. I had borrowed an eleven-carat diamond headband from Harry Winston and pretty much anything my mother could get from Neil Lane. Hair clips, earrings, a pearl pendant, a bracelet . . . more was more. Throw in a six-foot train and you had yourself a princess bride.
Mom and Dad went with me and Ashlee—my maid of honor—to the chapel in a 1937 Cadillac limousine we rented for the day. We all waited until the last possible second to get out in the rain, and they ferried me from the limo to the chapel under two umbrellas like I would melt. Inside, someone handed me my bouquet, a ball of five hundred tiny white stephanotis stems tied together that I later found out, when I got the bill, took twelve hours to build. Worth it.
My mother went in first, then Ashlee, and the doors closed, leaving just me and my dad in the vestibule, with an usher and photographer. I put my arm in his, fumbling with the bouquet. He cleared his throat, his usual signal he was about to say something important. I thought he was going to tell me he loved me or do something to make me feel less nervous.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.
I didn’t answer, and he continued. “I’m right here. We can—”
“Dad, please.”
“You don’t have to.”
I fixed a smile, knowing the doors would swing open at any second. “Dad, I’m walking down this aisle and getting married,” I said through gritted teeth. “You’re giving me away. You have to. I’ll always be your little girl, but you have to do this for me.”
The doors opened, and I saw Nick waiting for me. He gasped at the sight of me. I waited for my father to take the first step down the aisle, a white carpet lined with white rose petals. Instead, I took a step, dragging my father into movement. He briefly got it together but cried the whole way down the aisle. It was brutal. I took step after step down the rose-petal-strewn aisle, keeping my eyes on Nick.
He was standing on a slightly raised platform next to Brian Buchek, our officiant. Brian was a church friend from Richardson, all the way back to the fifth grade. He knew my dad well and seemed to sense what was happening. He started by keeping the tone light, talking about how I’d talked about this day since we were ten. “Is it everything you ever dreamed of?” he asked.
“Yes, it is,” I said, truly meaning it.
I remembered when Brian found Christ when he was sixteen, and now here he was helping me marry Nick. I looked behind me on the bride’s side and saw the faces of friends from all my worlds. My cousins, church family like Carol Vanderslice, and my music family like Teresa and CaCee. My dad sniffed and looked down. He had to stand next to me while Nick stood facing us.
Nick and his 98 Degrees groomsmen—his brother, Drew, was his best man—sang their song “My Everything” to me, and Nick could barely get through it. What I would always love about Nick is that he was sentimental, and as much as he tried so hard to appear tough, he couldn’t help but show that he felt things deeply. I had both men in my life crying. I widened my eyes under my veil, determined not to cry and muss my makeup.
Then came the moment when Nick had to take my dad’s place. It was almost too literal for my dad, who couldn’t look at Nick but, as he turned to sit, let everyone see his face of doom. Nick lifted my veil for our vows. I know a lot of couples choose to write their own vows, but Nick and I used the traditional words, for the very reason that for hundreds of years many people had pledged their love using the very same promises.
When Brian pronounced us man and wife, I felt such a shock of happiness go through me that I almost laughed out loud. Nick kissed me, and we left to a gospel choir singing “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee.” In for a penny, in for a pound, so why not have a twenty-piece choir show up? “Melt the clouds of sin and sadness; drive the dark of doubt away.”
I had no doubts. I swear. At the reception, Nick spun me to our song, Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love,” with my friend from the USO tour, Neal McCoy, singing to us. I was twenty-two, and I had pledged my life and destiny to this man. And I don’t regret it. Nick was meant to be my husband. No one else was supposed to have my virginity. I know that because I had talked so openly, with Nick by my side, about waiting to have sex until my wedding night, that people were curious. I get it. I’m the girl who spent three years doing interviews where everyone asked me about having sex, and I literally named the date it would happen. So, once that day came, all those interviewers found a way to ask me what I thought.
I didn’t know what to tell them, but back then I felt obligated to give them an answer. I’d built up the anticipation in my mind that the first time I had sex with my husband had to be this transcendent experience where the heavens parted. What I didn’t know then is that everyone’s first time is awkward, and that is part of it. And that it’s okay, but at the time, it’s tough to understand. I had joined a long line of virgins in my family who said yes to forever for that one experience.
11
Into the Fishbowl
Spring 2003
“So, we thought it would be fun if Nick took you camping,” the woman in my living room said. This was a production assistant whose name I can’t remember. There were so many people in and out of our house that, in the beginning, we lost track of who was who.
“Nick wants to go camping?” I asked. My husband was not someone who randomly planned adventures. If we weren’t working, we were on the couch. Or trying to figure out how exactly we were going to pay the mortgage on our million-dollar house in Calabasas.
“It would be funny,” she said. “Fun.”
“Where?” I asked. “Like, where do you even go camping in L.A.? Santa Barbara?”
“Yosemite.”
I had no idea where Yosemite was, and I swear I had it confused with Jellystone. “Like with Yogi Bear?” I asked. “Are there bears there?”
“Oh, that’s good,” she said. “You should be worried about that. We can use that.”
Welcome to the filming of season one of Newlyweds: Nick & Jessica and the first year of my marriage. Places, everyone.
When I packed for the trip, I stuffed as much as I could in my spring 2003 Louis Vuitton Murakami bag. Before I had children or my dogs, that bag was my child. It went everywhere with me.
“Is this okay?” I asked the crew.
They smiled. “You be you, Jessica,”
If I was me being me, I would have said no to going camping. But I guess they had enough footage of us sitting on the couch, so a-camping we will go. The plan was for us to drive up to Yosemite National Park with Nick’s brother, Drew, and his wife, Lea, who were good wingmen on the show. They were family, and I could completely be myself around them. Which is to say that Lea and I could sit in the back of the car and commiserate about cramps.