Spending the weekend in San Diego, our “Honeymoon City,” that Karen once had to convince me to take her to because I had been to Los Angeles and thought that I hated Southern California.

She was right and I was wrong, of course, a theme that has remained as constant as Jesus Christ in our now forty two years of wedded bliss. It turns out that it’s Los Angeles that I hate. San Diego I LOVE, almost as much as I love my still beautiful bride.

Being here reminded me of our wedding reception and the funny and hotly romantic thing that had happened there.

Being the “Good Girl” she always was who had waited for our wedding night through the erotic excruciation of our absurdly too long engagement, Karen wasn’t too sure that she wanted to include the silly ritual of me removing her garter belt to fling to the young men at our reception.

I had been a “Bad Boy” who Jesus had saved and cleaned up enough to be worthy to husband a bride as chaste and beautiful as Karen, and I convinced Karen to keep the silly garter ritual because I had a secret surprise ending planned for it that I didn’t tell anyone, not even her.

After our meaningful wedding ceremony that included us exchanging our handwritten vows and sharing communion with one another, the elements of which we had prepared during the ceremony without the assistance of any priest to symbolize the birth of a new household under the Lordship of Jesus Christ; after the long receiving line of the hundreds of family and friends; after we had sweetly shared an intertwined sip of champagne and nibble of wedding cake, Karen shyly sat on a chair in the center of the banquet room while I knelt before her on one knee and gave her my other knee on which to place her ballerina-slippered foot to lift her leg so that I could discreetly reach under her gown as I slid my hands up her thigh to reach and remove my brides’s garter belt.

As I did so, I sang to Karen one of the songs of her favorite musical artists of the time, Neil Diamond. When I began singing, Karen gasped, then laughed, and then looked straight into my smiling face with an increased fire in her eyes . . .

“Girl . . . YOU’ll be a woman soon!”

When I stood up after our personalized ritual was complete, I placed Karen’s prized garter in my tuxedo’s pocket and have kept it to this very day.