Chapter 31: Desert Wedding
This was the first I’d seen the bridesmaid’s dresses. Kaitlyn had described them to me briefly, but they were just perfect, a Mexican peasant cut in Moab desert colors: mostly sand brown but with red-rock and sage accents. The buttons were small and round, colored a matte pastel purple, like juniper berries.
“Oh, those are just lovely, Allison, Carmen!” I cooed.
I’m not too proud to coo, all right?
They curtsied at me, then giggled together.
Miguel and Vin were in standard Sunday suits. I assumed that’s literally what those suits were, though I knew Vin was toying with agnosticism at the moment. Miguel and Carmen were fairly serious Catholics, and they always went with Miguel’s parents to church on Sundays.
Shortly after the last of us got dressed, up the canyon hiked Officer Poulsen and a woman I didn’t know. They each had a day pack on, Poulsen’s with a small tent slung under its frame. “Hello, Mr. Bhat! Congratulations!” We shook hands. As I was shaking the woman’s hand, he said, “This is Sherry Richardson, my guest.”
It took me a second, but then the rupee dropped: I knew that name! “You’re Kaitlyn’s boss, right?”
Her mouth broke into a wide grin. “That’s me! Please call me Sherry.”
“Good to meet you, Sherry,” I said, shaking her hand. Then I turned to Poulsen and asked, “So do I finally get to know your first name, too?”
Poulsen looked thoughtful, then Sherry poked him in the ribs, saying, “C’mon, tell him! You’re about to marry him to our dear friend Kaitlyn! There’s not many things in the world more intimate than that.”
“Well, it’s Jasper,” he said bashfully. “And now you know why I don’t let many people know it.”
“I like it just fine, um… What is your proper title, anyway? For the purposes of this ceremony, I mean?”
“Minister,” he said, still bashful.
“It’s good to know you, Minister Jasper Poulsen,” and I shook his hand again. “Thank you for agreeing to do this for us. It means a lot to us.”
“I’ll be very happy to see you two married,” he said. Then he got a look on his face and said, “Oh, before I forget, is Kaitlyn taking your name, Mr. Bhat?”
“No, she’s keeping her family name,” I informed him.
“All right then,” he said.
Sherry asked, “So, where can we get dressed?”
I pointed her at a crook in the canyon and said, “You can have some privacy up there, if you like, though I assume the good Minister explained the nature of the wedding and after-party to you?”
“He did,” she agreed, “but I think I’ll still take you up on that offer of privacy. I think I’d like you two to be the first to get naked out here.”
We didn’t tell her it was Allison who’d been first, but we all looked at her, and she grinned at us. Sherry and Jasper looked at us curiously, but then when we didn’t explain, she said, “Well, we’ll be back shortly,” and off they went.
I called after them, “Go ahead and stake out a camping spot while you’re up there. Kaitlyn and I will be camping right here on the wedding spot.”
Next to arrive was a young man who was also a stranger to me, but Allison went running up to him, and he caught her in his arms and spun her around a few times. Then they started kissing rather passionately. Her boyfriend, clearly. I looked around at the others and they just shrugged at me. Apparently Allison had been keeping him a bit of a secret.
After they broke their lip-lock, Allison brought the young man over and said, “This is Joss Taylor, my boyfriend. We met at college. Don’t worry, y’all. You can trust his discretion.”
We all shook hands and exchanged names. It felt a little strange, standing there in my new tux and fancy dress shoes, standing on the sand, talking to a casually dressed kid, but today would be full of much stranger things than that.
About that time, Sherry and Jasper came around the bend in the canyon, so I sent Allison and Joss up to grab the next camping spot further up, where he could get changed.
Next to arrive were Jess and my parents.
I jogged over to meet them, a broad smile on my face, and I gathered them all up into a group hug. This was a big surprise to all of them, none of us being the hugging sort, but it felt like that kind of day.
“Welcome, welcome! Thank you for fetching my parents from the airport and bringing them down, Jess! And thank you for coming, mother, father. It means a lot to me that you’d come halfway around the world for this.” My parents still lived in Mumbai, India, in the house where I grew up. I’d sent them the plane tickets, but it was still quite a sacrifice in time and hassle for them to get here.
My mother was the first to speak. “You grew a beard, Devindra! This is new.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of that comment, so I asked, “Do you like it?”
“Mmmm,” she said, looking at me critically, then pronounced, “Yes, it suits you. It looks good with that tuxedo.”
“I like your new look, Davie,” put in Jess.
My parents began looking around at the odd scenery, such a great change from their humid home. My father said, “It’s rather a strange place to get married, isn’t it Devindra?”
“It’s a holy place to Kaitlyn and I. Did you and Jess speak about the, ah, special features of the wedding on your trip down?”
My father answered, nervously. “Yes, son, but I’m not sure how fully we’ll be participating.”
“It’s fine. It’s all optional. You can even leave after the wedding itself, if you’re not comfortable with it, though I do hope you stay and participate.” Turning to my friend, I asked, “And how about you? What’ve you decided?”
Jess said, “Oh, I’m definitely in. I’ve been wanting to see you naked again,” with a wry grin on her face.
“I’m a bit curious to see all of you, too, Jess.” My parents looked a bit scandalized, so I added, “We’re just friends. I think of her as a little sister, actually.” She smacked me on the arm at that, but it did at least have the virtue of replacing the looks on my parents’ faces, turning their shock into small smiles.
I turned to the others and called out, “Vin! Please come over here. There’s some people here I want you to meet.”
I introduced him first to my parents, but then said, “Vin, this is Jessica Jevgenijeva. She’s your +1 today. Jess, Vicente Gutierrez.” They shook hands shyly. They’re both even bigger introverts than me. “All right you two, go get to know each other, ’kay?” And off they went, keeping their distance and their heads down, but chatting just the same. After they’d gotten out of ear-shot, I explained to my parents, “I’m trying to get those two together.” My mother beamed at me, and my father just kind of quirked the corners of his mouth up, amused at me.
“How about you two grab some chairs over there under the awning? The rest of the wedding party will be arriving shortly.”
Just as I said that, I heard the growl of mi burro driving up the canyon in first gear, low and slow. Shortly after we heard it, we saw the final members of the wedding party round the corner in the canyon, so the rest of us scrambled for positions: me to the left side of the stage, Allison and Carmen off to the right side in their bridesmaid’s dresses, Miguel to the left, Vin in the back with the wedding rings, and Jasper up at the back edge of the stage. The rest were out in the audience chairs: my parents, Sherry, and Allison’s boyfriend Joss.
Jess was in the back with Vin, armed with a professional grade DSLR camera, the same one she’d had back at the WNBR, this time set on its quietest settings. She began to document the event.
To the left side of the stage was an ornate Mexican blanket, which Miguel sat down upon and removed a well-cared-for flamenco guitar from a case nearby, laying it horizontally across his lap, the neck parallel with the earth, the guitar supported on his right thigh up in the curve of the body. Miguel began to play a flamenco variation on Wagner’s Bridal Chorus.
My eyes were on mi burro, specifically the vision in white in the middle of the bench seat. I barely saw Kaitlyn’s mother walk up and sit down next to my parents and introduce herself to them. Instead, I watched my future father-in-law hand Kaitlyn down from the truck and then interlock arms with her.
As they began a stately walk towards us, my hands began to shake. The music was beautiful. The day was gorgeous. My Kaitlyn was glorious.
My parents and Kaitlyn’s mother rose when Kaitlyn and Ramón got to the back of the chairs, and the two walked slowly up the sand between the chairs, stepping in time with the bars of the march.
When Kaitlyn and her father got to the edge of the stage, Ramón handed her up to the stage with me and went to sit with his wife in the audience.
Kaitlyn was radiant. The rest of the scene just disappeared for me. I fell into her pale green eyes and stayed there, trapped; I was content.
To my left, I heard Officer Poulsen begin, “Friends and family, we are gathered here today to witness the marriage of Kaitlyn Amber Gutierrez to Devindra Sanjay Bhat.”
I mouthed “Amber?!” at Kaitlyn, and she grinned and mouthed “Sanjay?!” back at me. We hadn’t thought to exchange middle names before. I bit my lip to keep from laughing aloud in the joy of our shared amusement.
Poulsen went on in his unflappable way, “Does anyone here have any good cause that these two should not be wed?”
He waited a respectful span, despite the small and intimate gathering size, then went on when no one spoke up, “Kaitlyn, Devindra, you have agreed to perform the actual wedding nude before your friends and family as a symbol of your openness to and trust of them. Is this still your intention?”
We agreed that it was, so he said, “Place your things here on this table before me, and then we will continue.”
We began, accompanied by Miguel playing a soft Hispanic melody, nothing I’d heard before, but somehow fitting the moment.
We’d scripted this out in advance, so Kaitlyn stepped up to me and without any hesitation gently untied my bow tie and turned to set it on the table before Poulsen.
I in turn took her bouquet, setting it aside on a corner of the table. I’d made the bouquet myself. I used my magic in my back yard to convince a yucca plant to flower a second time that year, gathering its blossoms as the core of the bouquet. I then picked several small juniper fronds from nearby trees, interlaced them with the blossoms as accents, and lashed the whole assembly together with desert grasses, and tied some spare ribbon from the bridesmaids’ dresses around it as a secondary accent. It would never be featured in a bridal magazine pictorial, but it was entirely appropriate for a mage bride.
Kaitlyn unbuttoned my jacket, walked around behind me, took it from my shoulders, folded it neatly, and placed it atop my tie.
I lifted Kaitlyn’s veil and stared into her green eyes some more, then removed the veil entirely, folding it and placing it atop my jacket.
Kaitlyn came over and removed my cummerbund, folding it neatly atop the rest.
Kaitlyn spun her back to me, and I unbuttoned her dress to the waist. Kaitlyn slid her toned, tanned arms out of the sleeves, and let the bodice fall to her waist. The audience sighed at the sight, as did I. Kaitlyn was wearing a bra I’d never seen before, an ornate lacy but opaque full-coverage white brassiere that went perfectly with the dress. I realized that it must have been one of the things in that taped-up box she’d had in Salt Lake, the one she wouldn’t let me look inside. I’d been told about the secrecy of the dress, but I hadn’t connected that to the idea that her underwear would be a secret to me until this day as well. I wanted to see the rest now, badly.
Kaitlyn smiled at me, knowing exactly what I wanted, even without the Gaia bond, but she just unbuckled my belt and slowly removed it, coiling it up and sliding it under the clothes pile to keep it contained.
I unbuttoned the last few buttons on Kaitlyn’s dress, allowing it to slip down her legs. I controlled its fall, revealing her glorious white full-coverage panties, a perfect match to the dress and bra. Kaitlyn stepped delicately out of the dress, and I walked it over to a nearby juniper. A few days earlier, I’d come out here and used my power to grow a few of the branches into hooks, sized and spaced so they’d hold the glorious creation up in a display since Kaitlyn was no longer going to be serving that role. The tree was no dressmaker’s dummy, but it served our needs.
I stepped back onto the stage, and Kaitlyn unbuttoned my dress shirt, then removed the cufflinks, set them on the table, and slipped my shirt off, folding it neatly atop the pile.
I knelt into a seiza pose and removed Kaitlyn’s shoes, setting them up on the table edge, toes pointed out at the audience. Then I removed her garter and stockings, rolling the stockings into the shoes and shooting the garter off into the audience. Allison’s boyfriend caught it and looked at it bemusedly, then back up at Kaitlyn, clearly thinking about where it had just come from. We all looked at him and smiled, and he looked back at us nervously. Apparently he’d heard the superstition that went along with that catch. I hoped it’d come true, if that’s what Allison wanted!
I sat back in my pose and just drank in the sight. White full-coverage underwear, a more ornate sort than Kaitlyn had worn when I’d first fallen in love with her. I decided they were the ceremonial versions of those plain things, perfect choices. I put my hands up in front of my face, palms together, and kissed my forefingers in benediction to her.
I rose smoothly back to my feet, using nothing but my toes and a sway of my body, and Kaitlyn sunk down to my feet, exchanging positions exactly. The bicycling had done her good: she flowed into the position like a gymnast doing a well-practiced routine.
Kaitlyn removed my shoes and socks in turn, setting them beside her own shoes up on the edge of the table. Then she unfastened my pants and slid them down just as slowly as I’d done with her dress, revealing my new black silk boxers. Kaitlyn folded my pants neatly, handed them up to me, and I set them atop the clothing pile.
I handed Kaitlyn up from the ground, purely for the look of it, Kaitlyn needing no help from me. I spun her like a dancer so that her back faced me, her front to the audience, and then I unclasped her brassiere. Miguel’s playing got slightly louder; things were about to get real. I slowly slid the bra off and down her shoulders until it began to fall. The audience sighed again, except for Joss, whose eyes bugged at the sight of my wife-to-be’s breasts, his jaw dropped. Kaitlyn’s mother smacked him lightly on the back of the head, and his jaw snapped shut with a click. We all laughed as genteelly as we could manage, while Joss turned red.
Kaitlyn handed her bra to me, and I set it on the table in the final corner of the table not yet occupied.
Jess had been orbiting the stage taking photos this whole time, not getting in the way but getting all the angles anyway.
Kaitlyn then knelt before me again, her breasts lovely in their freed state below me, her fingers hooked into the waistband of my boxers. Then she slowly began to inch them down. I’d been using all of my meditation training to keep myself from getting an erection, so she was able to slip them down smoothly. That last little hook on my glans, though, almost cracked my concentration. I stepped shakily out of my boxers, and she handed them up to me, neatly folded. I got a few smiles of appreciation from the audience, but no vocal approval.
I put them away on the table and traded places smoothly with her, me now at her feet, my fingers now in her panties’ waistband. I looked a question up at her, and she nodded “Yes” at me. I carefully pulled the panties slowly downward, revealing first her hips, then her full auburn bush, then her outer labia, and finally began slowly inching them down her long, toned, tanned legs. The audience “Aaaah’d” even louder this time, and Miguel’s playing rose into a finishing flourish which I must have been able to interpret through some kind of musical language, having listened to a lot of Western music as a child, so that Miguel and I both finished together, he reaching a crescendo of completion, me lifting the panties from the ground as Kaitlyn stepped out of them, now completely bare like me.
Everyone broke into applause as I rose to hold Kaitlyn’s hand, both of us presented to our friends and family, as visually vulnerable and open to them as we’d ever likely get.
Then we turned our backs on the audience and Minister Poulsen resumed his part of the ceremony. “Kaitlyn and Davie, it is now your time to exchange wedding vows. Kaitlyn?”
My nude wife-to-be turned to me, still holding my hand, and said, “Devindra Sanjay Bhat, I promise to be as open, vulnerable, and honest with you as I am with you now. I promise to help you in life as I helped you undress here before our friends and family. Though we are vulnerable to each other, I will protect you from our foes. I promise to cherish and love you, in good times and bad, for as long as you will have me.”
Poulsen then prompted me, and I repeated the same vows back to Kaitlyn. I squeezed her hand at the end, and she returned the silent gesture.
At this point, Vin had arrived with the rings. I plucked Kaitlyn’s from the little silk pillow Vin carried them upon and slid it onto Kaitlyn’s finger next to the engagement ring. Kaitlyn slid mine onto my finger, and we grasped hands and faced Poulsen one last time.
“By the power vested in me by the State of Utah,” he intoned, “I pronounce you husband and wife! You may now kiss.” Everyone then stood and applauded while we embraced and kissed as long and deeply as we dared.
Allison had quietly walked around to the back of the table and handed the bouquet back to her sister as soon as we broke our embrace, and we walked arm in arm up the center aisle between the chairs, completely naked, to the accompaniment of Miguel playing the wedding march, this time with more gusto.
When we’d walked past the chairs, we looked back over our shoulders, waited for everyone to gather behind us and for Jess to get in position, and then Kaitlyn threw the bouquet back over her shoulder into the middle of the crowd. Allison’s hand shot up to grab it, uncontested.
It must be a sign!