Happy Anniversary to Us, and How I Stole Kermit and Piggy's Cake Topper

  Today's doll was going to be a Miss Piggy bride doll, but I can't locate her.The reason I chose Piggy for today was twofold: For one thing, Ken bought her for me at the recent auction we went to, as a gift for today, our anniversary.And that's the other reason I was going to use the bride Piggy today: She's a bride, and 25 years ago today, so was I!

How young we look! I was 27 and Ken was 26. He was the only man I ever went out with,which was just the way I wanted it. I didn't want to 'date', I just wanted to find that one person.

   Last year on our anniversary I told the story of how Ken and I became a couple. This year I have another story.
  I have always loved the Muppets. I grew up watching them on tv, long before there was even Sesame Street. I watched the tv show when I was in school, and saw all the movies when they came out. (Except somehow I missed seeing a couple at the theatre: Muppet Treasure Island, (No big loss.) and Muppets From Space, (Which I actually love.)) I got my mom to take me to see The Great Muppet Caper at the movies, where the scene where the Muppets climb a drainpipe to escape some watchdogs intent on shredding some felt prompted Mom to proclaim it, "The dumbest thing I ever paid money to see: a bunch of stuffed animals climbing up a drainpipe!" I thought it was hilarious. I saw The Muppets Take Manhattan in 1985. Years of Muppet movies were stored away in my brain.
  When I was planning my wedding in 1989 I looked through a lot of pictures of wedding cake toppers. The bakery promised they could recreate any cake topper I saw. I didn't find anything that was the 'perfect' cake topper. I liked various aspects of several toppers. Could we combine them, I asked, to come up with what I actually had in mind? Of course,they said. Just tell them what I wanted and they could do it, they said. So I described what I had in mind. The lady made the topper and I was very upset. It wasn't what I had in mind at all. I said I didn't want any tulle background. I want the arch to be heart shaped. I want driplets of pearls hanging down behind the bride and groom. So she wasn't happy, but she remade it. Finally I got what I wanted. Ken, being English, suggested what an English wedding cake topper should have. I think it was my friend Cheryl, who came over from England just before we got married, who brought us the  little silver horseshoes for our cake topper. So instead of wedding bells, we had horseshoes on our cake topper. I wanted them at the top of the arch, I said. So there they were, attached firmly above the heads of the bride and groom.
  Some time later,a year or so after my wedding, I am alone in our apartment and Ken is at work. I am simultaneously cleaning and watching The Muppets Take Manhattan on tv. I am running the vacuum I think, when I look at the tv. A big musical production number is happening on screen. The Muppets have finally gotten their play to Broadway, and the big finale is underway: Kermit and Miss Piggy's wedding. As I look up, the Swedish Chef turns around and sits the topper on their wedding cake...and my mouth drops open. At the commercial (because I'm taping!) I run the tape back...over and over again. I can't believe what I'm seeing. Seems those Muppet movies didn't just lay in my subconscious. They forced their way through into my wedding plans. What I was seeing was Kermit and Piggy's wedding cake topper, and it was IDENTICAL to the one I THOUGHT I had designed! (Other than theirs had Kermit and Piggy and ours had what was supposed to be me and Ken.)

The Swedish Chef puts the finishing touch on Kermit and Piggy's cake in The Muppets Take Manhattan.

 
And they had little silver wedding bells and I had little silver horseshoes.

Our wedding cake, with the topper I designed, (Ahem...). Note the little horseshoes. Kermit and Piggy had a more extravagant cake and topper than we did, but then, they have more money.

Kermit and Piggy's cake topper from The Muppets Take Manhattan. They have bells instead of horseshoes. It flashes past so quickly in the movie you hardly get to see it. It's almost impossible to find a picture of the thing,(and it doesn't show up well in my screen capture.) This one belongs to a lady named Ellen, otherwise known as eee1313. I have asked her permission to use it, and I hope she doesn't mind. She took this picture at the Center of Science and Industry in Chicago a few years ago, when they had an exhibit called The Fantastic World of Jim Henson. I believe the same exhibit was at our COSI too, but we didn't have a vehicle we could drive that far while it was there.

After I got finished being stunned I started to laugh. It still makes me laugh. It makes my youngest, Ivy, sigh and roll her eyes, (She's such a teenager!),"You copied Kermit and Miss Piggy's cake topper?!" Not intentionally!
  
   Now that I look at it, Piggy and I had similar dresses too...

Hers has more lace, mine's more satiny.I like her veil better! I wanted Ken to wear a mourning suit, like Kermit's!

Hey. A lot of wedding dresses looked like that in the 80's...