By the time I got home from the press junket, he had a grand scheme in full swing—not so much for the wedding, but for married life—including renovations at the house and at Paisley Park. He didn’t want me to see any of that before the wedding, especially the bedroom, so he’d had a big round bed put in the living room by the piano downstairs. On an impulse, I’d bought him a wedding band in Milan, and he immediately said, “I want it.”
“You can’t have it until the wedding,” I said. “It hasn’t been fitted.”
“I’ll get it fitted. I want people to know that in my heart and mind, we’re already married.”
I didn’t argue with that. A few days later, he was wearing the ring, and other than during the first part of the wedding ceremony, I didn’t see him without it. I guess he thought he was being super sly having Wardrobe call me. “Hi, Mayte, we’re getting ready for this photo shoot with a new designer and new additions to the look, and we lost some of your measurements. What’s your shoe size?”
“It’s 7?.”
“And your hat size?”
“I have a big head. Like—big big. Plus a lot of hair.”
“And your, um… ring size?”
I laughed partly because it was so see-through but also because I honestly had no idea. I’d never had a fancy ring before. One afternoon in October, he called my apartment and told me to come over. I parked in the garage, came in through the laundry room, and found a series of notes on heart-shaped paper.
The first one was just an arrow pointing down the hallway.
The second one said, Message 4 Mayte on Kitchen Table.
The third had an arrow pointing to a glass of port wine. Pour a little, take a sip and then look on “the bench.” I poured a little port and pretended to take a sip. I could hear him spying on me from the loft over the living room. By this time, we were both giggling.
The note on the bench said, Just relax. You’ll smile a thousand smiles. An arrow pointed me in the direction of the big round bed by the piano. The note on the bed was just a smile with an arrow pointing to some flowers and a blanket, and under the blanket was a box, and in the box was a ring, and it fit perfectly. Laughter. Tears.
He was right. I smiled a thousand smiles.
I’m smiling a few more right now just thinking about it.
We toured Japan for two weeks in January 1996, and early one morning, I woke up in the hotel room and heard him playing piano on the other side of the door. I dragged the sheet off the bed and went to sit beside him. He was so content, so sure that he was exactly where he was supposed to be, and the music he played was full of that feeling. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was working on Kamasutra, the music that would be played at our wedding. It flowed so easily from his heart to his hands to my ear. I rested my head on his shoulder, and he kissed my head, both of us wise enough to cherish that moment.
On the airplane as we flew home, he ripped pages from Vanity Fair and Vogue.
“Look at this dress for your sister.”
“Oh. Okay. Um—”
He decided he wanted us to get married on Valentine’s Day in Paris. We couldn’t make that happen on such short notice, but he was fixed on that date and wanted me to find a wedding planner who could figure out a way to make it happen in Minneapolis.
We decided to get married in a small ceremony at a church in Minneapolis, followed by a private dinner for family and close friends at Paisley Park, and then move to the soundstage for a huge party that would include over a thousand friends, coworkers, and devoted fans.
When I got home, I interviewed wedding planners and hired the one who stressed me out the least. When she asked me about my vision for the wedding, I said, “Well, I always wanted a long train. And for my dad to wear his uniform.”
“Good…” She looked at me expectantly. “And…”
“And… wow. That’s all I got. Never thought about it.”
Apparently, my fiancé had thought about it a lot. He chimed in with specifics for everything from flowers to flower girls—there would be seven. We had a casting call. Yep, you’re reading that correctly: we had a casting call for our flower girls. And yeah, I get the rock-and-roll fantasy over-the-topness of that, but I was moved by how much he cared about every detail of this wedding. It was a work of art, not a show for an audience—there were very few people there; he wanted us to have this beautifully orchestrated memory in our own heads. The rich visuals were important to him, because the memory of it all was a gift he wanted to give me, along with music he was working on. He kept the songs closely guarded so I would hear them in the perfect setting. The reveal. The audience he was playing to was me—the me of that moment and the grandmother me. The old woman who would look back and tell her granddaughters on their wedding days how she was greatly, artistically, lavishly loved by their grandpa.
He’d come home from the studio, all excited, like a kid, singing, “Wait till you heeeear.”
“What? I’m going over there.”
“Noooooo, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”