By Lee Hurley
Newlyweds Mimi Waggoner Wininger and Dee Wininger are in their car on the way to Point Clear for a wedding. The author asks which one of them is driving? “I am,” Dee says. “Why is that,” the author asks? “Because I value my life,” Dee laughs.
This story is about a Vestavia guy who falls in love with a Mountain Brook girl, and the two get married in New Orleans in November where everyone has an incredible time. On Sunday after the wedding, they catch a Saints game before flying out Monday to Antigua.
The couple has been married less than two months and happily they have the key ingredient required to keep a marriage interesting: a sense of humor. In the midst of Covid, Mimi, who graduated from Mountain Brook High School in 2015, met Dee, who graduated from Vestavia Hills High School in 2009. Mimi was hanging out at a friend’s house near Saws Juke Joint in Crestline Park, and the girls there knew some Vestavia guys who lived nearby. Dee and Mimi were introduced, and a spark was ignited.
Their first real date was dinner at the Grand Bohemian, which they must have enjoyed because Dee decided to propose to Mimi there in a tricky way. He told her he was taking her to a Green Sky bluegrass concert at Avondale Brewery but instead asked her to marry him and then took her back to her parents Mark and Susan Waggoner’s house for a surprise party.
Dee and Mimi went to the University of Alabama after high school—where Dee was a Phi Gam and Mimi was a KD—though their paths never crossed in Tuscaloosa. Now, Mimi teaches at Preschool Partners while Dee is nearly a year into an account manager positon with Honeywell selling industrial safety supplies. They live in Crestline Park not far from where they met. Asked who cooks, the answer is, they both do, on a Blackstone grill they got as a wedding gift. Dee does steaks, while Mimi’s specialty is lemon baked salmon. Mimi hesitates when asked who does the dishes, “mostly me, but we help each other out.”
The final question, “is there anything at all you would like to change about each other? “His snoring,” Mimi says, “the rest is perfect.” “She’s right,” Dee says, “we got to fix my snoring.”
Destination Wedding
Aside from a the recent tragedy in the French Quarter, New Orleans is at the top of the destination list for anyone who enjoys good food, good beverage, good music and good times. Luckily for Mimi, her mother Susan you grew up in New Orleans, and the family traveled down I20/59 many a Mardi Gras, Christmas and Thanksgiving to visit Susan’s parents Jack and Mimi Calhoun. In fact, Mimi’s parents were married in New Orleans in the Calhoun’s back yard in the Garden District. Rumor has it someone hid an alarm clock in the monkey grass where it chimed as vows were being exchanged. That was back in 1993 when weddings were a little more mischievous. So, when it came time to talk about wedding options for Mimi and Dee, NOLA was an obvious choice.
