Weddings On My Brain…
…or in my heart
Forrest and I attended a wedding last Friday. It was the second day of a two-day wedding.
The first day was on Juneteenth and held in our Presbyterian Church, the second day was a bilingual wedding with some elements of the groom’s traditions.
The bride’s family emigrated from Ghana years ago when “AM” was a young girl. There was no way to include all of her “church family” for all of the two-day affair, but we were encouraged to attend and be a part of her second-day wedding.
Forrest and I have watched this young girl grow into this beautiful young woman, inside and out.
The groom started attending our church whenever “AM” and “J” were in town. They have been part of our IT team for the past 10-months; and they both are both very much a part of our inclusive church family.
The interesting part of attending a wedding is listening to the recitation of the vows. For someone who has been married for 42 years, it’s been a long time since we said ours.
There have been many unexpected twists and turns in our married life.
There have been so many happy times, there have been sad times, times of poor health, worry about money, fear of abandonment, and the death of a child. Hearing the vows and remembering our wedding felt like a bit of a reset.
Forty-two years ago, Forrest and I got married on a shoe-string budget. We were well out of our family of origin’s households when we married and did not feel our parents should foot the bill for a big wedding.
But…
We had a lot of folk-dance and contradance friends that all wanted to know when we were marrying—they wanted to attend. Plus, I had been attending the church my family of origin belonged to for 16 years. One of the choir members I sang with for years said to me, “I’ll organize a potluck if you have the reception here at the church.”
And with those magical words, Forrest and I knew how we could afford to have a large wedding reception and not break the bank at the same time we were buying a house.
Since we did not need any household goods; we needed nothing in traditional wedding presents, so, we put a plan together.
I designed my wedding dress with a tiered skirt. That way, I could have a long dress for the wedding and a cocktail length dress for the reception. The last tier was basted on, with a few snips, it could easily be removed.
My mom and grandmother sewed the dress. My soon-to-be mother-in-law made bobbin lace—so she made the “crown” I wore. She expected me to add a veil, but I decided not to.
His parents paid for the rehearsal dinner; my parents paid for my dress. The rest of the wedding costs Forrest and I covered.
We made up flyers we passed around at our various folk- and contradance venues. We posted flyers around the church and several announcements were made the Sundays prior to our wedding that all were welcome to attend.
We were married on January 1st… I was determined to have a Christmas wedding and since this was still Christmastide, we decorated the church with poinsettias.
A minister, JR, who was a close family friend and our church’s minister, CK, were the officiants. Our wedding singers were my sister Susan and her husband Glenn, along with Barb and Rand Reeves. Barb’s the daughter of JR.
Our wedding cake was a moist carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, no plain old white cake for me!
Our flyers had the details of time, place and expectations. No gifts were needed.
We did ask people to bring poems, songs, tunes they had written to share during dance breaks. We suggested they get creative with their outfits, wear their folk or contradance clothes and comfortable dance shoes, as there would be dancing during the reception.
Anyone here old enough to remember those huge reel-to-reel recording devices?
Forrest set up two, hour-long reels that had a mix of contradances and folk dances. The first one was filled with easier dances, and everyone was encouraged to participate. The second, for after the break, had more challenging dances.
We anticipated the dancers would stay longer than non-dancers and that is pretty much what happened. However, the first dance for the married couple, we chose a Zillertaler Landler,
, (remember Maria and Captain Von Trapp in the Sound of Music? That dance they did was a landler, but not quite the same moves in the same order as the one we did.)
We organized for at least 200 people…it was a good thing. But I digress…
I love weddings.
Weddings bring out the best (and sometimes worst) in people. As we sat in our church a few days ago all I could think about was the hope and wonder I felt on my wedding day. Would we last? (The jury is still out on that question.) Would we have children? What would our lives together look like?
I have loved singing at weddings.
At one wedding I sang during the wedding pre-processional music. Ducked down the back stairs from the choir loft, ran through the basement and came up the front stairs into the vestibule. I gathered my bouquet from the bride’s hands and stepped out after the two other bridesmaid’s and preceded the bride down the aisle (slightly out-of-breath, I might add).
I have sung at one friend’s first and her second wedding.
The second time around, I was very pregnant. Forrest and I would join our wedding singers (Sue, Glenn, Barb and Rand) to sing this time. This was for a dear friend that Sue, Barb and I first met so many years before at a Methodist Family Camp.
It is hard work being married. So often it is harder on the emotive partner than on the logic driven partner. It is harder on the one that juggles housework, children, emotions, and has the lower paying job than the one that earns the higher income.
Anyone can google benefits of marriage for men vs. women, of who gets the most out of being married, or who is happiest in marriage and come up with results that would indicate men are more satisfied than women in married life.
However, this look at marriage really is not nuanced enough for changes in social dynamics and power balances vs power imbalances.
Back to our young friend, recently married…
Like our wedding which was unique in so many ways, the wedding of AM and J was such a special occasion. Made up of traditions from both the bride (Ghanian) and groom (Ecuadorean-J, I hope I got that right and forgive me if I didn’t) backgrounds.
They found a way to make sure even their extended “church family” was not left out of the proceedings. A good time was had by all participants.
But what is a wedding? Symbolism, ritual, a trade of goods for services?
A wedding does not a marriage make.
It takes hard work from both people that met at the altar on their wedding day. If one gains much and the other loses themselves, it is not a marriage of equals—eventually both will lose.
Hope is such a large part of any celebration, and we have so much hope for this young couple starting out. If honoring traditions, deep listening and learning, being open to new ideas, traditions, love and hope have anything to do with longevity, they stand a chance of facing and walking through their trials and tribulations together.
The Sunday following the pair of weddings, the newly married couple was in church.
Before the Prayers of the People portion of the service, our pastor asked if there were any joys or concerns. A birthday or two were mentioned, horrific flooding and loss of life was stated, and one of our beloved older couples said they had just celebrated their 66th wedding anniversary.
The newly married couple and any family members attending the service were called to the front of our worship space. There were prayers said, for them and their marriage.
The male half of the couple celebrating their 66th anniversary, a retired minister, was also asked to bless this new young married couple.
It was a moving tribute and, again, part of the Ghanian, wedding traditions.
I will add:
May their feet be set on a fulfilling path,
no matter what tribulations may befall them.
May they find a positive balance of good times
with the challenging times.
May they find pleasure and fulfillment
in the days ahead.
May they find bravery when facing
the hard times.
May joy catch them unaware and lend
sparkle to their days.
May they know great love.
A human, not an AI text generator, wrote this essay.
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Loved reading this- cultural + weddings = YESZZZZ- this just made me smile from the inside out.
Thank you for taking the time to share. I can feel the love and care in how you’re walking through this next chapter with writing.
…. And now I completely understand why Christmas holds such meaning for your daughter — she clearly gets that richness, that joy, that magic from you. 💫
Great read! My daughter has just got engaged and so we’ve started talking about her wedding. She wants it to be a bit different (and not overblown as so many now end up being) Your post has given me food for thought…so thank you Nancy!