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What Planning a Wedding is
Really Like I was about 10 years old. Careful not to catch my curls, I zipped up my teal green satin bridesmaid’s dress as I had countless times since wearing it in my cousin’s wedding just months prior. It had poofy sleeves, a full skirt, a heart-shaped neckline, and matching fabric roses on the sides of the neckline. At the time, it was the single most glamorous stitch of fabric ever to grace my chunky, underdeveloped adolescent body. That wedding was my first exposure to the fantastical world of weddings and all of their tulle bows, beautiful couples, and yummy white cake. Ever since, I would lay on my pink bedspread in my heart-covered wallpapered room and daydream about the moment I would be a bride. I’d doodle on notebook paper with different imaginary grooms for each scenario. But regardless of all my planning, it was difficult to finalize the plans. Who would be in my wedding after all? And who would the groom be? (It’s awfully hard to plan a wedding without knowing how tall the groom’s sister is. An inch or two miscalculation in the assumption could throw the wedding party lineup completely off. Sigh...) Regardless of the technicalities, some principles would remain the same: I’d have 10 to 15 of my closest friends as my bridesmaids. They’d all wear pink. And I’d be glorious in a huge white gown that would fill the entire aisle. And as I marched delicately but confidently toward the altar, people would weep at the sight of such pure beauty. Envisioning it in my head, I put on that hideous bridesmaid’s dress and draped a Spanish lace tablecloth over my head and walked down the steps of the second floor of our house. Ahhh yes, some day my prince would come. And I could finally plan that dream wedding. Fast-forward 15 years. My prince has come. And he’s dreamier than anyone I ever conjured up in my mind. The wedding plans? That’s a different story. In the past few years I’ve abandoned the idea of a huge fairytale wedding. I’ve come to realize the wedding is about the combining of two families and communities together before God and forming a covenant to selflessly give ourselves to each other for the rest of our lives. Somehow fluffy white tulle and sugary sweets don’t calculate into that mix. I purposefully avoided wedding magazines during the time Jeff and I dated because I knew I wanted to marry him. Reading those would only foster dissatisfaction during a crucial stage of getting to know each another. And I knew flipping through advertising-saturated propaganda would make me dream of Vera Wang gowns, pink diamonds, and $1,000 fondant wedding cakes. When Jeff popped the question, I felt like that 10 year-old girl with a Spanish lace tablecloth over her head again. My time had officially come. Over a celebratory dinner at my favorite restaurant, we settled on a date in the fall—which meant something very different for the wedding scheme than all the pastels of my youth. Out with the pinks, in with the weathered look of burnt oranges and antiqued golds. Yet it was fitting. “Wedding” now meant “marriage” to me (something I never thought about as a girl.) Marriage presented the biggest challenge and journey either of us had ever thought about actively entering. We’d seen other couples bitterly fail and we’d seen other couples succeed, but not without hefty amounts of pain and forgiveness. I knew a wedding was more about sacrificial commitment and spiritual humility than it was about euphoric love and superficial beauty. Dying’s associated with the fall season and it’s fitting since we’re dying to ourselves for the growth of a new union. So we’re incorporating the beauty of the fall season into our wedding with treated leaves, bare branches, organic cloth, and fruits. The wedding logistics—from the wedding showers to the reception—have not gone so simply either. I’m not the only one planning. This celebration incorporates both sides of our families and it’s been our first lesson as a couple in how to compromise. It’s also been a huge lesson on dependence. Jeff and I are both used to living on our own and doing everything for ourselves. Now we both have to depend on friends and families to carry out this celebration—and it often means not having everything our way. But that’s the beauty of the day. Just as each of our friends have shaped our lives, so will they shape this prenuptial season and ceremony. And I wouldn’t trade any of it for all the Spanish lace in the world.
ninetyandnine.com © 2003, Cara Baker --------- Cara Baker is the associate editor of ninetyandnine.com. She and her parents are thankful that the cost of her wedding is well under the national average. |
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