This weekend, we drove up to Maine to attend a friend’s wedding. Actually, Rev was performing the wedding, and we were there to offer him moral support as much as to witness the marriage. In the end, it was a tiny wedding in a rural country church, with the same number of guests as members of the wedding party.
Every bride wants her wedding to be perfect: beautiful and sunny weather, happy guests, no disasters. She wants to be the gorgeous princess, with all eyes on her in stunned admiration. She wants to have a leisurely breakfast, pampering herself and her attendants as they do their hair and makeup.
She doesn’t want to wake up to a broken sprinkler gushing in her hotel room, which causes a flood of biblical proportions and leaves her gown and all of the bridesmaids’ dresses in sodden heaps on the floor. She doesn’t want to be late for her own ceremony (designed to take place on 11/11/11 at 11:00) due to having to give statements to the police and the fire department.
We left our house at the crack of dawn, drove across two states, and arrived at the church early (for once) to the news that the wedding might be a tad delayed. This was conveyed by the groom, who was the quintessential unflappable Mainer. We got to work filling balloons with helium (Doodle and Scooby are happiest when they are being useful, like Thomas the Tank Engine), while Rev went over the ceremony with the groom. By the time the bride arrived, her laughter a hair shy of hysteria, all of the family and guests had settled into a collective shrug: hey, if this is the worst that will happen, you’re going to have a fine married life.
For his homily, Rev used a piece of advice my dad had given him years ago. In sum, most people think that marriage is a fifty/fifty proposition: each gives an equal fifty percent. But it’s not. Each person has to give 100 percent – because there will be days when one or the other can’t give that much, or maybe can’t give anything at all. And the other one covers the difference. Otherwise, on a bad day, you can’t even meet in the middle. He also reminded them that they don’t have to look behind them, because they will have each others’ backs.
Rev and I are seventeen and a half years into our marriage. On occasion, we still might have our schmoopy moments – when we’re not running around crazy busy and texting schedules to each other. He likes to pat my tush at inappropriate times in inappropriate places, and I think he is at his sexiest when he’s in his vestments. We have never had a shouting fight, and neither of us has ever placed a hand on the other in anger. (I like to say we argue like chess, not tennis.)
But he always has my back. If I say, Honey, I want to try to do X, his natural response is, That’s great; what can I do to help you? He wants me to succeed, and wants me to be happy, and he’ll do anything in his power to help me get there.
And I’m, as Scripture says, his helpmeet. I protect his unguarded flank. I keep watch for predators and dangers; I offer my good sense and solid opinions; and when I can, I take out the enemy.
When we got to the hotel that afternoon, I watched an episode of Say Yes To The Dress – with my mouth open. I only have five weeks to find my perfect dress! My fiance and my mother want to pick out my dress and I don’t agree with their taste! Waaaah! This is sooooo hard!
Seriously?
You can tell brides until you’re blue in the face that a wedding is just a day, but a marriage is a lifetime. That’s a truth they have to come to on their own. Regardless of the disasters that happen on The Day, all that matters is that there is a husband and a wife standing there at the end. I used to have a Post-It stuck to the credenza in my office in the days leading up to my wedding. It said: All you need for a marriage to be valid is a bride, a groom, an officiant, a witness, and a license. Everything else is fluff.
Fluff is good. Fluff is sweet and gooey and yummy. But fluff has no nutritional value.
I wish that our friends’ wedding had been perfect. I wish it had been everything that the bride had hoped for and dreamed of.
But more than that, I wish that the couple will be able to face every day with the same calmness and good humor as they did the small-scale catastrophes of their wedding day.
For the rest of their lives.
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