Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts
By Alyce Wilson
October 12, 2006 - Reflections on My Hippie Wedding
As you know if read Musings regularly, the wedding I'm planning now with The Gryphon is not my first. I was married 10 years ago to a guy I've nicknamed The Druid. This was a very different wedding, which I refer to as my hippie wedding.
My priorities in planning it were different than my priorities are now.
Instead of a traditional ceremony with an officiant, we got a Quaker license and had a Quaker-inspired ceremony, where all the guests were invited to stand up and say something.
Then we signed the marriage certificate with our witnesses. At the conclusion of the ceremony, we had people join hands for a circle dance.
Our clothes were reminiscent of the Renaissance, and we had some friends play original music to us for our procession. I spent a lot of time looking up facts about wedding traditions, which I put in our program for the ceremony.
The rest of the details — the location, menu, flowers, table decorations, cake — I let my parents handle. Those details just weren't very important to me at the time. I spent all my time planning the ceremony.
The Gryphon suggested a possible reason. "Maybe it's because you thought if you could make the ceremony perfect..."
I finished the thought. "I could fix the relationship." It's true; I'd had many indications that, ultimately, things between me and The Druid would not work out. But I don't think, at the time, I thought I could do better.
Subconsciously, I suppose I thought that one moment of united marital bliss would make up for the more serious problems: differences in the way we saw the world, in our goals, problems with communication and his increasing mental health issues.
In contrast, I find myself getting very excited about even the most minor details regarding my wedding to The Gryphon. We want our wedding to be a big celebration of a relationship that's already strong.
As I said to The Gryphon yesterday, I don't find myself worrying as much about what we're going to say to each other during the ceremony. In a sense, that's almost superfluous: we've already made the commitment in our hearts.
Closer to
the wedding, of course we'll sit down and work out exactly what we want
in the ceremony. But we don't need any magic words, any formula, to make
things right between us. They already are.
Moral:
The perfect wedding can't fix an imperfect relationship.
Copyright
2006 by Alyce Wilson
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