Friday, June 17, 2005

Mistakes Help Make Weddings Memorable

The main reason for the sparser posting these past few days is that our daughter will be married tomorrow. I've taken the week off in order to prepare for the wedding and to spend time with the family of our soon-in-law. (I'll have to come up with a new anonymous designation for him after tomorrow.)

One of the things I tell couples whose weddings I perform is that, "With every hitch, there's at least one glitch." I say this in order to reassure them. "Please know that even if not everything goes according to plan," I say, "you'll be just as married and God will bless you just as much as would be the case in a perfectly-orchestrated ceremony." (Sometimes I remind them that Prince Charles and Princess Diana enjoyed a perfect wedding ceremony and then, a perfectly awful marriage. More recently, when I've told couples this, they've asked me, "Who?" "Never mind," I tell them. "The point is that wedding mistakes aren't fatal to marriages.")

To underscore this, I usually tell the story of when our son, known here as P-Diddy and now twenty-three, served as ringbearer for the wedding of one of my sisters. This meant, of course, that he stood before the altar with the bridal party and the three clergy as the service unfolded. He was four at the time and understandably, grew bored with the ceremony.

While I preached a short homily, he got down on one knee with the pillow to which two fake wedding rings were secured by two ribbons tied in a bow. (The real rings were in the Best Man's pocket, thankfully.) He proceeded to untie the bow, sending the pseudo-rings "heaven-knows-where" and then, clamping the ends of the untied ribbons between his teeth, swung the pillow back and forth like a pendulum. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth his head went with increasing speed, causing the pillow to jump from side-to-side like one of those carnival spaceships.

My wife, sitting in the second row, viewed this with rising mortification and I did my best to ignore it while I delivered my pearls of wisdom. The videographer recording the wedding panned away from bride, groom, the other clergy, and me to show P-Diddy's antics. Then, he focused on my wife, who furiously, silently tried to signal our son to come and sit next to her. But our son didn't understand her signaling and instead, called out with something louder than an inside voice, "What Mom? Whaddya want? Huh?"

Finally, my poor wife buried her face in her hand and simply waited for the end of the service.

After recording all of this, the videographer went back to showing what was, after all, supposed to be the main event, the wedding itself. The shot was taken from somewhere down the middle aisle, behind my sister and her husband-to-be. One would think that, by this time, they would be ready to strangle their little ring-bearer. But when you look at the video, you see their shoulders moving up and down in laughter, their previous nervousness displaced by P-Diddy's antics.

So, a second thing I tell couples is that often, the glitches themselves are the things that, in subsequent telling, we laugh and enjoy so much about weddings. Glitches allow us to be human, providing relief in the midst of our pompous pretense and stress. They stamp joy on our memories.

I don't know what glitches will happen tomorrow as our daughter is wed. But whatever they might be, I'm going to remind everyone to just do their best and when our humanity shows, enjoy the moment.

6 comments:

  1. Best wishes to you and your daughter today. I enjoyed this post and linked back to it.

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  2. Absolutely priceless story! Love it!

    Best of luck to your daughter today. May her life be filled with laughter and happiness. I hope she's marrying a man with her father's sense of humor!

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  3. Thank you to both of you. The wedding was wonderful and the reception was too.

    More than a few people expressed concern, fearing that I might not be able to make it through the wedding without breaking down. I have to tell you that I prayed about this a lot. After all, God needed to be the primary focus, followed by our daughter and her new husband.

    God was faithful and it was a meaningful ceremony and a fun celebration.

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  4. I was led to your blog by my sister-in-law's blog. http://bolenabode.typepad.com/aliblog/

    Please tell Sarah congratulations on her wedding. I'm sure it was a very special day. I can't believe she is married!! Tell the rest of the family "hello" as well.

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  5. Wow! It's so neat to read your comment, Susan.

    Yes, it's hard for me to believe that our little girl is married, too. But she's a wonderful young woman and she married a fantastic young man.

    I have to tell you, though, that it's sometimes difficult for me to imagine that you are all grown up and married, too. I don't know why it is, but this process of growing older always seems to take us by surprise!

    I'll let everybody know that you wrote. And I will check out your sister-in-law's blog.

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  6. Yeah, you've got a point. Mistakes really help us remember weddings and not only weddings but in all occasions.

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