WEDDING SEASON IS HERE!
It’s wedding season! I LOVE weddings. Everything about them – the romance, the silk and satin dresses, the layers of tulle flowers, the pretty food and favours – all make me light up inside when I remember my own special day in the Florida sunshine, 7 years ago.
Seven years since we sat in a replica of Franck’s Bridal Boutique from The Father Of the Bride film by Disney and planned our events, and seven years since we walked our separate and single paths along the red bricked aisle of Disney World’s Yacht Club Resort, towards the gazebo where we would say our vows and become man and wife, promising to love each other forever during a legally binding ceremony, in the House of Mouse.
Our wedding was so far removed from the wedding of my parents – and any marriage that our boys might enter into during their lives will probably be just as different again. Times change and the history of marriage is full of intrigue and customs that we now just find plain absurd.
Culture plays a huge part in the traditions and rituals involved in a wedding – even in the USA, the people we spoke to found it very interesting that I wasn’t going to see Gavin the night before the wedding, or before I met him at the aisle. “First Look” photoshoots are so popular in the states, where the bride and groom meet before the wedding to have photos taken alone.
My mum will openly admit that she had a ceremony for her mum, my granny. She isn’t religious and
although they managed to pack the enormous church [and then some, there were people stood outside], she would have been just as happy and contented with her day at the local register office.
For me, our wedding was the happiest day of my life to that point [pushing children into the world in agonising pain somehow trumped it] and I’m not ashamed that for me, our day was a day for me to feel beautiful. The ceremony felt like a platform to be a princess for the day. To be perfect for just one day. I had my day – those memories are so precious to me.
Last week my cousin announced her own wedding abroad – and amongst the excitement over the big day, it started me thinking; how will my boys’ wedding days will affect me emotionally? Will the bride or groom to be want me as their mother in law around and participating in the planning of the big day – or whether as mother of the groom I’m relegated to the peanut gallery, just watching from the outside.
One day, I’m probably going to be a mother-in-law – and for some reason that doesn’t fill me with joy. Maybe it’s the thought of my boys growing up and having their own lives, maybe it’s the thought that one day I will lose them – and I worry over any choices they will make for their futures – but maybe it’s just that I don’t want to grow old, and I’m feeling that my time in the sunshine is over, I don’t know. All I do know is that I’m so grateful they’re all still tiddlers, who love their momma, and that I found a man to marry who loves me with all of his heart, and who gave me MY special day to cherish in my heart.
