The wedding this weekend was lovely. The bride was radiant, the groom was grinning, and the bride’s parents were frazzled to just the right degree. JG’s high school friends, including dates to freshman homecoming and junior prom, were astounded that his wife coerced him into dancing after all these years. I made small talk with JG’s parents’ friends and did my best to take pictures despite less-than-ideal lighting. To my surprise, I realized that I really enjoy going to weddings.
JG and I are at the point in our lives when we should be inundated with weddings. We’re a few years out from college graduation and the time has come for our peers to start entering into wedded bliss, especially in the summers. Apparently, our friends didn’t get the memo, because this summer of two weddings has been the most wedding-crowded so far. It seems as though our close friends are just peachy being single while their friends are tying knots. As a result, we hear a lot of stories about weddings we didn’t witness and our own wedding circle is fairly limited. I’m sure that my affection for the events is tied to the slim number of weddings I’ve been obligated to attend and the fact that I’ve never been a bridesmaid.
That said, I take great pleasure in putting on what I’ve affectionately termed “the wedding uniform” — little black dress, pearl earrings, pink wrap — and being a wedding bystander. I love to ooh and ahh over the bride coming down the aisle, wonder what lies under the white wedding cake icing, and dance to numbers like “The Way You Look Tonight” or “Living on a Prayer”. I enjoy the fact that JG and I get all gussied up to celebrate our friends on a day that they look their best and happiest.
Most of all, I like weddings because they automatically make me think back to our own. When the organ struck up the strains of Canon in D, JG’s ears perked up and he whispered, “It’s our wedding song.” When Liz and Andy both said, “’til death do us part,” we squeezed each other’s hands. When I signed the guestbook photo mat, I couldn’t help but think of the framed photo in our house that boasts, in the bottom-left corner, good wishes from the bride and groom we were celebrating that night. When we lit 3-foot sparklers to wave off the couple in their horse and buggy, I thought fondly of the bubbles we customized with hand-tied knots. In a strange, echoing way, each wedding JG and I have attended together has been a memorial to that hot June day more than two years ago when I wore a J. Crew dress, he made all the women cry from his tears on the altar, and we made our getaway in a ’95 Subaru Legacy packed with presents and shedding streamers all the way home.
Weddings are an excuse for me — a painfully pragmatic, left-brained girl — to be a little sentimental and think back to my big day, but the short escape into romanticism isn’t what I really treasure. At our friends’ wedding over the weekend, we witnessed vows, clinked our glasses for kisses, and admired the couple’s rings, but in doing so, we restated our vows, kissed each other, and marveled at the rings on our fingers.
9 comments
I was one of the first of my friends to get married, and now they are all taking the plunge. I absolutely adore going to weddings. It really is like a vow renewal for Ted and I. I am always taken back to our wedding day and reminded of the promises we made to each other. Plus, I love the getting dressed up and seeing Ted in a suit!
We were the first in our circle to get married and I definitely agree with you. Especially the suit part!
We’ve been to just one wedding since ours (I think?) and I know just what you mean - they are extra lovely from the already-wedded side.
It’s just nice to be happy for the couple and, at the same time, have great memories of your own to cherish.
Awww. Looking at your wedding photos and reading your post makes me want to get married even more than I already do!
Being married is great! Planning a wedding - ugh. I was happy to have that over with.
I love weddings, and I haven’t been to ANY lately. *sigh* I’m with Brie. Wedding envy!
As much as I loved my wedding, it was fun plus stress. Our friends’ weddings are just fun!
Your photos are great. I can’t believe that gorgeous dress was from JCrew. I’m going to have to reconsider my breakup with them (instituted when they adopted “final sale” in place of “clearance”).
I love going to weddings, too. I always cry.
Seriously, look into J. Crew for your formal dress needs. I got the dress in the mail and never looked back. And - this is embarrassing, but whatever - after the wedding, I sent them a picture of my bridesmaids and me in our J. Crew get-up and they put it up on their call center Wedding Wall!
I love weddings, too. I know that they get over-hyped and, most importantly, overly expensive for everyone involved, but the IDEA is so good. Standing up in front of all of your family and friends and God and promising to be committed to the person you love a really important way that we support each other and hold each other accountable as a society.
(Can you tell that I’ve had the are-weddings-necessary debate recently?)
Also, I love the bride’s dress–it’s so cool and different from the cookie-cutter strapless that everyone is wearing these days.
Oh, that debate is a good one. I don’t know if a wedding — as it is now with its thousands-of-dollars pricetag, coercive advertising, and license to act like a jerk — is what I’d call necessary, but what you’ve described is certainly a good idea. And, wasn’t her dress great? I loved how really white and swooshy it was.
Both your wedding and JG’s friends’ wedding were absolutely beautiful! I love going to weddings, too. Like Erin, Tim and I were pretty much the first of our friends to get married. So going to our friends’ weddings is always a wonderful trip down memory lane.
See, I love how JG gets excited about getting dressed up and dancing at a wedding, but his reaction would be totally different if I suggested that we go out for dinner and dancing. Men!
*Sigh* So true - I love weddings for the same reasons - not only to celebrate the union and love of friends, but to also reflect on our wedding day and marriage. I get to go to one of my best friend’s weddings this weekend and I am just squealing inside, I am so excited.
It’s great when weddings are a “get to go” instead of a “have to go”, isn’t it?
Ahem…this is your sister…I too am waiting for the “summer of weddings” to hit you as it did with me in 2003 and 2004. Consecutive summers of 9 and 5 weddings, respectively, as well as 5 bridesmaid stints have worn thinner the exuberant excitement of attending those celebrations.
But I will say that the recent wedding in Boston was uber fun! Who knew Labor Day weekend was such a marital-filled time? I didn’t!
Why, hello, mein zeester! I’m glad to see that my wedding didn’t fall within either summer of weddings… But I think Labor Day is a popular weekend because of that extra day off, no?
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