Thoughts on Three Weddings: A Week, Five Years, a Lifetime

One week ago, a beautiful, highly anticipated event occurred, one that had consumed a great deal of my time and energy for nearly four months. Our daughter got married, moved out of our house, and left us with an almost-empty nest. And we gained a wonderful son.

This was a very different event from 2018, when we celebrated the marriage of our oldest son after his time in the Marine Corps. He became a married man that summer, but he had been overseas for most of the previous four years anyway, so the change was felt much less in the Matt household. We did, however, gain a delightful daughter and eventually two granddaughters, as well.

I have a few thoughts after these two weddings, and I submit them here with the admission that  a) due to my not-so-typical upbringing, I do not know what I’m doing with milestone events, such as special birthdays, graduations, and funerals—I was pretty much winging the whole wedding thing from beginning to end; and b) I have friends who have gone before me (even multiple times) and have helped me along the way, thank goodness. What I have observed from my wedding experience is that:

• “Mother of the Bride” is an entirely different ballgame than “Mother of the Groom.” That wedding five years ago when my oldest son got married was a piece of cake for me. Now, partly this was due to my own ignorance of anything I could or should have offered to do or contribute, and partly this was due to the bride’s mother and the bride herself being incredibly competent, organized, and gracious about doing 100% of the work and decision making. But event planning is not my favorite thing, so let me just say that God knew exactly what he was doing when he gave me a 3-to-1 boy/girl ratio.

• People want to help. Let them. If the planning is in your court, delegate tasks to others, accept their help with whatever it is you don’t like doing or don’t have time/energy/money for (décor, crafts, addressing envelopes, shopping, cooking, organizing and storing items, cleaning up), thank them profusely, and tell yourself how good it feels to let go of control and not be responsible for everything.

• You can have a wonderful, meaningful, beautiful wedding and reception for much less money than Google says you can. I’m not going to throw out numbers because different areas of the country have very different economics, but it can be done for less than you might think. Churches are usually inexpensive to rent, you can prepare and serve food with people who want to help (see above), friends and relatives can lend their talents and items they may have on hand, and word-of-mouth is a great way to find affordable vendors you may actually need to hire, such as the baker or photographer. You can also scale down your (or the bride’s) expectations because after all, it is only one day and that day is actually about a marriage, not just a wedding.

• There’s a lot to be said for a short engagement. Embracing the attitude of “why wait?”, agreed upon by all parties, we planned and executed a late spring wedding in less than four months. My mantra to myself during this time was, “When this is all over, I’m going to have a great summer.” And I will. More importantly, so will our daughter and her husband.

• The things you will remember may surprise you. My favorite memory from my son’s wedding was our dance, especially rehearsing it with him in the weeks prior to the wedding. I deliberately chose an upbeat song that cried out for choreography (“Loves Me Like a Rock,” by Paul Simon). I consulted YouTube for a few examples of other mother-son dances to this song—this one helped a lot—and my son and I had a thoroughly enjoyable time coming up with steps we could remember under the stress of being watched by 100+ people. The truth is, I had one reason and one reason only for not doing the usual slow dance with my son: I cry at the drop of a hat, and I didn’t want to spend three minutes crying in public. The distraction of trying to remember dance steps (I’m not a natural at this), and the fun of laughing with my son as we worked it all out together in the weeks ahead was priceless.

• Don’t forget to look at the groom. When the bride walks down the aisle, we all rise and admire her beauty, her smile, her dress … but one woman, the mother of the groom, looks back at her son to witness the look on his face as he sees his bride coming toward him. Before my daughter’s recent wedding, I was talking to the mother of the groom and reminded her to do this. Here’s what I told her, based on my experience with my own son (and I saved these words because she told me to): “It’s a really bittersweet moment at the time, but I can tell you this … after several years of their marriage, and the ups and downs of whatever is in store for them, you will be SO grateful to remember that look on your son’s face. Because you know he really, really loves her and they can get through anything together. That look that makes you cry is the same look that gives you confidence that your son has just entered a new and wonderful and necessary stage of life that God has planned for him.” The groom has eyes for no one but his bride, and as our pastor pointed out in the wedding homily, at that unique moment, the expectant groom is a picture of Christ and his anticipation and love for the church, his bride. (If this concept is new to you but piques your interest, there are pastors and elders and even some faithful, everyday Christians who would love to talk with you about what it means that the church is called the bride of Christ, and how that works itself out in a Christian marriage.)

• One final thought regarding the picture at the top of this article—those cards are actually from my own wedding day almost thirty years ago. My husband and I gave each other cards the evening of the day we married. The small envelope addressed to Mrs. Matt contains hand-drawn “tickets” telling me that he had purchased season tickets for us to see six live plays during the first year of our marriage. His card to me contains a poem he wrote about our wedding day (surely it’s clear by this point why I married him?), and my card to him contains a letter telling him what things I was looking forward to over the next fifty or more years of married life together. Most of those have come true, and many more good and precious things besides.

I found these cards when I was putting away mementos from the two recent weddings in our original “wedding box” in the basement. And after nearly thirty years, my husband and I read them together last week, and remembered.

So if you’re getting married soon, my advice to you is to write the note, buy the card, make the tangible memory that will be incredibly meaningful to read or rediscover decades from now. If you’ve been married for a while, do you have a box of mementos buried in a basement or attic? Do you have your wedding cards from friends and relatives, a saved invitation and program, or handwritten notes? Or maybe you have photographs, a video, or a copy of a speech or toast. Pull those things out and remember, with your spouse, who you were then, where God has brought you since, what times you have cherished together and what you have endured or overcome, and especially, why you fell in love in the first place.