Remember the last day of my vacation, how I posted Kris's overwhelmed with joy-ness, and you all clamored for a wedding graduate post? Well that girl is snappy, and you have it today. There are a million wonderful things about this post, the way the wedding is both traditional and non-traditional at once; the way Kris talks about really concreate things, like the things they spent their money on; the way she full on tackles that this was her second wedding and what that meant to her on a really personal level. And the wedding is beautiful, did I mention it was beautiful? But before we jump into the post, I'm going to leave you with something Kris said to me in an email, which I loved, "For our wedding we both wanted traditional things. I wanted a ceremony and he wanted dinner and dancing. He wanted a wedding party and a ring pillow. I wanted a bouquet, flowers on the tables, and wedding favors. I suspected that he wanted me to wear a white dress. I felt that we had a responsibility because he was the first in his family and his entire generation to be married." Because sometimes you forget this in the midst of all this wedding hip-ness, simple is great, traditional is great, feeling like you owe something to your family? Sometimes that makes you lucky. And with that, I give you Kris:
The first thing I want to say about our wedding is this: as beautiful as it was to me, as great as the satisfaction I feel about it, the radiant details are less important to me than the fact that we got married.
Perhaps this is partially due to the fact that this wasn’t the first time I got married. The first time was at City Hall in NYC to my very dear ex, who I loved and love. We had a favorite book: the characters got married at City Hall, and we did too. We had a couple of different parties afterwards in our many cities that were very us, very loving, very meaningful. So why then did I feel sad and nervous getting ready to go to City Hall? Why did I feel like crying the night before one of these parties? I think we all know the answer. Sometime even a great person isn’t the right person for you.
My feeling about divorce is that, even at its most amicable, it is heartbreaking. That vows were said, not just to each other, but to friends and to family. You may know in your heart that your ex will find someone else, but what about his kind grandfather and grandmother who welcomed you with open arms into the family? Faith was broken somewhere, even with the best intentions. That is why, like it says, I have come to believe that marriage should be something you do reverently and advisedly. It is an act with weight. A covenant. It is a great and powerful thing.
When I met my now husband, I did not think we would get married. Aside from my own fears and concerns, the 13 year age difference made a long term relationship seem unlikely. I kept bracing myself for the worst, the moment he would find someone else and move on. That moment never came. We got engaged, now we are married. We embraced the future together.
When I think of our wedding, I think about how beautiful everything was: the gardens, the pool, the tables, the room I changed in, the patio outside, the chairs, the trees. I think about the Lion King song his brother sang us, about his best man’s moving toast. I think about my sister and law singing “Che il sogno di Doretta” as we walked to be married. Or my friend Ann singing “The Nearness of You” as our first dance. I think about coming in to our bedroom that night, the bride’s room I changed in, and seeing a million candles and orchids and artichokes that my bridesmaids had repurposed from the tables and used to decorate the room for us. Let me tell you, any decorated bedroom you have seen in a movie has nothing on these ladies and their men, who helped. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. The thing I think about most often is holding the man I love’s hands under the pepper tree and looking at him. I think about how happy we were, how full we were of the astonishment and joy of getting married to each other. That is why we had a wedding.
Now the nitty gritty: I think the wedding planning process can be meaningful and transformative; I also think it can be mind-bogglingly stressful and hard. I thought a little about what I would have told myself at the beginning of it all (not so very long ago!) and here it is:
