By Paul Esau (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: May 23, 2012
I achieved a remarkable milestone in my personal life last weekend, with the survival of my first inclusion in a wedding party. For the record my friend is now officially married, we are still on speaking terms, and I did not lock him on the roof, in an icebox, or the trunk of a vehicle the day prior the ceremony. I did offer to perform the dance of the seven veils for his father using decorations from the reception, as well as inform his bride that if he didn’t show it was my duty to step up to the altar and take one for the team, but these were minor hiccups in what was otherwise a successful occasion.
In my memory at least.
Weddings are funny things, especially for members of the party. On one hand there is the profound, awesome joy of seeing people you love embark on the journey of a lifetime, on the other there is the nagging horror that you might sneeze during the exchanging of vows, or somehow upstage the happy couple at a critical moment. It’s hard to be an ornament on a stage, hard not to rock, or slouch, or yawn, or do one of a million other little things. It’s also hard, at least in my experience, to convincingly sing the third and fourth verses of “Amazing Grace” when you don’t know any of the words, and harder still to not launch into an impromptu solo during a pause in the musical accompaniment.
It’s hard to stand in front of a silent congregation knowing your pants are too tight and your shirt’s too wide, and it’s possible you might have scuffed your shoes while roughhousing with the groom during some pre-ceremony jitters. It’s hard to spend your Friday night tying roughly four billion ribbons into cute little bows on the backs of chairs at the reception hall, only to realize that the sister-in-law has tied twice as many in half the time in a different location on the chair. It’s hard when people cry, not because they are angry, but because they want things to be perfect so badly that it physically hurts, because they don’t want anybody to be disappointed.
It’s funny the memories you have afterwards, both physical and spiritual. The kiss at the altar which almost (but not quite) moves you to tears. The look in the bride’s eye the moment before the door opens and she sees the groom standing beside the minister. The tin-foil wrapped cardboard heart that you and your mother made to duct-tape to the back of the wedding vehicle, and the moment of silence when the best man swallows hard and hands the mic to you, to make the toast that he would have made if only he could still speak.
At the end, after the events and the ceremony and the photos and the reception and the escape, you almost feel as if you were the one who got hitched. Almost.
And at the end you worry, again, because you remember that your idea of a classy wedding gift was a four-foot-long dwarven battleaxe, which seemed hilarious at the time of purchase but in retrospect seems a poor expression of the gravity of the occasion. So you hope that your friend, and his beautiful new wife will understand the confused, convoluted yet powerful love behind that axe, and forgive you all your indiscretions.
Congratulations J & L. I wish you the very best. And to everybody else who is supporting a friend or family member this summer, I hope you have a similarly powerful experience.
