"I am getting married. And I am having a wedding. And those two truths are different.
It’s easy to confuse one into the other, because they look a lot alike. One is normally assumed to be the cause, and one the effect, but not the way you’d think. I think a lot of bridal unhappiness stems from the in-articulation that the wedding is an effect of the marriage.
What I mean is, Getting Married is the end-game; having a wedding is just bonus.
The only thing that really matters about Friday is that I get to stand up with James and pinkie-promise to love and respect him as my best friend and confidant and partner in crime, every day, until happily ever after, the end. Making that promise has absolutely nothing to do with the wedding. Making that promise involves the two of us being ready and willing and resolute and committed to keeping that promise each morning when we wake up and each night when we go to bed. No centerpieces required.
Getting Married is our Because.
Having a Wedding is just the effect. It’s what we’re doing after Getting Married. It’s a lot more work for something that’s, by comparison, a touch superfluous. To love The Groom forever, to be a strong and faithful and supportive wife to him… All I need is to Get Married. Anything else really is just bonus. (Or… an excruciating exercise in pleasing our families. Jury is out.)
It’s the frosting. The Wedding is the frosting.
Realizing that the marriage and the celebration can be looked at as separate things… It brought order back into my world. Birds sang. The sun shone. My mother’s voice stopped sounding like nails on a chalkboard. The question that had been railing me was answered. I knew why I was jumping through hoops and tolerating stress and making all these compromises. Because my marriage to this man is going to be the most amazing thing I ever create.
(And coming from the girl who made hundreds of origami flowers, that’s something.)
That’s the beauty of Wedding Week. You have to sift through the rest of it, and play chicken against the clock… But when you get this close, you can see the beautiful divide between The Marriage and The Wedding. And your priorities sing through, clear as day. And then Your Groom will smile at you, and you’ll realize that it really is all worth it. All the agony and the isolation and the blisters and the broken nails and the nervous twitch you have when someone says “hot glue.”
None of it will endure in the same fashion as your love for one another.
That’s what you see, when you’re forty eight hours away from your wedding. You see your first glimpse of Forever"
