Our wedding was one of several coming events observed today at a morning tea at my workplace, along with the comings and goings — including one other wedding — of my colleagues. We were sweetly presented with outsize bunches of flowers and there were kind words and extensive catering.
My colleagues remarked on my equilibrium, two weeks out from the day. In part this has been achieved by careful planning, but there is another element to this, and it is something like realistic (or maybe vague) expectations. We’ve both tried to reserve our energy in planning, to put in place the basics and to hope with this that there will be enough for people to have a happy and lively good time. We can’t effect on ourselves or our guests a magical transformation into anything that we’re not.
A big part of this is travelling alongside, rather than within, the commercial discourse of weddings. Complete detachment is impossible, and likely pointless, but there’s so much that can be bought and sold that isn’t any good for us. Consider the myth of the tiny bride, for example, which threatens not only the large but also the nearly-tiny; or the bridezilla (whose alleged behaviour comes up regularly in wedding conversations), who might otherwise be described as a woman with limited time and unresolved conflict with her mother and sisters.
I have limited personal knowledge of other brides, of course, and therefore a restricted range of experience by which to judge my own. It seems, however, that a wedding is a fragile thing on which to set one’s self esteem and by which to define oneself, pageant-style, for people by whom one is already known. We’ll see.
