I went to a friend’s wedding this weekend and was genuinely moved by how beautiful these things can be – when you don’t try too hard to make them beautiful.
The happy couple ditched every cliché, and even though a lot went… differently than planned, they took it in stride.
Not too long ago, I went to a very different wedding where the bride yelled at people for “ruining her perfect day“ when they took off their ties, and went into meltdown when the flowers were half a tone different from the image she had in her head since age four. The marriage imploded within six months.
By contrast, when the hairdresser flaked out on this bride the morning of the wedding, the groom simply braided her hair. When it turned out the day before that she was a bit too pregnant to fit in her dress, the groom adjusted the dress. When the music didn’t work, they just went “So I guess we go?“ and started walking down the aisle, with the groom humming “taa-dah-da-daah!“ to general laughter.
There were no staged photoshoots, babies in frilly dresses, galloping horses or black-and-white closeups of wedding rings.
It was also discovered that the most expensive adjective in the world isn’t “organic“, but “wedding“. Turns out a nice dress is 100 dollars here, but an identical wedding dress goes for a thousand. A cake costs fifty, but a wedding cake costs two hundred. Hairstyling is a hundred, but wedding hairstyling is…actually free in the given circumstances.
So they got a friend to make a kick-ass blueberry-white chocolate cake for 20 dollars (I kid you not), got a stunning dress for a price I typically associate with a decent bottle of wine (because it was not marketed as a wedding dress), and in the process managed to save a few salaries‘ worth of middle class income, while cutting no corners in effect.
Details, in short, were not fretted over, and the only important thing was that they wanted to get married and did so. This is a much recommendable attitude in such situations. If Auntie Chloe has a problem with Auntie Zoe and won’t sit next to her, that’s her problem and she can go sit in the grass. If cousin Daphne is going through a medically unwarranted gluten-free phase and won’t touch the cake, sucks to be her because that thing is delicious.
Two people who love each other very much decided to get married and did just that – trifles be damned. It was by far the best wedding I ever went to, and it would not be inaccurate to say that the experience has redeemed marriage in my eyes. If I ever get married, I want it to be as relaxed and nice as this.
The perfect wedding is the one which is permitted to be imperfect in the things that don’t matter, while having a solid foundation in the things that do – like love. As the groom put it during preparations:
“The attitude for the last half year has been “Do I want to marry her?” rather than “I sure hope the tablecloths are the correct colour, otherwise my day would be ruined and I’d have to divorce her””
“The main thing to maintain mental stability is to only concern yourself with the important stuff, and that at the last possible moment”
“Shed the little shit that saddles you with the most mental work and clutter”
“Sometimes, pursuing perfection is worth it, and sometimes, just fuck it. And the perfection must be built on a clear and crucial basis, not the frills and shit”
Words of wisdom, bro, words of wisdom.
Congratulations and best of luck in life.