Wedding insanity

[sabrinamari]

I’m on my way home and I’ve never been so happy to have a few quiet hours in my whole life. OK, that’s probably an exaggeration, but the last five days have been painfully full of things to do---things over which I’ve had little or no control. Privacy has been scarce, except late at night, when I’ve been completely exhausted. Time to think, reflect and rebalance has been nearly non-existent.

I’ve never been a big fan of weddings, and I think this may be because often, they seem to me to be the opposite of love. During Michael’s toast, he talked about what love meant to him. For him, love means respite and a sense of safety from the world. I don’t think that’s true for everyone, and I still have to think more about what love means for me, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t mean intense stress, an onslaught of revolving demands and the loss of peace and agency. And the vast majority of weddings I’ve been involved with have offered just these kinds of high-stress experiences. I have to ask myself, “How is this the embodiment of love?” It leaves me completely mystified. If I love someone, or even a whole group of people with whom I want to share my joy, why would I want to stress them out this way?

****

In my case, I think I lost my emotional footing the day after I got here, when I realized that I was trapped at the intersection of several whole sets of enmeshed, anguished relationships characterized by a severe lack of communication. Many years of exposure to Buddhist thought kept me from losing my mind, but damn, it was uncomfortable. It stayed uncomfortable on and off during the whole trip, but thank the gods I was able to turn things around enough in Albuquerque at least to allow for more than a few moments of laughter and peace.

But I don’t think it was just the multiple tensions that made this hard. I think it was the complete absence of reflection time. Without a certain amount of calm and quiet, I just can’t function. And it seemed like every frickin’ second of my time in New Mexico was taken up by the need to do something with or for someone else for the benefit of the greater good. Some of these things were fun, but even fun can lose its luster if it’s not punctuated by calm, quiet and peace.

The next time I do this I have to set some serious boundaries.

Comments

How is this the embodiment of love?

[meadmaker.livejournal.com]

I may be a freak, but I don't think that a wedding is an embodiment of love. A wedding is a party, in celebration of love. Depending on the temperament of the people involved, it might be a bigger or smaller party, but at the end of it, it's still a party. (Many people have this as the occasion where they get to have a party in the style of high society - you can trace that back along the lines of white wedding dresses being inspired by Queen Victoria's wedding dress.)

The embodiment of love - that's the long years that follow the wedding.

Re: How is this the embodiment of love?

[meadmaker.livejournal.com]

Hmm, as I think about it:

A wedding is a theme party, where the theme is the couple's love. (Or triad's, or quad's, or whatever.)

[sligoe.livejournal.com]

Weddings are like funerals---beginnings and endings. They are over-planned, over-financed, overwroght celebrations with over-the-top expectations of "the perfect day". Families misbehave, old resentments burst forth like fireworks, guests "let it all hang out"---all because we think that this is how it's supposed to be. We laugh at the wedding videos of nearly-drunk people stumbling over themselves, of the children refusing to behave like adults and walk down that aisle in perfect harmony with one another, of the ancient saunt, uncle, or grandparent who pushes their teeth from their mouth when someone sticks a camera in their faces. A wedding is stress, and it's no fun for anyone who is intimately involved in its planning and execution---and those people go home at the end of the party with a great sense of final relief---much as people do at the end of a funeral for someone who has been ill for a very long time.

I confess to loving weddings---the "wedding" part. The vows spoken. The people tenderly looking at each other with the best of intentions, one for the other. The bright promises in their eyes. The love that seems to be swimming all around. I also confess to preferring the simplest ceremony, because I truly believe that simplicity is elegance. I haven't witnessed many of the truly simple ceremonies, but they always take my breath away.

If people would just remember that everyone is human, to allow for differences, to understand that there will be stress, there will be rampant emotional displays, and to allow for the foibles of humanity, weddings would be a lot more enjoyable. As it is, we're cramming everything we can think of into a small space---and many times, chaos is the result. Sad, but true.

[akrissy.livejournal.com]

When I provide services as a JP, the moment that fed my heart was standing with a groom for that moment s/he would first gaze as his/r new bride as they approached us. An audible gasp of LOVE that would settle the most nervous and bless that moment for them. Celebrations after were just noise and for everyone else.

[showingup.livejournal.com]

I'm with you that most weddings are more about meeting social expectations than celebrating the partnership.

I managed to keep ours as simple as we did because my mother was on the other side of the Atlantic, but I still felt bulldozed and rather cheated of the day I wanted it to be - quiet, fun, simple, non-commercial, just family kicking back. I was too young and under-confident and acutely aware of the effort and money being put into it by the parents - it really was their day, not ours.

Gosh. I didn't know how much I resented that.

[mage-imbroglio.livejournal.com]

A quick correction to what i said in my toast. I didn't say love is a respite and a place of safety from the world, marriage is (or should be). Love is the opposite. Love is open and expansive and hard. In some ways, love and marriage stand as opposites. Much the way religion and spirituality stand as opposites. I'm now filled with a desire to do an entire post on this... just need the time to do it. Both Tom Robbins and Hughey P. Newton talk about religion and spirituality as opposites. I've never seen anyone speak of marriage and love the same way, so I think I shall.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Wow, lots to think about here. I'll love to see your posts on this, honey.

By the way, happy wedding anniversary! : )

[brock-tn.livejournal.com]

A wedding doesn't have to be that way. Done properly, a wedding is about celebrating the fact that two people who love each other have chosen to bind their lives together. In large part, our society seems to have lost sight of that point, and instead we wind up trying to exceed societal expectations, while engaging in innumerable exhausting social rituals that are, in the long run, largely meaningless.

If I were a Buddhist, I might say that they are lost in illusion.

[rio-luna.livejournal.com]

i tried--oh how i tried!--to keep my first wedding from being a Stressfest. and considering it was in a park, and was on as much of a shoestring as possible, it was still an experience of stress, of beig surrounded by people who didn't get along, feeling imposed upon and resentful of each other. i worked my ass of to make it as nice and inclusive and beautiful as possible, and my mom spent a bundle on food and drinks and we all worked so hard and...

everyone who went still talks about how "lame" it was. i heard later that my ex-in-laws would regale guests with stories of the "weird wedding" and laugh at us for hours (one relative said it was like attending the Leni Roast but I wasn't there to keep it from being "mean-spitited"). my folks talk about how low class and boring and not-loving it was. My former inlaws think it waas too weird and hippie and emotional. out friends stood around wishing they were anywhere else. the best man vomited during the vows. My sister "jesus christ, that was a white trash barbecue, but i know you did your best, given your limits..."

it still hurts.

healthy boundaries at a wedding? girl, is this your first day in America?

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

I'm sad for your experience, rio. That sucks a lot worse than mine. Actually, i think this wedding was good for Kim and Eric, and that's what I care about most.

Nah, not my first day. But I persist in thinking I can wriggle out of traps I don't like, and feel surprised when I'm caught.

[evcelt.livejournal.com]

I think brock_tn's words were wise and well-chosen.

For me, a wedding is also about witnessed promised- making vows to one another in the presence of their friends and the Powers. Witnessed vows have a wonderful and scary power to them, and it is a great act of daring (and in the case of weddings, Love!) to make them.

Whether you believe that the celebrant or the ceremony have any direct/causative roles in this, the fact remains that a wedding can and IMO should focus a lot of attention (numinous as well as societal) onto the bond between those getting married. It's an initiation... "The sacrament of marriage". Sacrament. Making sacred. Involving the holy in our lives.

I'm sorry that this one fell short for you- they all too often do. As brock_tn said, Western society seems to have lost track of the sacred element of marriage, and the focus on the those at the center of it.

what i meant to say was...

[rio-luna.livejournal.com]

weddings are very loaded occasions, with multiple stressors. i'm sorry your experience was so harsh and you couldn;t get space to regroup and ground.

Hapy Anniversary to you and Michael!

Re: what i meant to say was...

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Thanks, honey!

[eoma-p.livejournal.com]

My father, with his wry sense of humor, offered to pay me, generously, if I would elope. My husband commented afterward that the purpose of a wedding is to drag everyone, kicking and screaming, to the realization that these two people are getting married. I had a wedding because I didn't want to shock my parents by "living in sin." My wedding was great, but obviously, my expectations were much lower than yours are. Plus I had good drugs.

(Please delete the anonymous version of this comment. *(#JM%$ LJ Login...)

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Jeez, I would TOTALLY have taken my dad up on any offer to pay me for eloping. I've tried to elope twice and both times got caught and pulled back.