The recent 5 year birthday of our marriage, and a summer full of weddings mean that I've had marriage and all sorts of wedding related fripperies on the brain. I thought I’d put some of my thoughts down here because this blog is a sort of journal, and just in case this may be useful for any mister and missus's to be. If you hate weddings and puke during talk of love and marriage then this post probably isn’t for you.
(Try this post where I talk about making a twat out of myself.)
The 5 year birthday of our marriage feels momentous to us. Significant some how. Our marriage is 5 years old! It's starting school with a gappy milk teeth smile, a fully fledged mini adult...
The world of blogging was just a twinkle in my eye when we were planning our wedding, something I am both sad about and strangely glad about too. It is deeply pleasurable to browse through wedding blogs brimming with beautiful hazy photo's, cuter than cute projects and impossibly polished, jaw on the floor weddings. But there’s a danger, I think, that some of these blogs turn weddings into something a bit ....odd, an aesthetic focused design fest rather than the real, life changing gritty reality of the commitment. I am a very grateful member of the blogging community, but secretly I’m glad that the world of blogs was absent when I got married. Is that sad? There seems to be a lot of pressure to create perfect ‘wedding blog’ weddings, and woe betide if you have a plain wedding! No, it has to be set in an extravagant venue (a mountain, the middle of a desert) complete with extravagant home made centre pieces (whole small trees and butterfly's), quirky details (fake mustaches, library paraphernalia) and very expensive photographers. But that simply wasn't my experience, nor is it the experience of countless other brides, wives, husbands and couples out there, and I feel like I should pipe up about the reality of my experience.
There were a few wedding details I became fixated with before the wedding, details that were ultimately ill-fated. I have dreamt about having 2 or 3 lantern-lit yurts at my wedding reception since I first saw them at a festival when I was 14. But alas, it was too expensive to transport them up north so we had B& Q gazebo’s instead
*, which were fine. I also didn’t head over heels adore my dress. I loved it but felt pressured to feel like a goddess, and I just...didn’t. There were a couple of other bits too, but I realise with hindsight that some of my expectations were ridiculous and in the end, what mattered was what we had just done for each other, and the people that were around us when we did it.
Partly because of personal choice and partly out of financial necessity (read; poverty), almost everything was made with love by friends and family. My home was a flurry of activity for the week leading up to the wedding, filled with family and friends rushing about trying to pull everything together. There was a celebration outing to wagamama's a few days before the wedding when nobody could be arsed cooking. The night before, everyone ate a meal at my aunties house. And then it was our wedding day, and it came together amazingly. Another auntie (I have a few!)arranged our very last minute flowers. My cousin sewed the table runners. My friend sang me down the aisle; a song chosen only 2 days before the wedding. My dad and some friends cooked the food. My father in law dad lead our service of blessing, and my cousins played in the worship band. Both my sister in law and sister made miles of fabric bunting and ribbons. Our guests ate the main course in my family’s living room and desert in our garden. A group of friends formed a band and entertained the guests for the evening, I could go on. This sort of sharing of our lives, of the first few hours of our marriage with the people we love around us has been a foundation of our marriage. It was one of the most important parts of the wedding and the thing I am most grateful for. That's the bit that was important. Not the fact that my wedding was Yurt-less or that I didn’t faint with pleasure every time I saw my dress. I am not saying that every wedding should be handmade by loved ones, nor am i saying that wedding involving moutain scenery, fake moustaches and extravagant centre pieces are naff, but my point is that its about the
people, people. The LOVE! (jeez, maybe someone should take me off my soapbox now...)
On our wedding day, just a few hours into our marriage I remember feeling ... fizzy. And glorious. And full of gratitude. I wondered when that fizzy wedding day feeling would stop, speculated when it would crash and burn (ever the optimist). BUT IT NEVER STOPPED. I still feel this fizzy feeling. I still feel that we share a secret marriage where we cant believe our luck, where we'll snap out of it any second...
But that's not to say it isn't hard. My mister and I work pretty great together. But all good relationships go through some real testing. Some real moments of 'wow, we couldn’t be further apart right now'. But people don't really talk about that. About the fact that a good relationship, a good marriage takes work. Really hard work! But I can vouch for the fact that the work pays off, thrice over, in fact. And it got easier. We’re better at talking about stuff at an earlier stage, and in a different way. We are better at compromising, at meeting half way. We have both become far more self aware too, and learnt an
enormously massively huge amount about ourselves and each other.
If there were any words of wisdom I could pass on to brides/grooms to be it would be this; The most important part of the day is about making this insane (and it is insane) lifelong commitment to each other, of declaring your love to each other amongst the support and love of your family and friends around you. And having a good party. The other stuff, the details are secondary. Not unimportant,especially if you are a creative person, but secondary. And marriage rocks. It is incredible. But it isn’t easy. However,If you are both willing to look at yourselves in the mirror sometimes and say 'I'm being a stubborn twat' (really, very important), and if your both willing to compromise and talk it out, really talk, about everything, then in my experience the best is yet to come.
(Finally climbs down off soap box...)
Wow that was long. That's been bubbling in me for ages now, can you tell?
How about you? Whats your take on it all?
*Yurts will, however make a theatrical appearance at our 10 year wedding anniversary party!
Posts
