As I was
gearing up for the release of All’s Fair in Love and Weddings, I started
thinking a lot about weddings in general.
Weddings are joyous occasions.
They’re wonderful opportunities to celebrate with family and
friends. They are also frequently
opportunities for the universe to show us that no matter how much time and
energy you devote to getting things exactly right for the big day, perfection
in the world of blessed events is a rare and elusive thing.
With so
many details involved, it’s challenging to get them all to line up perfectly
and on time. My wedding wasn’t perfect.
Lovely and special and a day that I will always treasure—but not
perfect. For example, halfway down the
stairs for my big entrance, my dress got snagged on a nail, and my father had
to grapple with it to get me free (there’s a moment you want caught on video
forever). Our officiant kept calling the
ringbearer by the wrong name throughout the entire ceremony. And my gorgeous backless gown was great for
photo ops but, as it turns out, not so great for preventing sunburns during
outdoor receptions. Fortunately, that
vivid shade of pink that my back turned happened to coordinate beautifully with
my red bouquet.
And it’s
not just my wedding that I’m thinking
of; I’ve attended several others that kept the members of the wedding parties
hopping. I’ll never forget one outdoor
wedding that became much windier than anyone expected, and pretty soon the
groomsmen were forced to scurry around in search of large rocks with which to
brace the decorative arch and its yards of fabric so it would stay put above
the bride and groom instead of tumbling a
second time onto the dearly beloved who were gathered there. Whew!
We all had one eye on the happy couple and one wary eye on the arch
until the minister wound things up and we could retreat to a safe distance.
And years
before that, my sister and I were adorable little candlelighters at my cousin’s
wedding. (Young children in tons of
ruffles? Open flame? Sure, why not?) We marched together down the aisle in perfect
unison, lengthy brass candlestick holders held safely aloft, managed to light
all the candles around the altar—and there were a lot of them—and then turned to face each other without quite
estimating the distance between us correctly.
The clang of our candlesticks smacking together reverberated throughout
the otherwise silent room for what seemed like an awfully long time, and I’m
sure it was not something the bride and groom had originally planned on
incorporating into their ceremony. On
the bright side, though, we managed not to set the church on fire. I’m calling that a win.
The funny
thing about those kinds of “oops” moments, though, is that now when my husband
and I look back on our own wedding, for example, we have a great old time
laughing about the stuff that didn’t quite work out the way we planned. Sure, I stressed over all the planning
beforehand, but maybe I shouldn’t have, because it kind of seems like those
things that supposedly went wrong have sure given us a lot of merriment over
the years.
So, who
knows? Maybe perfection is
overrated. Sometimes it’s the
imperfections that make for some of the most memorable experiences that you’ll
end up treasuring.
