There goes the bride . . . .

Since this year there have seemed to be a whole slew of funerals of people I care about, I thought I would blog about the recent spate of weddings and wedding related celebrations I have attended, as an upside to all the other.  

Our niece was married on Saturday and we attended her temple wedding, her wedding dinner and the reception.  It was a nice day to be with friends and family and to celebrate this new marriage.  We hope for them many happy years ahead.

Besides celebrating the marriage, weddings serve a secondary function and that is to make a married person recall his or her own wedding and how it felt to start out on the road of matrimony, oh so many years ago.  

I cannot attend a wedding in the east sealing room of the temple, where my own wedding was held, and not recall that as soon as my fiancé said "yes" to marrying me, I had to fight the almost overwhelming urge to vault the alter that was between us, despite my big-skirted wedding dress and veil, and just give him a big hug. I did restrain myself but I still remember the effort it took to just stay put.  

I always think of how, as nice as advice from the sealer may be, likely no one will remember what he says.  I certainly do not remember anything our sealer said but that may also be because somewhere along the line I just quit listening to him, assuming at some point in the dialog that it was all for my husband's benefit!  Ha!

At the wedding dinner, the father of our niece said, "Marriage is equal parts love and commitment."  I thought that was quite profound, actually, because, what love does not get you through, commitment can, although I am not sure if it is always in equal parts in every instance. And sometimes one-sided love and commitment is not enough to make up for a lack of the same in the other party to a marriage.  However, when there is love AND commitment on both sides, those traits really can keep you from leaving that matrimonial road.

At weddings and wedding receptions, I always ponder on all a bride and groom "do not know that they do not know" about what is ahead for them on their matrimonial road.  All of us go into marriage with certain uncontrollably erroneous ideas of what we expect marriage to be, what we expect our spouse to be, and what we expect our future to be. I think it is safe to say that no matter what we DO think as we start out, we are wrong.  Period.  This same idea holds true for other life-altering undertakings such as parenthood or missions (to name a few).

This last weekend, we also celebrated the 60th wedding anniversary of my in-laws.  For my in-laws' 50th, I  put together a dinner at Pine Valley recreation area for them.  On Father's Day this year, my father-in-law asked me to put something similar together for their 60th.  So I did, and I had a lot of help from family members.  We met at the Pine Valley recreation area again and had a dutch oven dinner along with visiting and photographs.  My in-laws, and all their children and grandchildren and their spouses were able to come, except two nephews-in-law--a great turn out.

This picture was taken a few years into their marriage and I used it on the invitation to the party.  I think it is a great photograph, capturing their youth, the happiness of the outing, and the look of that decade.

I told my in-laws that reaching the sixty-year mark is not something that very many people can claim.  For example, by the time my husband and I reach that milestone, B will be 99 and I will be 91.  Possible, I guess, but not probable.  

This 60th anniversary party was juxtaposed with my niece's wedding the following day.  Additionally, B and I are approaching our twenty-year mark.  All of us at different places along that marital road and each couple probably has different perceptions about that marital road.

As an aside, I have been in my husband's family for nearly twenty years, and for all those years I have thought my mother-in-law's favorite color was red. In fact, I have always given her things that were red for birthdays, Mother's Days and Christmases, when color was a factor.  Then, just a couple of days before the 60th anniversary party, I asked  my mother-in-law what her favorite color was, fully expecting the answer to be red.  She said, "Any color is my favorite color as long as it is blue."  Well, of all the things I didn't know I didn't know . . . .

The week before this wedding-related double header, I attended the reception for a friend's daughter.  As that newlywed couple left the reception and got into their decorated car, up in the sky over their heads was a perfect rainbow.  I could not resist taking a picture, because it was so symbolic to me.

This is how most couples start out on their marital road, with a, beautifully large, optimistically promising rainbow overhead.  The new couples move off along that marital road looking for that promised pot of gold.  Not all will find it.  But I think some do.