It has been a big summer for weddings. I just returned home from attending my third wedding celebration. That’s an unprecedented number of weddings in one season for us. Thanks, no doubt, to the influence of Pinterest, each ceremony was unique in its own way.
Wedded bliss
In July, it was a backyard soirée to celebrate the marriage of our friends’ daughter. The ceremony had been a couple of weeks earlier, but they wanted to have a party where she had grown up so the people “who knew her back when…” and couldn’t attend the wedding could still be part of the festivities. It was a lovely, low-key outdoor affair with good food, good wine, and good company.
September long weekend we were overjoyed to witness the marriage of our nephew and his long-time girlfriend. Another outdoor wedding and while the weather was chilly, the event was without a doubt the most visually stunning and unique wedding I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending. A friend performed the ceremony which was at times funny and lighthearted, and equally meaningful and romantic. True to the artistic vision of the bride, the reception preceded a sunset ceremony with the bride riding her beloved horse through a hay field to where her parents took over and walked her to the groom. The ring bearer was their Great Dane, affectionately known as the horse-cow for reasons you can read about here.
Finally, the celebration I just returned from was another nephew’s wedding; yet another outdoor ceremony, but with a traditional dinner and dance in a local community hall. If I thought the previous wedding was chilly, this one was downright frigid. It was a mere 3°C (37°F) with the occasional snowflake falling gently to the ground. After a half hour sitting on a bench outside, I had lost all feeling in my toes. Temperature aside, it was a lovely ceremony which included a literal ‘tying of the knot’, something I hadn’t seen done before. We spent the evening laughing, singing, dancing, and celebrating. We do know how to have a good time together!
I have to tell you…I cry at weddings
I tear up at the beginning of the ceremony when the groom first sees his bride as she begins her walk down the aisle. I cry at that moment when the vows have been said, promises pledged, and the oath is sealed with a kiss. Something about that tiny instant of time stands still for me. My heart swells and overflows with hope and excitement for that newly married couple. In that moment, they stand on the threshold of their future as husband and wife. It is a perfect moment where their focus is solely on each other and nothing else intrudes until the spell is broken by the cheers of the witnesses.
And this time, I held back tears as the Marriage Commissioner led the couple through the fisherman’s knot ceremony. It’s a symbolic action, tying two pieces of rope which represent the joining of two separate lives by a knot that only grows stronger with pressure. In fact, some ceremonies use wording that tell the congregation the rope will break before the knot does.
My tearful reaction wasn’t solely because the knot ceremony was so beautiful, though it was lovely.
I was feeling a little overwhelmed because I was thinking about that rope breaking – how the rope could break, but the knot could still be tied.
For a moment I was thinking about endings and not beginnings.
It’s an occupational hazard
I would be the first one to tell you that my job as a Funeral Celebrant has changed the way I look at life. And death.
I often tell the families I serve that death ends a life, it doesn’t end a relationship. It certainly cannot end love. Love is how the rope can break, but the knot can still be tied. It is the one truth that has given me the most comfort in my own walk with grief – love remains, as strong as it ever was.
I watched these young couples begin their lives together as husband and wife. I saw them promise things that they have only the slightest inkling of what they’re really pledging themselves to; variations on traditional vows – in good times and bad, in sickness and health, until death parts us. Until the rope breaks.
I wish I could spare them. I wish they could always be as happy as they were in that singular, shining moment when they sealed their vows with a kiss. But life doesn’t work that way. It brings challenge and struggle, sometimes in disproportionate measure to the joy and happiness. It brings new beginnings – new jobs, new friends, perhaps new life. And eventually, inevitably, it brings endings as well. It will even bring death.
But if they were spared the heartaches, they would never have anything against which to measure the blessings.
So instead of a life without pain, I wish for them a love that grows deeper with each passing day. I hope that no matter what life brings to pass in their life together, that one day they will know the true and everlasting value of a knot that holds, even after the rope breaks.
