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ARCHIVES
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Weddings and Shakespeare Posting Date: Jul 8 2007 10:15PM Weddings, like horse racing, are a spectator sport. They are both about the show, about the crowds, about the drinking and eating and even the gambling.
In all of this, weddings are clearly different from marriage. Marriage, at least in my two weeks of it, seems to be about love and companionship and comfort and sharing and compromise and decorating choices. Historically, weddings – and you can look this up – have been very little about love. They were about linking families, transferring assets and celebrating religious faith. Not so much any more. Since the first time a bride and groom wrote their own vows, weddings have been spiraling into a fudge ripple of love. Now, weddings can be festivals of love clichés.
Which would be fine, honestly, except that William Shakespeare killed love poetry. It was a mercy killing that made it impossible for anyone less talented than William (and that’s all of us, especially country singers) to write anything about love that didn’t sound like, You are my soulmate, blah, blah, blah. I love you more and more every day, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. You are my best friend, yada, yada, yada.
The funny part is that weddings don’t need to be testimonials to love. Unless you happen to be at one of Michael Jackson’s weddings, you probably just assume the bride and groom are gaga for each other. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be sweating in the June heat, carrying a toaster oven in shiny wrapping. In fact, going to a wedding and getting excited because the bride and groom are in love is a little like going to McDonald’s and getting worked up because they have burgers.
For these reasons – perhaps oddly – my memories of my wedding don’t revolve around my love of my wife. I married her precisely because I don’t want a once-in-a-lifetime monument to our love, I want it every day. (See what I mean? You can’t write about love without sounding like a dufus. Friggin’ Shakespeare.)
Here’s what I will remember …
I will remember feeling uncomfortable as I rank-ordered my friends to bestow wedding invitations. I will remember the atoms that comprised the list – the little orbits of friend groups that cannot be subdivided. If one friend gets invited, they all get invited.
I will remember feeling guilty for accepting presents, generous presents, from my friends and relatives without giving any back. I will remember the mental gymnastics of fooling myself into believing that I somehow earned this bounty. Now I can use our new Henkel knives without guilt and listen to our new stereo with a clear conscience.
I will remember how not-so-secretly pleased I was that my bride and I looked quite smashing on our wedding day, she in her gown, I in my tuxedo. Normally, having a good hair day or knowing that my shirt brings out the colour of my eyes is a fleeting sensation that vanishes once I lose sight of a mirror. But on your wedding day, when you know people actually care about your sartorial choices and coiffure, it’s positively narcotic to believe you brought your A-game.
Most importantly, I will remember that the process of getting married helped me remember how important my friends and family are to me. I remembered – or realized – that these people, who are far too easy to take for granted, are vitally important to my life.
I will remember always how happy they were that I was marrying someone who makes me happy. I will remember how eager they were to drop everything, to travel, to rearrange their lives, to dip into their wallets, to offer help. I will remember how my wife’s friends and family became so unreservedly mine and my people became hers. I will remember them wanting to know the details, rehash the stories, look at the photographs. I will remember every touching thing they said and did, and I would tell you exactly how important those memories and feelings are to me, but that friggin’ Shakespeare went and ruined everything.
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