My Bride and I on our Day!

I very useful wedding idea is to do the wedding your way.  Ensure that your wedding day is the way you both want it!  When I got married over 30 years ago, I found that the wedding day was mostly about the bride.  Even the activities that led up to the ceremony were bride-centric. I was totally opposed to such a paradigm.  It was my wedding too and I wanted to have a say so in what happened at the ceremony and things leading up to the ceremony.  With that mindset, my then fiancé and I crafted our own wedding ceremony and did it our way.

The wedding day is a day that you will remember for the rest of your life.  Therefore, it is expedient in my opinion that it be a day that is an expression of you and your fiancé.  The wedding ceremony should not be crafted solely from the vision of someone else.  After all, the wedding ceremony isn’t some event like a concert that uses a promoter.  It is the day of the bride and groom or the groom and bride and that day should reflect the vision of the pair.

Let me give you some examples of what we did for our wedding ceremony way back in 1988 when dinosaurs roamed the earth.  I study the Bible a lot and was intrigued by the way that the Jewish people were married (at least what I read).  For one thing, the bride and groom arrived in pomp and circumstance.  One thing that I hated about the traditional wedding was that the bride would march down the aisle in all her glory while the groom snuck in from the back and stood with the groomsman (sounds like a movie).  I was getting married too so, I wanted the ceremony to reflect my tastes and ideas.

I have had a keen sense of the concept of togetherness since high school and realized that many things about the wedding day were in fact separating us.  There were certain things that the bride does in wedding planning, which was most things, and there were certain things that the groom did, which was little.  The bride controlled the invitations, decorations, colors, etc.  The groom was expected to go along with things, get a tuxedo, gather his groomsman, and show up on the wedding day.  Also, traditionally the bride’s family paid for the wedding.  No.  I wanted to contribute to the wedding because it was my wedding too.

There was a tradition that the bride and groom were not to see or talk to each other on the wedding day. Hogwash!  To me, that violated the concept of togetherness.  We were together for about six years prior so, why should we separate now just to satisfy a tradition.  I remember my fiancé, Carla, calling the house for something.  I answered, and she didn’t want to talk to me or something like that.  If I remember correctly, she called back to talk to me breaking that tradition.  She doesn’t know it, but I would have called the whole thing off at that moment if she separated herself from me like that on the very day we were to be declared as one.  Just kidding!  I would have been adversely affected and I think I was until she called.  To me, that was a serious matter.  Togetherness should not be altered because of someone else’s tradition.

We constructed that wedding ceremony the way we wanted.  We also had a very good wedding planner.  It wasn’t the bride’s ceremony, but rather our ceremony.  For that, I am very grateful.  I, therefore, would highly recommend to anyone on the road to a wedding ceremony, that you make that ceremony the way both of you want it.  It is not the bride’s day as some think.  It is not the groom’s day as some may wish.  It is the day of the bride and groom as they are declared before witnesses and God to be one flesh. A union of husband and wife.  Let no person pull them apart!

I think back to that day and I just have to smile.  My bride looked beautiful and I was very happy, though nervous.  It was a really good and tiring day and well worth it.  It was our day and an expression of us not others.  It was our wedding ceremony and yours should be what you want as well.  It is your day.  Make it so!

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