I've been to many, many weddings over the years.
A few were lavish affairs, and a few were done on the cheap—the cheapest being my own, no doubt. Most were somewhere in the middle in terms of cost and high spectacle, though hardly less memorable for it.
Some of those weddings went off without a single hitch, but not many. A few were logistical train wrecks where nothing went right. Again, most were middle-of-the-road, well planned and well executed but invariably spiced with a bit of unexpected drama.
The bottom line is this: of the hundreds of weddings I've been to, I can't remember a truly bad one. Whether one or both of the marrying couple happened to be my close friend or family member, or whether it was one of those friend-of-a-friend situations where I hardly knew a soul, all the weddings I've attended have been celebrations where I saw lots of people laughing and dancing and having a good time.
Don't get me wrong. I know my cheery experiences as a guest at hundreds of weddings are cold comfort to the bride who wakes up on the day of her summer solstice wedding to find it raining. I recognize that couples invest much time, energy and, often, money to pull off a ceremony and reception that appropriately reflects the depth of their love. And I have seen firsthand how a few unexpected glitches—bad weather, tone-deaf DJs, obnoxious guests, booze-addled toastmasters—can turn what should be a happy occasion into a stressful and ultimately disappointing affair.
I recall vividly a wedding I attended in Ohio a few years after I graduated college—the wedding of two of my classmates who'd been sweethearts all through school. It was a big wedding, no doubt an expensive one, to which they'd invited scores of their college friends, most of whom lived on the East Coast. The night before the wedding, instead of a rehearsal dinner for a select few, the bride and groom threw a big party at a particularly fancy private club for all their friends. For many of us, it was the first time we'd all been together since we'd graduated. We ate, we drank and we were very merry. Most of us, bride and groom included, were wise enough to pace ourselves and call it a night early enough to save something for the big day. As it turned out, a few of our buddies were not so wise.
I heard about it the next morning, the day of the wedding, when I met the groom and his best man for a ten-mile run—something the groom, an accomplished athlete, viewed as an essential way to begin his march to the altar. I'd expected to find him in an ebullient frame of mind—he was an upbeat guy by nature—and was quite astonished when he showed up steaming mad.
His best man, clearly in a gloomy mood, filled me in. Around two a.m., after all the other guests had gone back to the hotel, two of our college buddies had remained at the club, drunk as skunks and out of booze. The bar had closed and exactly why the management hadn't tossed these two knuckleheads out the door I can't say. But as they were searching the place for more alcohol, they stumbled upon a closet filled with expensive china. As one settled onto a sofa to pass out, the other removed stacks of dinner plates to a nearby balcony, whereupon he tossed tens of thousands of dollars of bone china, like Frisbees, out onto an empty parking lot below. Around dawn, the groom, a member of the club, was awakened from his prenuptial slumber by the club manager, who was wondering where he should send the bill for the damage.
Even after a hard run, the groom was still spitting mad. All day, through the ceremony and the reception, guests whispered to each other about the china incident. And yet, for all its ugliness, the act of a drunken vandal had an oddly unifying effect on the gathering, bringing people closer together in support of the bride and groom and their families. It seemed also to bring out the best in the bride and groom, who put the previous night's misfortune behind them and let it go, as if to bid farewell to the college days in which their love was born and step fully into their new life as married adults.
I've never been to a better wedding.
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I'm not saying bad things won't happen on your special day. Most likely something will go wrong. Nor do I offer the tale of the china Frisbees as an example of the worst that can happen. I've been to weddings at which, due to an untimely death or grave illness, a cherished friend or family member has been missing, turning a happy day bittersweet. The anger provoked by a jackass guest pales by comparison with the sadness of marrying in the absence of someone you love.
And that brings me to my point: the more you view your wedding not as a gift to yourself and your spouse-to-be but as a gift to the people you love, to your friends and family who will gather to join you in matrimony, the more likely you are to appreciate all that is joyous, memorable and fun about it. Simply put, rather than dwell in an inner landscape filled with the demons of expectation and anxiety, look outward to the people who have come to celebrate your union.
When my wife Betsy and I married eighteen years ago, we eloped. We'd only known each other for about eight weeks—two months during which we were inseparable—and our intentions were roundly second-guessed by friends and family. Intoxicated with our love for each other and giddy at the prospect of defying convention, we arranged for a justice of the peace to marry us at Walden Pond, not far from Thoreau's cabin. After a brief ceremony, we had a reception for two at a Brigham's in Concord, consisting of coffee, cheeseburgers and a hot fudge sundae. That night we consummated our marriage at an old inn, where we sat in bed drinking a bottle of champagne and watching Saturday Night Live.
Today we look back on our wedding with great fondness and still enjoy seeing the look of amusement that comes across people's faces when we tell them about it. But over the years we've also had occasional pangs of regret, not because we can imagine having had a better time for ourselves and not because we didn't feel relief—then and now—at having avoided the stress of throwing a big wedding. Rather, we think of our friends and family who, despite their many reservations eighteen years ago, would undoubtedly have enjoyed giving us a proper sendoff.
Someday, we tell each other, we'll atone for our earlier selfishness by renewing our vows in front of our family and every friend we have. We'll throw the wedding for them, not for us.
Of course, we'll make sure to lock the china cabinet.
