On becoming a wife

Yesterday Michael and I traveled home from our honeymoon ("mini-moon") and were suddenly struck with just how much had happened in the last week - most notably, we got married! I have reflected before on all the new identities I am having to come to terms with - regarding my health, my financial lifestyle, my decision-making process, all these things that are changing (practically daily). This week was the biggest of all: I became a wife.

It was really a wonderful day, full of smiles and celebration. Michael and I had decided that for us, it was really more about the ceremony than the reception, though we were also very much looking forward to seeing and talking with people who had come, some from great distances, to be with us on Saturday. We agreed that for us, our wedding day was the perfect balance of ceremony to reception.

I started getting ready about 12:30. I had several friends from college who had come from Minnesota (and one from Texas), and since these days I really only get to see them at weddings, and we are running out of unmarried friends, I invited them to come hang out with the wedding party during the getting-ready time. A member of Peace Lutheran Church had transformed the downstairs area where we got ready (the youth room) into a comfortable space with lamps, flowers, mirrors - it was lovely! We had our friend (my mom's hair dresser) come to the church to do people's hair, which she did while people milled around chatting and eating. Despite having allowed what I thought was plenty of time, suddenly the photographer was there and eager to take some detail shots and some bride shots. Whoa! So my friend Sara did my make-up for me (I had asked her to make a vintage face for me, which she did beautifully!), and I slipped into my dress, and voila! Bride!

For those who care about such things: my something old was my engagement ring, which is an estate piece. My something new was my dress, and also the beautiful crystal earrings I ended up wearing, a gift from my sister-in-law's parents in China. Something blue was also my ring, because it has sapphires in in. Something borrowed was proving to be the most difficult part! Because my dress didn't lend itself well to a necklace, I was running out of options. At the 11th hour, I emailed my friends who were traveling and asked if they had anything. My friend Amy's grandfather was a jeweler, and she had a simple string of pearls, so that is what I ended up wearing. Here's me, putting on the earrings - the final touch:

As I went with the photographer for some bride shots, we almost ran into Michael!! He was working on setting up the sound equipment. I saw him and immediately ducked behind the wall. He saw enough of me to realize it was me and I was in a white dress and quickly averted his eyes. Phew! Close call. (Besides that, we didn't see each other at all before the moment I walked down the aisle.)

Soon enough, it was time for the ceremony. Everything went smoothly, just as we had practiced it. Joe Robinson (my NY Phil oboe friend from my Make-a-Wish experience) and his wife Mary Kay played a haunting antiphonal piece as a sort of "call to wedding worship" - two instruments, back and forth, having a conversation with each other, and finishing finally together. Perfect for a wedding! Then they played Gabriel's Oboe from the the movie The Mission. This was Joe's suggestion, and it was perfect, just perfect! The bridesmaids (plus my brother, who walked in with his wife - he was my "bridesman" - and Michael's one "groomsgirl") came in during the first time through the theme, and then the second time through, when we added a violin descant into the mix, my parents walked me in. I was on cloud nine, seeing my beloved standing up there looking about as handsome as I have ever seen him, in his classic blue blazer, khakis, white shirt, and yellow bow tie. And seeing all my dear friends and family, including my friend Tim as our pastor, standing up at the front, and all those other wonderful people in the congregation... it was almost too much to behold, especially when you add the glorious music!

The ceremony was perfect. We sang good hymns (Love Divine All Loves Excelling, and Now Thank We All Our God), we heard good readings, Tim preached a lovely sermon about God's love trumping all and our marriage being a part of the promise of God's kingdom. We had communion, and my dad and uncle were the assisting ministers.

A couple of noteworthy things about the ceremony. First, the vows. Here they are:

I take you, N, to be my husband/wife,

from this day onward,

to join with you and share all that is to come,

to honor and to respect,

to speak and to listen,

to become with you a family,

to inspire, and to be inspired,

to stay by your side for better or for worse,

in sickness and in health,

and to be loyal and true, my whole life long.

This is my solomn vow.

Everyone says on your wedding day, you are on a plain above and that keeps you from crying. Not so. At the rehearsal the day before, Michael had full on broken down in tears when I came down the aisle, and so of course I followed suit. This time we both held it together during the procession, but lost it during the vows. Michael did all right - but as I suspected, when we got to the "in sickness and in health" bit, and I could not even say the words. Tim said them, and I opened my mouth but all that came out was tears. I whispered, "What he said..." and Michael whispered, "That doesn't count! You have to say it!" It wasn't that I didn't want to say it, or that I was scared to say it. Or was it? That certainly isn't what I was thinking at the time, but in retrospect, maybe I was scared to say it. Here we were, finally celebrating our wedding instead or going to the doctor, or recovering from surgery, or anticipating the pros and cons of different treatments and their unwanted side effects, and I just wanted to be there, in that happy wedding place. When we wrote our vows, I was so insistent that "in sickness and health" be a part of them, because we knew the importance of that all too well. But now as we said them, two thoughts went through my head: 1) I'm done with sickness. I'm tired of being sick, and don't want to consider the inevitability of more sickness in our lives together, and 2) I'm so scared about someday when Michael and I are in swapped positions, when he is the sick one, and I have to stand helplessly by, unable to ease his physical or emotional pain. I don't want to go through what I have gone through again, but even more, I don't want to go through what he has gone through. Yes, of course I will if and when the time comes for that. Knowing a little bit about it already, however, I found this part of our vows extremely hard to get out. But I did say it. And I do mean it, every last word.

(To echo this, in Luke's toast later, he spoke to Michael, saying, "She needs someone to be strong for her. She is strong for everyone else, so she needs someone to be strong for her." Michael has certainly done this. And I will do it for him when the need arises! This is something we are very good at. Lots of practice.)

The other noteworthy part of the service was communion. Interestingly enough, I didn't want to have communion. Communion is a sacrament of the church, and I knew there would be several non-church people there, and I didn't want them to be excluded in any way from this celebration. Michael, on the other hand, really wanted communion. He understood our wedding to be a very holy event, and felt that having communion as a part of it would make it all that much more holy, not to mention bring us and those with whom we were celebrating in closer communion with God. For whatever reason, I was not hearing this... until about Wednesday of wedding week, when I finally thought, "This is stupid - we should be having communion!" So I put my retired pastor dad on the task of changing the bulletin and adding communion, which he of course skillfully did. And it was absolutely lovely. Of our friends who are not "churchy," or for whatever reason didn't feel comfortable taking communion, many came forward for blessings. And we sat there in the front row watching this communion of saints in action. I don't very often get to just watch communion happen anymore, and so all the more I found this experience to be very overwhelming. There was so much prayer and blessing in this ceremony, in so many different forms - spoken, sung, given and received - that it would be impossible not to feel God's loving presence in our lives and marriage. And so when Tim blessed us and everyone at the end, and Michael kissed me, my heart was bursting with joy. The organ wailed its exuberant recessional (Peeter Flors' Toccata, a Peace Lutheran favorite), we skipped out (figuratively and literally), and we had a chance to greet each person coming out of the sanctuary with hugs and smiles. Every person I saw, my heart burst a little more. What joy!

After the receiving line, we took some pictures, we joined the reception, and did our first dance.

We took some more pictures. Some folks did some toasts, which were lovely and heartfelt. We did father-daughter dance (to Billy Joel's Goodnight, My Angel, a longtime favorite of mine that dad happened to choose!), and mother-son dance. We had pies for dessert and chocolate chip cookies (Michael's favorite) and spicy cutouts (my favorite) in the shape of hearts and airplanes, so instead of cutting the cake, Michael and I gave our favorite cookies to each other.

Here's the head table. The yellow cards talk about the symbolism of sunflowers, and say that in lieu of wedding favors, we have given a donation in honor of our guests to The Breast Cancer Research Foundation, an organization that received an A+ rating from CharityWatch. They give 91% of donations directly to research - impressive!

My childhood friends grilled Michael in order to give him the stamp of approval, and then giddily came over to me and said, "He's so great for you! I talked to him for 5 minutes and I can already tell that you guys match." There was some dancing, but mostly people sat around and talked, which was great, too. We had open seating, so people sat with whomever they wanted and moved around as they wanted. We had no DJ, so we had a playlist going, but then people came up and chose songs they liked from our vast library. Several friends stayed after and helped clean up tables and whatnot. We helped for a while, but then stole away to our wedding night suite.

And this, among other reasons, is why I love this man: after a long day with many emotions, we crawled into bed and I said, "Now we sleep!" and Michael said, "Yes, but first, we pray." And we lay there facing each other, holding hands, and praying: for the future of our marriage, for each of the wonderful people in our lives, in thanksgiving for all the events, good and bad, that have brought us together and to this point, for our friends and family and dog, for our future family, for God's abiding presence through all that we have endured together and apart. And after a resounding, "Amen!" we finally slipped into sleep.

A perfect day. Thanks be to God.