Your wedding is not yours

I subscribed very early on to the notion that I can only rely on myself. Disappointment, hurt, and annoyance often came with asking for help, so I was determined to become independent years before I could really stand on my own. Until then, I practiced. Instead of asking for explanations, I’d watch other people carefully and teach myself through mimicry and reverse engineering. I’d turn to the internet for questions I knew those around me would not answer. I’d cut out newspaper clippings about adolescence, womanhood, and money advice. I’d schedule doctor appointments on my own and earn what little I could through freelance work as soon as I was able to. I’d comfort myself through books and solitude. I got by mostly fine this way, and on the instances I did need help, I would be racked with guilt and shame for having to ask for or receive it. Afterwards, I would secretly vow to never put myself in that position again.

So when Michael and I decided to get married three years ago, it didn’t even occur to me to ask for help. We planned everything ourselves, and with Michael working full-time, I ended up doing most of the phone calls and legwork. I found a venue for $800, a vegan caterer out of Austin, a patisserie for our two-tier honey lavender cake, a table vendor, a San Antonio-based photographer, and a Justice of the Peace available to officiate the wedding on a Saturday afternoon in Spicewood, when our first one backed out four days before the wedding. Everything else, from cutlery to wine, we shopped ourselves at H-E-B.

On the day of our wedding, Michael and I drove to Austin for a 9:30am hair & make-up appointment at the home of a stylist I booked last minute. Initially, I decided to do my hair and make-up myself to cut costs, but Michael, knowing my anxious, perfectionist tendencies, wisely insisted I hire a professional and save myself from the risk of a faux pas and emotional breakdown. He was absolutely right, and I happily walked out of the stylist’s house an hour and a half later with light, shimmery make-up and gentle waves held together by fragrant hairspray. By then, he had already picked up our wedding cake, decorated with palette-style pastel flowers, from the bakery twenty minutes away. Everything was going swimmingly.

From there, in my wedding glam, we stopped by Goodwill for decor. Why we didn’t do this earlier, I wish I could tell you, but by the mercy of fate the store we went to had an abundance of vases and baskets that suited our needs.

The venue wouldn’t be available until 3 in the afternoon, so the next part of our hectic schedule was to head home to grab a quick bite, refrigerate the cake, and get dressed — Michael in his tailored suit, and I in my cream dress and kimono top. The hour was drawing closer and closer. Bag by bag, we loaded up the car to make the hour-long drive to Spicewood where, in just a few hours, we would be married.

We were twenty minutes away from the venue when, with the cake on my lap and our trunk full of groceries, I realized I had forgotten the kimono top and belt. I was wearing the main cotton dress underneath a dressing robe, but I had left the other half of my outfit hanging on a doorknob. I could recall the sun pouring through the skylight of our house illuminating the golden fabric of the shawl and the soft, textured jacket. It was so lovely against the cobalt blue of the pantry door. My hands went cold with panic and my face hot with shame, and in a split second Michael made the u-turn back to the house to retrieve it.

Our guests, composed mostly of Michael’s side of the family in Texas, had started to text us that they had arrived. My family, who flew in from Manila, were also already there with bags of ice I also neglected to plan for. When we arrived an hour and a half later than planned, my nerves were fried, the cake had begun to slide off the plate from the warmth of my lap, and I was sticky with sweat from the anxiety and unseasonably hot September day (2022 turned out to be one of the hottest Texas summers on record). We quickly greeted the folks who arrived, some of whom I am meeting for the first time, and hurriedly started to unload the car and assemble the tables. I couldn’t fathom how Michael and I would be able to prepare everything promptly, but, with everyone’s help, it actually took no time at all. Our guests, which is to say our family, eagerly put the tables together, loaded the drinks in the fridge, lit the tea and taper candles, scratched off the Goodwill stickers from the vases and filled them with the dried flowers I bought online. At one point I was shooed to the upstairs bedroom to freshen up and take a breath while everyone else straightened the linens, shuffled around chairs, and entertained themselves. At the very last minute, our photographer Julia advised we shift the center of the ceremony where Michael and I would stand from the fireplace decorated with random rustic knickknacks to the sunny corner with angled windows. There was no music or fanfare, no aisle to walk down. We just stood, a bit awkwardly at first, with the officiant on one side and our family on the other, spoke our vows, exchanged rings we bought on Etsy, kissed in front of a crowd for the first time maybe ever, and were declared married. A sacred union thus completed.

I have had much time to think about our wedding, and weddings in general, since. At the time, I was flushed with embarrassment at having our guests lift furniture and fuss around the kitchen in crisp smart casual. In my mind, as host and bride, everything should have been prepared when they arrived. They should have been floating around with a drink in hand. But now, it’s that memory of everyone kindly lending a hand that I reminisce the most about that day. Help came even when I didn’t expect it — money to help with wedding expenses, last-minute reminders, party preparation and clean-up, gestures of emotional support. I did not, in fact, have to just rely on myself. I couldn’t possibly have, and in truth, I’ve always relied on others, even when I don’t see it. I promise I do now.

In a conversation months later, someone says that weddings are not really meant for the couple; they are meant for the families. Years ago I would have resented that idea, but I think I see the truth in it now. Like many things, the individualism (and dare I say, consumerism) that defines most weddings today — it’s about whatever the couple or the bride wants! — is an overcorrection of weddings that, historically, have excluded the couple’s wishes. The point, as I see it, lies somewhere between those two extremes. The union of two individuals — united by love (ideally) or an economic contract (historically, and in some circles still today, I imagine) — becomes the cause for a much larger transformation of the social fabric. For better or worse, previously separate worlds collide in a wedding, starting with the couple’s. From that point on, their lives are irrevocably changed, both heavier and brighter with the weight of new implications and responsibilities that are both material and spiritual in nature. As a guest, you meet your friend’s other friends, or your daughter’s support system you’ve heard about but may not have met, or the in-laws that shaped the bride’s early childhood. In its highest manifestation, a wedding celebrates not just the love between the betrothed but also the love within their own communities, now combined, if only for an evening.

Even those wedding traditions and practices I once considered odd or frivolous originated in a collective intent to wish the newlyweds happiness, good fortune, and protection from ill-intent: rice throwing, festive music, the registry, the wedding party. These traditions arrived to me so far removed from the intent that, in my resistance towards what I perceive to be pointless rules, I dismissed them as irrelevant. This isn’t to say that I now hold them to be sacred or vehemently endorse their practice, only that intention is ultimately what matters.

The intimacy of our celebration feels much more meaningful in this light, as does every opportunity to witness the wedding of any of my loved ones. I sometimes daydream about how I could have let my walls down earlier, about the tenderness I could have found and welcomed, but it was clear I wasn’t prepared for it then. I hope instead to pass it on that when love is offered, you should take it, even if it’s a little strange, and when you are able, to offer it back out into the world. In the years since I’ve learned this, I’ve found this generous exchange, in its infinite forms, to be the catalyst for everything that’s ever mattered in my life.

Notes

1. “Don't take the following words / as reverence for tradition” is borrowed from Will Wood’s song Becoming the Lastnames.
2. I imagine some people might chafe at the sudden appearance of the word spiritual towards the end without prior context (though arguably the essay is glittering with it). I have much to say about this which I’ll save for another essay. For now, suffice to say that I believe the lack of a genuine, meaningful spiritual life to be a kind of epidemic. I’m convinced that problems caused by materialistic thinking — which many of our current crises are — cannot be solved by materialistic solutions.
3. There was a time the idea of marriage repulsed me. The history of the institution of marriage is, for women, not a rosy one, and I thought it unnecessary to a strong partnership. Hearing “jokes” from married men about having secret mistresses and being trapped in miserable marriages also made the whole prospect uninspiring.
4. If you ask me when that changed, I’m afraid it’s so obvious and cliché I can’t bear to say it.