The grand finale of Wedding Week! I’ve driven miles and miles on errands, I’ve met and re-met many many out of town friends, and I’ve rethought my own outfit multiple times. And now the day is here! The final stretch!
Have you ever had a couple tell you that they got married and you think “wait, weren’t you married already?” That’s what my friends are like. They just made sense as a couple, right from the start. They met, they fell in love, they moved in together and, a few years later, they got married in Vegas and planned to have a big party later own for all their family and friends. And that was in January 2020. So for 4 years now, they’ve been married without a wedding.
They are definitely married. I mean, we bought a house together! They fight about groceries and adopted 2 more cats and do the elaborate holiday shuffle to balance both sides of the family. But they have been in limbo about having a wedding.
There’s a difference between a marriage and a wedding, I know that, everyone knows that. Marriage is a formal social recognition of a relationship, something that people from your great aunt to the guy at the movie ticket counter will recognize. Saying “my wife” is just soooooooooooo different from saying “my girlfriend”. But a wedding is a CELEBRATION of that relationship. Not just saying “this exists” but saying “we are happy this exists”.
That’s been a feeling bubbling up over this past week. As more and more people come in from out of town, as the final plans for the day itself firm up, everyone is just so HAPPY. This is not an occasion of obligation and stress, it’s an occasion of happiness. My friends are happy to share their joy, and their friends are happy to be there and be a part of it.
And I am so so SO happy to be a part of it. I’ve been there since the beginning, I remember being told about two days after they started dating, and I was there the night they decided to be girlfriend-girlfriend. And now I get to be part of their little family, every day!
What I discovered last night at their pre-wedding pizza party for out of town guests, is that I am their Margaret! So many people I’d never met came up to me and went “Oh! And you are Margaret!” Isn’t that just lovely? To be so much part of someone’s life that they talk about you where ever they go?
I am there Margaret and they are my J and K people. They feed me and nag me to go to the doctor and hold me while I cry and we watch The Great British Bake Off together and I am very very lucky to be in their lives. And they are very lucky to be in each other’s lives and to have found each other. And everyone today is very lucky to be there and celebrate this miracle.