Groomasaurs Gal and I were talking the other day about this swine flu threat, and honestly we’re not sure what to make of it. First there was the Ebola virus, which was a horrible, awful affliction that thank goodness didn’t spread. Then we had the SARS scare, which again was a dreadful disease but didn’t even come close to the epidemic that had been feared. Now this latest in afflictions that has us all scratching our heads and washing our hands.
So what does this all have to to with marriage, and our wedding in particular? Well, we are getting married in Mexico, which currently happens to be the epicenter of the swine flu, and although our wedding day isn’t until November, the media is now saying this influenza could boomerang back around in the late fall for reasons beyond my understanding. Thankfully, the Centers for Disease Control have reported they are fast-tracking a flu shot for the swine flu that will be available in the late fall, and now the media is reporting that so far this pandemic has been relatively well contained. So the scenario continues to turn for the better, but I’m still unsettled about a few things…
1. Why do we continue to let the media yang our emotions all over the place? Granted, any illness should be taken seriously. But doesn’t it seem like the media is so amped up on its own bad-news adrenalin that they just can’t stop, so every little thing that comes along they are reflexively turning into armageddon. (And don’t even get me started on the media conspiring to inflate the import of our news to boost sagging viewerships/readerships and increase ad revenues. I’m not a paranoid person, but the Cassandra-like caterwauling of the media these days certainly has me questioning everything.)
2. How could this stupid virus still screw up our wedding? I know it has affected the weddings and honeymoons of many people over the last month, and it could certainly make things very uncertain in Mexico for a while. I for one am determined to get married there, so we may have to resort to a bride in a bubble and a groom in scrubs, but should we have a backup just in case? If so, what? If anyone out there has ever created a contingency plan for a destination wedding, please let me know … we’re all ears.
That’s a loaded statement if there ever was one. I got started thinking about this topic today as I was talking to a client of mine (I run a branding/marketing business in my non-blogging life) who is in her mid-20s and has the next 3 weekends booked to attend 3 friends’ weddings. I thought back to my mid-20s and, in that fog of activity, I hazily remember weddings ticking off as regular as hours on the clock. I grew up in Ohio and then lived in DC for a fair amount of my 20s, so attended both friendly potluck receptions with amazingly decadent downhome cooking along as well as estate/country-clubby lobster-and-steak affairs thrown by some of my wealthier friends’ parents. Both types were fun and memorable in their own ways, but I digress.
How many candles will be on your wedding cake is sort of a silly question
We were talking about age and the question of what is the right time to get married. Of course the answer is different for everyone. Most of my guy friends who have daughters say that the appropriate age to wed is around 63, give or take a few decades. Most of my female friends have a very fluid stance on this, as many of them have stated to me that it was important to them to gain a sense of self-awareness before getting married. I think this is a great philosophy, as it’s an asset to the relationship if at least one individual has a dose of self-awareness. Again, I digress.
What I’m putting off here is talking about my own age. I’m 41, and I’ve never been married, which makes me at best a wild-card and at worst a freak who could never get his s**t together or who lives with his mother. I don’t consider myself either, as I’ve come close to being married once before and am not really a difficult person or frighteningly ugly, and, for the record, I stopped living with my dear parents when I graduated from college. I just hadn’t yet found the right person until I met Groomasaurus Gal. We’ve dated 9 years now and although we’ve been fully committed to each other the whole time, we haven’t felt the need to get married until the last year or two. Now just feels like the right time, so 41 is the right age for me.
As for everyone else, I think different ages feel different pressures. When I was 25, I was in a relationship that I thought was heading toward marriage, and had certain ideas in my head about being a husband and father and such. I also think if I had a biological clock beating me into a panic that definitely would have swayed my thinking, too. On the other end of the spectrum, I have friends in their late 50s who have lived together for 24 years and never gotten married but love each other dearly and are just as committed to each other if they had.
So the answer to that question is that there isn’t an answer … just find the person for you, follow your heart and pursue what makes you both happy.
When I listen to music, when I read a book, I often catch myself thinking of how the act of listening or reading unfolds in time. In that unfolding is the expectation of what is to come, the elation of the moment and the bittersweet taste of a memory already starting to fade.
So it is with everything that happens in time, including a wedding. It’s often common to hear brides and grooms talk about not being able to wait until their wedding day arrives - focused on one day, a buildup to a signpost moment in their lives. But in only keeping our eyes on a future moment, we often miss what’s happening in the many moments in between.
I myself am just as guilty of looking past the present to get to the future faster, wishing I had some sort of speed warp to thrust me towards my goals and dreams faster. But it’s the getting there that makes that anticipated moment so special, and so I’ve been trying to slow myself down when I think of planning our wedding. When I enter my cousins’ names in our guest list, I try to retrieve memories of them opening presents at Christmas or throwing a football on Thanksgiving. As I think about the words to use in our ceremony, I reminisce about what in my first encounters with my bride-to-be made me intrigued and curious, and what later moved me to understand she was the person I couldn’t be without.
The old saw of slow and steady wins the race only applies if you’re in a race. An engagement isn’t a race; rather, it’s the music of anticipation.
