For Jonathan and Alissa

It is now June and wedding season is upon us. Yesterday Tim and I celebrated our 5th anniversary and it was also a year ago yesterday that we found out I was pregnant with Savannah. Spring is a wonderful season of new beginnings, yet so often somehow amidst all the beauty and splendor so often we lose sight of the wonder in the details. What I mean is I've been to many weddings where the bride shed tears because the flowers weren't the perfect shade of periwinkle that she imagined in the picture, or the caterer was running late. I saw an itenerary for a member of a wedding party that was literally planned out to the minute from the time each party member arrived four hours before the event took place. That's fine, and I'm not putting down your traditional wedding. Heck, my own personality probably lends itself to that kind of planning. Suze Ormon, one of the most conservative and widely know financial planners of our time says, even for a small wedding, you need to look at spending at least 20K. I say hogwash.

I just attended a wedding where there was no official florist. There was no church. There was no pulpit. There wasn't a ring bearer or even a dad to walk the bride down the isle. You may be thinking, what? But this was the most beautiful, romantic wedding I have ever attended. It was held on 35 acres on the land where Jonathan, Tim, and Jeremy's Grandmother lives (and we know Grandad was there too). This was a place where grandchildren grew up playing for hours, their imaginations running wild. The pulpit was a sturdy oak, their giving tree. The florist, a mother bringing flowers that she had grown herself with love. Maybe there was no ring bearer, but they had Betty, their Springer Spaniel who was cuter and more well behaved than any little boy I've ever seen. And maybe a dad did not walk, with the bride, but the groom met her as she approached the crowd of friends and family and walked with her to the towering oak tree. Maybe it wasn't a church, but this place...this place has been a sanctuary. Congratualtions Jonathan and Alissa.

That would have been a nice place to stop, but I wanted to include a beautiful selection that was read in their ceremony by Madeleine L'Engle:

"Ultimately there comes a time when a decision must be made. Ultimately two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take. It is indeed a fearful gamble. Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created. To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take. If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation. It takes a lifetime to learn another person. When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling."