Wedding Ceremony Rush
BANG! The wedding ceremony planning begins!
The racers were off. Each stride brought them closer and closer to the tape. The final line was just within their reach. They pushed with every fiber of their being, stretching to close the gap, straining and heaving as though held back by some invisible force.
SNAP! You’re there. You’ve made it!
The tape broke and the winner was crowned!
Does this describe your marriage? Do you resonate with rushing to either the starting line to ‘get this thing going’ or heaving toward the ‘finish line’ as though your wedding day were just the “starting gun” that began an emotional marathon we need only survive?
The expectations for planning your wedding ceremony might kill you if they aren’t properly managed.
Part of the problem with societies conception of marriage is connected to the negative ways we characterize marriage. Our collective thoughts on marriage are either negative i.e. battle field, or war zone or exhausting i.e. race, journey etc. We need to think about our marriages as experiences composed of more than just impossible encounters with reality that end in trivial rewards.
Your wedding ceremony planning should incorporate your beliefs just as much as your wedding itself.
Buddhist and Christian beliefs about marriage emphasize cooperation and mutual service. Christianity works on the moral of “love your neighbor as yourself.” Buddhism functions by the principle of practicing compassion toward all sentient beings. Marriage, in both religions, is a practicing ground in which the bride and groom give and receive the loving benefits of cooperation and affection that only an intimate lover can provide. In these systems of belief, neither the wedding day nor the day your partner passes, are adequately characterized as a “race.” There are no onlookers, no crowd cheering you on. Everyone present is engaged in the act of showing compassion to one another. There is no track, since the path of learning to love others is never linear. Rather, marriage is an unknown, day by day unfolding of the needs of others and how we might meet them.
The behaviors you exhibit under pressure, the way you act on your beliefs during the wedding ceremony planning will follow you throughout marriage.
Day-one, your wedding day, is not the beginning of your life-together with the one you love. The wedding day is one of many expressions of love given between lovers that communicates the reality of present love and creates hope for a loving future. As your wedding day approaches, or if you’ve been married for decades, let go of unhelpful perspectives of your marriage and re-learn the simplicity that today is the day for you to practice loving your neighbor, your spouse, your lover.
Contact: Ric Latendresse
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