Weddings!

I mentioned a couple of months ago I attended my cousin's wedding up in the San Jose area. I've had so many emotions after attending the wedding it was easier to just tuck it aside then to sit down and write about it. But after some of the reading I have been doing and then last night watching "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" again I thought it was time to finally sit down and process the mixed up emotions of my female brain.
(Side note: My absolute favorite part of this movie: that John Corbett who plays Ian Miller does not allow the complications of the situation to stop him from pursuing Toula!)

The drive up to that part of California (at least after you get through the LA area) is beautiful. I had purposefully made the choice to drive up alone and not with my family so I could stop and take photos and just enjoy the trip without having to talk. I didn't take photos on the way up, but I did stop and take photos on the way down. The wedding, it was beautiful.

Tim pulled out all the stops for his soon to be bride that weekend. From making sure the roses were trimmed just so, to hauling in fresh bark chips for the area around the roses to even vacuuming the lawn. I honestly had never heard of such a device until that weekend :)

During the hours prior to the wedding, I felt productive. Helping hang flowers, figuring out where to hang all the dirt bike posters (my cousin and his wife love to dirt bike), handling the centerpieces (with dirt bikes), and many other fine details, the craziness of it all helped keep my mind from thinking about what it was that was going to take place later that afternoon.

Weddings are the time to cry. Two people standing before God making their commitments to each other. To love and honor, till death do they part. Unfortunately to many people today just don't have any real understanding about what that commitment really is. The significance of what that ring thats wrapped around your finger stands for. Its hard to describe the range of emotions I faced watching this ceremony that afternoon.

What's happened to us? When and where did it become so much easier to walk away and give up then to keep a family together? A couple stands before God and commits to each other and to their friends and family to love and cherish each other, to walk away from that commitment, 5, 10, or 15 years later. What's happened to us?

Jokingly, but almost seriously when and if I get married again, I think the idea of having a tattoo stamped across the left or right rear cheek "Property of" is kind of appealing. I have no desire to have the big fancy white wedding as I did 17 years earlier. It's not that I wouldn't have it, its that its not an issue to me. To me the wedding could be as simple as sitting in a field on the backside of a mountain and stating those words, the commitment to each other with tears running down my face and an understanding of how seriously committed I would be to that man the rest of my life.