pre-wedding reflections

I have been religiously following and perusing wedding blogs ever since I got engaged, it became an unhealthy obsession. It is my guilty pleasure. I enjoyed looking at the beautiful, heavily-edited photographs, where everyone is beaming with happiness that is full to the brim, all the pretty details, with lace and ribbons and crystal champagne glasses. Cookies wrapped in brown paper bags, billowy maids dresses, little flower girls with actual flowers in their cute curly hair. Oh, bliss!

Soon, I noticed a trend. Nowadays, people want their wedding to “reflects us” (the most overused phrase in wedding blog world). Blogs are full of people injecting personality into their wedding, which is nice and all, and is pretty much what we are trying to do as well. You want to go to a wedding and be able to say, “oh it’s so you!”, and then giggle with the bride about how beautiful everything is, over your third glass of champagne. Yet, the more I scour those blogs, why do I get this strange feeling that some tries too hard to be different or unique? Alas, the Avengers theme song for processional? Skeleton cake topper? Are you kidding me? Or, maybe I am just being a bitch.

At one point it got sickening. People are so set into making their wedding unforgettable, they forget what is important. Is not marriage more important than the wedding? Is not what you promise at the altar more important the dress and the flowers?

At the beginning, I did fall into the trap of worrying more about how the reception is going to be. What colour theme should I pick? And oh, what about the shoes, the jewellery? What should I use for the bonbonnieres? How if people will get bored? Oh what should we do to make it interesting? However, closer to the day, one night, when boo and I sat at KD’s couch and were asked to think about our vows, the focus in my head changed.

The moment I realized, damn, what will I promise to this man, in front of God and at least hundred fifty guests who will be there to witness? This is the promise I will have to hold for the rest of my life. This is serious shit. I would be someone’s wife in less than three weeks. I am no longer just myself. Do I understand, what it means to be a wife? What a marriage is?

My colourful flowers, cute postcards and the amazing box I have been working on in the past weeks suddenly lost their importance. Sure, they will still be there at the wedding, I worked so hard preparing them, it’s just, they’re no longer the top of the priority list. There is only one question I keep asking myself. Do I really understand what this means? Have I prepared myself, mentally and spiritually, enough for this? 

²² Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. ²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ²⁶ to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, ²⁷ and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. ²⁸ In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— ³⁰ for we are members of his body. ³¹ “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” ³² This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. ³³ However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

Ephesians 5: 22-33

KD mentioned these verses last night. It’s not like I have never heard them before, but back then when I was younger, I regard these verses to be useful sometimes in the future, which was wrong, for if I did understand these words much earlier, I would have known what to look for in prospective relationships, right? Also, I would know what is required of me, in order to be a wife that is pleasing in God’s eyes. This is His timely voice I need to understand and learn from.

Obviously, I want to be a good wife, a great wife if I can! And of course, most importantly: a Godly one. I can see that it is not easy. I need that smack in the head, especially the submitting part. It is very hard for a strong headed girl like me to submit to anyone, including the authority of my husband-to-be. Add Proverbs 31 into the equation and I salute any lady who can come close to the amazing woman portrayed in it (and any man who can find such wife).

Well, I am as ready as I can be. Lord, the rest is in your hands. Let this new beginning start in You.