Watching life go back to normal

Posted by Marielle in Weddings.

I have a secret to confess. I’ve been using my friend D. for her wedding. She’s a kind, spiritual and fun person. We’ve been friends since high school and although we’ve never agreed on religion or politics (and probably never will), we have always managed to focus on our shared love of things like sewing projects and the BBC mini-series of Pride & Prejudice.

However, when she got engaged last year, our friendship came to serve me in new ways… soon, we began to bond over weddings. I lent her my copy DIY Bride, made myself available for wedding planning pep-talks, and agonized for days over the proper meter when she assigned me Shakespeare to read at her wedding.

My fiance and I used her wedding as a template, making a mental checklist of do’s and dont’s for our upcoming affair. DO let the DJ take requests. DON’T let the DJ play “Thriller” if no one knows how to dance to it. DO let your friends and Best Man go crazy with the car paint. DON’T let them do it on the side of the vehicle where the white-covered bride is getting in. It was a harmless, but useful system of following by example. And once their wedding was over, and they came back from their honeymoon, their value continued to rise, like gold in our faltering economy.

Recently, my fiance and I were the first visitors to their brand new home. The house is great and D. and her husband look really happy and comfortable together. Today, they serve as an example that life goes on after the wedding — and that is the best part! Sure, life isn’t perfect — jobs aren’t living up to expectations and they had to attend a funeral days after returning from their honeymoon — but these two friends, slightly younger than me and my guy, are starting to create their own home and family, which is a beautiful and humbling thing to watch.

So, I will continue to look to them as an example of what I might expect as next September 13th approaches, and especially once it passes. When you’ve been engaged as long as I have, you start to forget that life exists after the wedding day. All it took was a little peek over D.’s shoulder to remind me that September 14th is the day I’m really looking forward to — our first full day as a married unit and the beginning of the rest of our life together.

Weddings |