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Welcome to familywisdom.com, a website dedicated to informing and inspiring couples and families. Each week you will find a new article, story or essay about parenting, marriage or life. Suggestions for articles and questions to Ellen Terich are welcome. You can contact her at e.terich1@verizon.net |
PREPARING FOR THE BIG DAY 2004-07-12 Life, at best, is a series of surprises and unpredictable events. No matter how much we try to plan for things, we frequently must change those plans or adapt to changes beyond our control. Those unpredictabilities can range from the weather to the behavior of human beings. By trying to predict and explain human behavior, psychology has done much to help reduce our surprise at the behavior of humans. Advertising, on the other hand, has done much to counteract that. Take weddings, for instance. Advertising tells us that there is nothing more romantic than a wedding day. Pick up any bridal magazine and you will instantly see what I mean. Every bride is as beautiful as a Hollywood movie star; every bridesmaid is lovely and thrilled to be wearing a $200 dress she will never wear again; every groom is totally relaxed, joking with his groomsmen; the flower girl and ring bearer are sweet and angelic; and the parents of the bride and groom are invisible. Advertisements for gowns, flowers, food, and honeymoon destinations portray nothing but perfection. On the other hand, because weddings are human undertakings, they are always prone to the unpredictable and the occasional disaster. My son is getting married in August and because I have some understanding of human behavior under stress, as well as some experience with weddings, I am fully prepared for the week before the wedding to be punctuated with last minute problems possibly leading to arguments, fights, misunderstandings, and hurt feelings. No matter how much a bride and groom plan for the big day, there are things they forget, things they didn't anticipate, and things that are beyond their control. These cause an already nervous couple to feel more pressure as well as time constraints. Add to that overly zealous relatives offering unwelcome advice or asking for last minute changes, and everything can get ugly very quickly. Knowing what to expect may not help anyone avoid these stressors, but it can take away the element of surprise. At least the bride and groom, and their family, can say "we expected something like this," take a few deep breaths, summon some flexibility, and move towards solutions. Or, if they have prepared themselves well for the unexpected but nothing can be done to fix the problem, they may even be able to find the good will to laugh about it. At a recent family wedding, the three year old ring bearer did not want to walk down the aisle at the last minute. He was dressed in his new suit and had his satin pillow with the rings, but when he saw all those people who hadn't been there at the rehearsal he refused to go. He clung anxiously to a rather worn out and somewhat dirty pillow that had become something of a security blanket to him over the years. The bride, his cousin, was prepared for the unexpected, and flexible enough to let him carry the pillow up the aisle with him. So, with his father at the head of the aisle, arms outstretched to his son, the little boy marched rapidly up the aisle, his satin pillow perched atop the ratty, unattractive one and everyone, including the bride, smiled. I went to a wedding once where everything had been beautifully prepared. The bride was lovely; the groom was calm; even the flower girl and ring bearer behaved. The reception was going off without a hitch when I and several others looked over at the cake table and noticed it was resembling the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Just when this observation was registering in my brain as a potential disaster, the potential turned into the actual. The cake smashed to the floor. And what did the bride do? She laughed. Because I am familiar with the high expectations we have for weddings, especially our own, and because I am old enough to know our expectations are rarely met, I give wedding emergency kits to the brides in the family a few weeks before the wedding. I usually include a needle and thread (it came in handy when my daughter stepped on her cathedral length veil before her wedding and ripped it), breath mints; an antacid; clear nail polish for ripped stockings; a mirror, a hairbrush, a nail file, and kleenex. The emergency kit can only help with personal bridal emergencies, however, not with a falling cake, a reluctant ring bearer or relatives with their nose out of joint because they don't like where they're sitting or they're unhappy with the corsage. For those unexpected events, all a bride and groom can do is accept the reality that nothing in life is perfect, not even the most well planned wedding, and perhaps try to laugh. |