The Wedding

The “Promise” in Compromise

I love weddings.  By the time I was a bride at 38, I’d had a lot of time to plan my own.  Suffice it to say that I had a healthy wedding list long before I had a groom. 

I “re-met” the man I would marry at a wedding.  I’d known Joel when I’d lived in Chicago, before I moved to Miami.  When we lived in the same city, we had a mutual friend who kept us posted on what the other was doing.  Joel and I saw each other at a party or a dinner a few times a year, but we were not particularly good friends.  To be honest, I had a bit of a crush on him even then, but one of us was always dating someone else and it never worked out.  Then, I moved away.

Our mutual friend got married in Florida, so it was her wedding that led us to “re-meet” one April morning in Florida.  By then, I lived there and Joel was visiting for the nuptials.  I remembered why I liked him right away and we spent a lot of time at the wedding talking and getting reacquainted.  Then came the long distance phone calls and the plans to visit one another.  Eventually, I got on a plane to go back to Chicago for a weekend, a place I had happily left only three years earlier.  It wasn’t long before our “re-meet” turned into a full fledged long distance romance.

Our first exercise in planning something together was a New England vacation after dating three months.  It went very well.  One night, on the way to dinner, we talked about the type of wedding we each had pictured for ourselves. 

“I don’t like big weddings,” he said.  “I think they should just be small events, maybe with only family. “

I shuddered.  I clasped my hands in front of me, and pretended to impale myself with a sword of disappointment, all the while making a sound like I was about to throw up. 

He laughed.

I was stunned and momentarily concerned that he didn’t love the wedding scene I’d been writing in my mind for years.  I brushed my worry aside.  Yes, if we ever got that far, we’d have a problem.  In terms of weddings, he was a small and I was a large.  But, surely he would come around to my way of thinking if it came down to it. 

“I want a big wedding with all the people I love and who have been rooting for me, there to see the whole thing,” I pronounced. 

Before I knew it, we’d been dating a year. I thought it was time to get serious and talk about marriage.  The relationship was going well and we saw each other every month.  When I asked him what he thought would happen with us, he said “it’ll all work out,” in a way that didn’t sound condescending; he sounded calm and confident.  But, we still lived more than a thousand miles apart and he didn’t want to get engaged until we lived in the same city.  Though I hated to admit it, I could see his point.  I was fed up with my job and was ready for a change (again!) so I left Florida and moved back to Chicago to be with him. 

Nine months later, back in Miami for a vacation, he proposed.  Finally, I had the chance to plan the wedding of my dreams.  Only, I had to wake up the fact that our dreams were quite different. 

“I won’t get married in front of 200 people,” he insisted.  “I won’t walk down an aisle and make it a show.  I want to have a small wedding with close family only.”

“I’ve waited for this all of my life,” I said. “I want my friends to see me get married.  Some of them are like family.”

I was getting nowhere.  People were asking about a date and what to wear; how could I tell them they wouldn’t even be invited?  For weeks, I begged him to let us have the big wedding I’d always planned.  “Fine,” he finally screamed one night.  “Have your fucking circus of a wedding!”

He wasn’t kidding. He felt a huge event was more theater than marriage.  I wanted that performance.  I had looked forward to a dramatic walk down the aisle with all eyes on me. 

I could feel my friends’ and family’s eyes on me now, wanting an explanation.  What could I say?  That I couldn’t boss him around?  That I actually had to listen to him and sometimes he got what he wanted just because he wanted it?  That it was his wedding too?  Why was I ashamed to admit that I couldn’t tell him what to do?  Somehow, if a husband doesn’t do what the wife wants when the wife wants, it’s assumed that she’s making all the sacrifices and he’s a jerk.  Why is a wedding only about the wife’s fantasy? 

Did I know that in the years to come, he would let me pilot in ways I’d never imagined?  That when I was afraid I’d never sort out my professional life, he was an untiring listener?  That for the years we tried to have children, he let me lead us into doctor’s offices and acupuncture rooms?  That when the doctor said that something had gone terribly wrong, he got to her office so quickly that to this day I have no idea how he did it?  Maybe I knew the promise of our marriage back when were planning our wedding; maybe I was just lucky.  Either way, in the months before we became Mr. and Mrs., I had to learn to put “us” first, even if I didn’t understand why and even if it meant I wasn’t going to get my own way. 

So, we created a compromise fantasy.

When I first told a member of my family that we would have a small wedding ceremony one night and a reception for 150 a couple of nights later, she said she wasn’t sure people would come.  She said, “People are traveling to Miami to see you get married, not to go to a party.”  

One of my best friends said, “I’ve been to your parties. I want to see you get married.”

It wasn’t easy.  I could see their point. 

But, even with all the tension about planning our nuptials, neither my husband nor I wavered in our desire to get married.  To each other.   We were only engaged for four months.  A woman in a bridal shop said she couldn’t see how I could find a dress, much less plan a whole wedding, in that time.  I said to her, “The hardest part is over; I found the groom.  I’ll be fine.” 

We got married in front of 25 close family members on a Thursday evening.  My future brother in law poured the wine; my mother’s sister held my flowers.  A Cantor chanted Hebrew a cappella beautifully as my father walked me down the aisle.  There were no winks to teary eyed sorority sisters, no nods to knowing friends from first grade.  The group who watched me walk down the aisle were his close family and mine; the people who had gotten the calls when we were born.  Everyone stood near the huppah; our cousins held the poles.  My new husband stood beaming beside me, encouraging the small group to come in closer.  He was a very happy groom.  During our ceremony, he scolded me for laughing under the huppah and my father gave me one of his “raised eyebrow” looks.  I couldn’t behave; I was under our huppah. 

After the ceremony, my husband and I had a moment alone before going to dinner with our family.  We were both high with the excitement of what we’d just done.  I asked him if he wished all our friends were there with us. He smiled, kissed me, and said no.  I wasn’t as sure yet; I still had a fantasy to scratch.

Despite my husband’s initial objections, two nights later, we had the wedding reception of my dreams. I put on my wedding dress again, and my husband wore the tuxedo he’d worn at our ceremony two nights earlier.  Our friends and family danced under Miami skies and I felt the magic I had always dreamed of for my wedding. 

Though he hated the idea, Joel agreed that we could be announced as the newly married couple, and I got to walk onto the dance floor and have my first dance with my husband in a room with everyone I loved.  My new husband toasted me.  He talked about love and respect and partnership and said there was no one else in the world he could have done this with. 

The first wedding we went to as a married couple was several months later.  Once again, I found myself doing an appraisal.  I took in the decisions the couple had made, comparing them to what we had done.  It was a beautiful wedding.  Instead of making mental notes about how much I hate a receiving line, I tried to assess the feelings in the room or the emotions the ceremony and reception evoked.  As I looked around before the ceremony, I saw the guests milling about and I felt a tinge of jealousy.  This bride was about to make that dramatic walk down the aisle in front of all of their guests.  She did it; everyone leaned in to see her and she beamed as she took her 45 second walk down the aisle. And then it was over. 

We stared at her back while she and her fiancé performed an intensely personal act:  they began their life of compromise. She circled around him and he stood still for her.  She then stood next to him as he stepped on the wine glass.  I took my husband’s hand as this new husband and wife kissed for the first time and smiled. 

When were dating, living in different cities, I often tried to get my husband to say romantic things to me over the phone.  I’d ask him to say something “sweet and mushy” and he’d say “jelly doughnuts.”  It used to drive me crazy.

Now, on the fifth of every month, the day of the month on which we were married, he insists we eat jelly doughnuts together.   So far, we’ve eaten 29 doughnuts each.  We toast over breakfast, raising our doughnuts in the air, and say “Happy Anniversary.”  It’s sweet, it’s simple and it's ours.