9 Things I Learned Hosting A Wedding in 2020 (which turns out to be the things I might have learned any other year only extra)
“It’s not the experience that brings transformation; it’s our reflection upon our experience.”
— Jan Johnson
All that I learned this autumn falls into one of two categories: Wedding Things, Everything Else. Honestly, what I learned this fall would fill a couple of books. Since neither you nor I have time for that mid-December, I’m sharing a handful of the Things I Learned Hosting A Wedding in 2020. Pardon the extra long post and know it won’t probably be my final wedding-related post!
I’m struck that as I reflected on our experience of hosting the wedding and all the ways that felt especially disorienting during a pandemic, the lessons that bubble up to the surface are probably always true. Maybe heightened now, but timeless in value. This seems about right and, I suspect, something we’ll discover about 2020 in general. The truest true things - both the beautiful and the ugly - are being exposed in ways almost impossible to ignore. This will form our stories of grief, but also, I think, our joy.
About mid-October - while we were recovering from the massive emotional and physical energy we’d lavished on Kendra and Jordan’s wedding - I began to feel the warm whisper of anticipation for Advent. It said, "Good prayer time is ahead”. I hope that you’ve found space for prayer this Advent. Whether you’re able to form words that are profound or barely articulate, know that you are not alone in needing God-with-Us to be, tangibly, undeniably With-Us now.
Take heart, friend. Our best days are ahead. When we remember the beauty of Christ's arrival, that is really saying something.
Tidings of comfort and joy,
Tamara
1. Change is the new normal. (and probably has always been)
Been on our refrigerator since March. We could’ve also crossed out the location of the ceremony.
Years from now, when people ask “When did you first realize COVID-19 was a thing?” I’ll answer “When the small business making our daughter’s wedding dress to order told us we might not get it in time because they had to find another supplier and start it over from scratch.” At that time, my worst-case scenario was that her dress wouldn’t come in time and never - not even into March - did I imagine we’d have to postpone the entire event. I was so naive that when the news started getting bad and things began to shut down I told the anxious bride-to-be “This is good news! Stuff will shut down now so the virus can pass through and we’ll be all set for April 25!” Can you believe it? It’s probably similar to the now cliche “War will be over by Christmas” attached to every WWII dramatization. This dear seamstress in Bridgeport finished the alterations we needed for a dress we weren’t sure Kendra would ever get to wear.
2020 is a thief. Not just grand larceny level but a pickpocket and a kleptomaniac. The forces that have converged this year will rob everything in sight. For our family that included my daughter's wedding originally scheduled for April 25, 2020.
My daughter was supposed to be married in a big wedding in the middle of Fairfield County's famous dogwood blossoms, but we couldn't hold that wedding. What we could do is hold a private ceremony with her dad, the priest, officiating, and nine people watching from the empty sanctuary. We could invite friends to secretly decorate the newlyweds' car while we tried to reenact a somewhat sad replica of a wedding celebration with a miniature cake and cheap champagne. We could stand outside and blast confetti guns like a little revolt against the death droplets flying through the air.
Our daughter and son-in-law chose to commit to each other for better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness and health until death parts them on one of the worst days the Coronavirus could dish out in our community in Connecticut, just over the border from an eerie, empty Manhattan.
We could choose to celebrate that with whatever we had available. And so we did.
In October, surrounded by New England's infamous autumn foliage instead of dogwood blossoms, we were able to host the family and friends version of a wedding celebration - minus over 100 guests from our original invitation list.
We hoped we’d know what was possible and wise as we held the tension of caution and creativity. We moved the ceremony outside, assigned seats to keep people within their “bubbles”, requested masks and hand sanitizer, and more. Still, we worried that at any given moment the plans would have to be changed again in order to keep us out of reach from this dreadful disease. At times, we felt a bit paralyzed by the worry of it and really didn’t sense “this is actually going to happen” until the end of September.
But somehow, someway, in the middle of all that we discovered to be impossible, God opened up a way of possibility.
God knew we could trust Him to be good, and so we did.
2. There’s nothing more beautiful than a bride who knows she is dearly-loved
Some women naturally soak up the spotlight their entire lives, but not Kendra. She has to be coaxed and of all the things I grieved when we had to postpone her wedding it was her moment to be the star of the show. Not in an obnoxious, reality-television way of manufactured drama - all style and no substance. I mean in the way a wedding - imagined at some level by our Creator - creates a backdrop for the radiance of a bride who knows she is loved.
3. There’s nothing more beautiful than a wedding that reminds us all we are the beloved of Christ.
All of us need a regular dose of good weddings in our lives. It reminds us that we are all the Bride - beloved, and pursued by Jesus. I hated - with a mama-bear fury - 2020 for robbing us all of this moment. At some level, I hated it for my own doubting heart. I needed Kendra and Jordan to reenact in a visible way the invisible reality of our place as the Beloved held in the gaze of Christ.
4. It (always) takes a village.
The wedding between Kendra and Jordan required a force of love greater than the chaos taking advantage of our vulnerabilities this year. We needed our individual love for the Bride and Groom to unionize into something unstoppable.
So many hands dropped all the accumulated weight of suffering in this year in order to hold tight to the joy and beauty and celebration 2020 keeps trying to steal from us. The day after the wedding, as I woke up slowly, I pictured the faces of those who’d joined us and realized the profound accumulation of grief and hardship represented by the congregation. It felt like our friends and family tucked away for a moment all they've been carrying - deep personal grief and loss, illness, job anxiety, legitimate fear for their health and well-being - in order to pick up every bit of this celebration.
Together we hunted down every last scrap of joy and beauty and returned it to its rightful owner.
God, as God does, restored each bit into something even more beautiful and joyous than we could've imagined.
5. Ask for more help than you think you’ll need.
On October 10, together, with God's help, we held the four corners of celebration so that Kendra and Jordan could find shelter for their covenant to God and each other.
This must always happen, of course. No marriage stands on its own. But if I could, I would hand out actual superhero capes for each person who contended with the chaos in order to hold onto the joy with us.
Among other help we received throughout Kendra and Jordan’s wedding preparation, giant thank-yous to the following wedding superheroes:
Beth Toy for risking extravagance on new friends and for the gorgeous floral arrangements (I mean, LOOK at those flowers!).
Hannah Evans for the 101 ways she made things beautiful - from Kendra's hair (and mine!) to the exquisite processional song.
Laura Voisine and Tim Toy for helping us sing with so much joy we could forget for a moment we were wearing masks (also for all the plant wrangling).
Amy Willers for helping us make space for every treasured guest.
Reverend Jan Buchanan for holding us all together (and for proving that a Deacon can wear fabulous shoes).
Adiel Dominguez Rivera for helping us remember the day because we don't ever want to forget God's goodness.
Tom & Shelli Hendrican for the unrelenting generosity of your time and attention. We wouldn't have made it this weekend without you.
Todd Hill & Ryan Willers for carrying us over that last hurdle of getting the bride and her father to the ceremony.
Young-Mee Hill, Rich & Alicia Nichols, and Kirstin & Drake Dowsett for hunting and gathering from all the corners of Bridgeport so we could feast.
Thank you, not least of all, to Rodeph Sholom for continually welcoming us into their home.
6. It (always) takes a family.
It takes a family to raise a child. Thank you, Harold & Jane Jackson for welcoming us into yours. Thank you for the priceless gift of your son (as well as that dynamite rehearsal dinner), Jon Jackson for standing up for all of us in so many ways, Jessica Bria for her grace and generosity (thank you guys for literally giving us the gift of cheer), Andrew, Alex, Rebekah, and Natalie for laying down all that you are carrying right now so that your hands were open to pick up the pieces of joy 2020 kept trying to steal from this celebration, and to Brian for the fierce love you pursue us with to keep our hearts safe.
7. It takes a Church to raise a family and Father, Son, and Spirit to raise a Church.
It takes a Church to raise a family. Thank you to all of you who've loved and prayed and given to help Kendra and Jordan begin their life as the Jackson family. Thank you especially for the sacrifice many of you made to enter into the scary unknown of a pandemic-era wedding celebration (which, as it turns out, is not altogether unlike entering the scary unknown of marriage!). May God bless and keep you all - the ones we got to see and the ones we carried with us in our hearts.
It takes Father, Son, and Spirit to raise a Church. Thank you to our silly-good God for lavishing beauty on this day (especially the October brilliance), to the Holy Spirit for binding our hearts together when together has never felt harder, and to the Most Wonderful Jesus for being the Founder of the Feast - giving us His very self as the gifts of God for the people of God.
The song that Jordan chose for the ceremony reminded us, Jesus, that we overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony. And this mother of the bride wants to testify that all shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.
Until the wedding feast our hearts are most longing for, thank you, Jesus, for this little taste. We love You.
8. The mistakes, missteps, and misunderstandings make space for unmistakable love and beauty.
The moment where the priest (aka, Kendra’s dad) accidentally pronounced the married couple as Mr. and Mrs. Murphy. This moment allowed the entire congregation to shout in unison MR. AND MRS. JACKSON! it turned out to be the perfect way to end the ceremony.
Is it possible for the stakes to feel higher than in hosting a wedding? A wedding for your child? Yes. I submit that hosting a wedding during a pandemic for one’s child amplifies the expectations and the sense of risk. I will tell you, friends, we made too many mistakes to count, hurt each other’s feelings, misunderstood our family and friends who love us and were trying to do what was best, got stressed out at exactly the wrong moments, and completely flubbed up, lost things, forgot things, and took ourselves too seriously at times.
Yet….
These are the moments God’s been using to most demonstrate to me the utter reality of our belovedness in Christ. There was one particular moment in the day that I may share the details another time when I felt paralyzed by anxiety and frustration and fear. This moment haunted me following the wedding for longer than I’d like to admit.
My memory of the moment threatened to steal my joy and I took it into a conversation with my Spiritual Director. As I sat in silence, listening for the voice of Jesus to me in the places my heart and mind felt stuck in the memory of completely getting it wrong, I began to feel overwhelmed by the profound simplicity of God’s deep love for me. In fact, it was precisely in that moment - the one that felt like it blindsided me and I failed the test of being the Mother of the Bride - that I began to understand that’s the person beloved in Christ. Right there. That moment where I felt frozen by anxiety and failed expectations, the person who didn’t respond the way I thought she should have, that’s the person Jesus loves.
Can you even believe it?
Required wedding favors when BBQ is on the menu!
9. We didn’t realize how much we needed to be merry together.
Seriously. We hit the reception like a popped cork on a fizzy bottle of champagne.
We stamped out the grief of 2020 like Jesus dancing on His tombstone, soles of our feet recalling that the preacher’s family is a dancing family.
My blisters have just now finally healed.
