Weddings

Pretty much everyone that knows me knows that I have a love/hate relationship with weddings. To me, there is nothing more beautiful than watching two people confess their undying love for each other in front of a crowd of friends and family. Even if the marriage only lasts eighteen months, the wedding itself, that singular moment right before two people lean in to seal their vows to each other with a kiss, is awe-inspiring.

I hate weddings because watching two people have that moment while sitting in a pew or garden chair alone can be heart wrenching. I'm always the single person at the wedding, either sitting by myself or trying to wrangle Zac into the seat next to me.

At my sister's wedding, I cried like an idiot for the entire time. A steady film stream of clips from our childhood flashed through my mind. I couldn't grasp that the woman she was standing up there was the same girl that used to steal all the bubbles from our bubble baths. I didn't learn until I was about six or so that the person sitting closest to the faucet gets a higher density of bubbles. The day I learned that was the day that I learned anything was possible. On the day that my sister got married, I was 19 years-old and in college. So much had changed between the two of us, yet I was crying over what used to be, even though our relationship now, as adults, is more complex and fulfilling than I could have seen at the time.

For as much as people talk about weddings as a new beginning, they are also a form of closure. While they open up a new life for the people involved, they almost necessarily close a chapter of a person's single life. As much as the two people try and deny it, you think twice before calling a married friend at 2am because you just got your heart broken, again. "They don't really understand anymore," you rationalize and brace for the words that you know are coming, "It will be ok," they mumble in sleep-induced haze, "You'll find someone else" they tell you.

And you know all these feelings and emotions are going through your head while you are sitting in the ceremony, crying for what was and what will be. I cry because I have no significant other, not even one that I can invite to Tulane's "Significant Other" weekend. I'm not sure it would be socially acceptable to show up with my cat. MG offered to go with me, but he said it with such hesitance in his voice that I could tell that he didn't really want to go. I told him that he didn't have to and dropped the subject.

I'm in that phase of life where everyone I seem to know is getting married. In a little over a month I'm going to AEP's wedding. She and I have known each other over ten years. Prior to her visit to Houston for a conference in October, it had been four years since we had seen each other. She hadn't met my son yet. It seems like lately I see my friends primarily at weddings, either their own or the weddings of mutual friends and now AEP is getting married.

So I'm going to this wedding as the last completely single parent that I know personally. When I moved to Texas, I met three other completely single Moms and one single Dad with young children. Over the span of three years, all of them have gotten married or engaged. I just went to Tracy's wedding reception a month or so ago. Our sons are three weeks apart in age and celebrated their second birthday together. She was so radiant at the reception and I was so happy for her that it worked out, but that didn't make being one of the only single Moms there any easier.

No matter what emotions wedding evoke in me, it is almost a guarantee that I'll be the one quietly crying in the corner while the two participants exchange vows. I even cried at a stranger's wedding in Seattle and will frequently bawl at the end of wedding shows on the Discovery Channel. I just want to lean over to someone during the ceremony and have them tell me, with such warmth and confidence, that it's all going to turn out just fine and exactly as it was supposed to, regardless of the state of matrimony I'm in.