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Weddings;
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Who's Important?: Basic Rule #6:
Have a wedding that's meaningful for everyone.
I recently met a woman whose son is getting married this coming summer. I wished her well in completing the plans for the wedding day. "Oh, I have nothing to do with it," she said regretfully. "All they want me to do is show up."
How sad is that?
Now, my eldest child Erin is a very wise woman, and when we were in the throes of planning her and her fiance's wedding, she made a point of telling me (I was the Planner) that it was important to them that everybody in both families was involved in some way in this wedding day. Everyone was important. She was adamant that we make it easy for members of both families to intermingle and get to know each other.
This was high on her list of priorities and we made sure she got what she wanted.
Colleen, Erin's fiance's mom, was not in the same position as the woman I recently met who was not at all involved in her son's wedding.
Very early on in the process, Colleen volunteered her time and artistic expertise to do anything that she possibly could to help out. So we took her up on it, of course!
She had wonderful ideas and great skill and created a beautifully decorated seating plan chart for the lobby of the banquet hall as well as a gorgeous and touching "family tree" for the lobby - a real sumac hung with pictures of all of Erin and Chris's family members and a whole bunch of black and white photos of ancestors. There was even a lovely poem displayed about marriages being like the parts of a tree.
Wow!
We delegated jobs to Chris's aunts and uncles and family friends - putting up the decorations in the church; moving those decorations to the reception venue after the ceremony; giving readings at the church; taking care of getting the ushers to the church and reception, since none of the ushers had vehicles, and much, much more. They were an enormous help and they fixed snags in the plans as those inevitable problems cropped up, too.
Now my family, they're pretty adept at this whole wedding thing. We've been through a whole bunch of weddings, all of us helping out, and all us kids were born entertaining at the many elaborate functions my parents hosted in their own social circle and for business.
I didn't have to conscript anyone to help - they were lined up at my door, ready to go as soon as the date was set!
Everyone in my family who attended this wedding wanted to be - and was - involved and had at least one job: transporting stuff to the reception hall; helping make the invitations; helping put together the guest favours; hosting a shower; baking goodies for the sweet table; giving toasts; being masters of ceremony; lighting family candles; leading Ukrainian traditions...
We joined the families immediately after the wedding ceremony when everyone at the church was invited to walk across the street to the steps of Tabaret Hall (the 150-year-old Hall just happening to have housed the department at Ottawa U from which Erin had just graduated) for a group picture.
Two families had just become one and we needed the picture to record this memorable event.
More on who's important in the wedding right here...
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