There is a lot to be said for the private, intimate ceremony that is held between a man and woman when he proposes marriage. Depending on the couple, most proposals are made in private – a moment that is intense and intimate and filled with a gravitas that few other ceremonies related to marriage are going to accomplish. So consider the following – the wedding ceremony traditionally is about bringing the families together – and the bold, but honest truth is that there are many couples who do not want to bring their families together.
Husband and Wife
When I got married, the only member of my family to attend my wedding was my mother. My grandmother died six months before, my brother and I have not spoken in more than two decades and the only other family we have lives across the great pond in Great Britain. It was sweet to have my mother there, but I — like many of my contemporaries – do not come from a huge or especially close family.
Blood relations were once used to define what constituted our family and the modern day family is far more than just sharing DNA, but sharing warmth, compassion and common experience along with love and respect. A family is what you are building the foundation of or extending a branch off from when you marry.
Don’t Be Afraid to Walk Down a Different Aisle
Yet, it can seem embarrassing to admit that you don’t have fifty people you want to invite to your wedding. The average wedding seems to play host to some 200 guests. I don’t think I could populate a list with more than 30 names right now if my husband and I decided to renew our wedding vows. A great many of our guests came from his side of the family and from his pool of friends with only a small handful from my side.
If both bride and groom are in the same boat that I was in – consider walking down a different aisle. Rather than sweating the guest list and matching some unrealistic expectation for yourself – consider having a wedding that is just you, your prospective spouse and the minister performing the ceremony. You can have a perfectly lovely wedding in total privacy and seclusion.
Commitment and Intimacy
I’ve known at least one couple that planned their wedding this way. In fact, they invited only two other guests – one to stand for each of them and to act as witnesses to their very private nuptials. They knew they would be offending some members of their families and there was more than one friend that felt hurt that they hadn’t been one of the only two invited witnesses. However, they confronted both of these feelings head on with a simple announcement card that read:
We invite you to take a moment on April 5th at 5:00 p.m. to say a prayer, a blessing or simply to observe a moment of silence as we, the bride and the groom, commit ourselves to one another and to walking the path of life together. In privacy and intimacy, we will make our commitment because our marriage is about joining our lives.
When you see us before, you will know us as we were – individual and singular.
We invite you to join us at the Omni Hotel in the private dining room for a celebration dinner at 7 p.m. In lieu of any gifts, we ask that you instead make a donation to charity in our names as a couple that we will have become. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your love, your kindness and your devotion.
They walked down a different aisle and they came out the other end joined in love and unity. Not a bad way to go.