Wedding Day Celebration Emotional

Today is the day after my daughter’s wedding. All in all, the wedding was an incredible event, held under a tent in a torrential downpour—courtesy of Hurricane Bill—with a full roster of guests from places near and far who, while challenged by the weather, were undeterred in their desire to celebrate this moment with the bride and groom.

My own wedding was similar, some 25 years ago, though it wasn’t a hurricane but a blizzard that swept in, blanketing the city with snow. The blizzard actually seemed somewhat anticlimactic given the fact that the church my wife and I had selected for the ceremony had burned down the day after we put all the wedding invitations into the mail.

The church, however, had a small chapel hall—one that I was quite familiar with from the AA meetings that were held there every Wednesday night—that had not been damaged and was made available for the wedding. So, essentially, while it was spruced up nicely with flowers and ribbons for the ceremony, my wife and I, both sober alcoholics, inadvertently got married in an AA meeting hall.

I think, perhaps, inclement weather is a good sign for a wedding, at least I’ve chosen to look at it that way, and I can only hope my daughter and new son-in-law have a marriage as successful as my wife and I. With the fellowship of AA as a kind of steward throughout, we’ve both learned that our sobriety, on an individual level, must come first, for, without that, we would both be at sea.

There were plenty of tears at the wedding yesterday—tears of joy, tears of relief —and I imagine additional tears will come sooner or later as a more mundane reality dawns after months of non-stop wedding planning.

My daughter has always had difficulty with the day after, suffering a drop-off of emotion after birthdays and holidays. But she’s gotten a lot better over the years and at least she’s aware of her tendency and knows that it’s more than likely to occur.

In fact, as we were dancing at the wedding, in our special turn together alone on the dance floor with everybody watching, she whispered in my ear, “Tomorrow’s gonna be a real killer.” We nodded together and laughed and she did a graceful spin, delighting the guests seated around the dance floor.

It made me happy to hear her say that and to watch her spin, hopeful that she wasn’t going to let an irrational fear of tomorrow get in the way of her enjoyment of today, a psychological and emotional construct that had kept me from enjoying things much of my own life.

Gratefully, she was able to maintain that approach throughout the evening, fully appreciating all that the wedding had to offer. And she has been able to hold onto that feeling even through today, the day after, calling us from Rhode Island, where they went after the wedding, to report how wonderful they both still felt and how grateful they were for all the work that had gone into making the wedding so special for them.

I have no doubt that an emotional letdown will occur at some point, but for now, on the day after, they are both still basking in the glow of a wedding even the remnants of a hurricane couldn’t extinguish.