Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels
I really wasn’t planning on seeing a wedding season at this point in my life. I’m nearly fifty, and I thought that my days of raising a champagne toast to the bride and groom before dancing in my bare feet to the “Macarena” and “YMCA” on the dance floor were long over.
This weekend, though, we were invited to a wedding with a reception in the city. It was quite a different experience to come to a full-on wedding party when we’ve all spent so much of our time recently focused on raising our children and on our professional lives. After the era of child birthday parties and playdates, we were now solidly in the era of scheduling events months and months in advance. And sadly, we had even entered that era where some of our scheduled get togethers were for much sadder events, like funerals.
Having a party where we could see old friends and gather in celebration (rather than in sadness as we’ve had to for some friends that have lost parents) is a joyful thing.
There are some noticeable differences I observed going to a wedding later in life, though. The bride and groom have established their lives, so they have a diverse set of friends and family to bring to the party. We met people from so many different aspects of their lives, not just the old school friends that you may have met when someone gets married much younger.
We all shared tales of life milestones and childrearing; stories so different from the tales of partying we may have shared when we were younger.
The band was a “retro” band that played all of the music from the 1990s and 2000s that I remember dancing to like it was yesterday. Yes, my brain still hasn’t processed the fact that when someone says something is from thirty years ago, they’re not talking about 1970, they’re talking about the time when I was in college. To soothe my pride and my aching feet, there were lovely flat slippers tidily placed by the dance floor. These golden slippers folded so neatly were praised by us old fogies who hadn’t worn high heels to go dancing in years and years, saving us from dancing around with bare feet on a dirty dance floor.
The wine, champagne, and cocktails were flowing all night. While it was fun to throw caution to the wind and indulge in our adult beverages, I’m still paying the price several days later. This was probably the biggest contrast to our wedding celebrations of previous years, where we could go to the afterparty and keep partying for the rest of the week with no deleterious aftereffects to our body.
The bride and groom made a lovely couple, and they had a reverend who was a close friend. That made all the difference as he spoke with love and humor about their marriage and the wonderful community that surrounded them. When I used to go to weddings when I was younger, I didn’t pay that much attention to the religious portion of the proceedings. But I have time now to contemplate what those words that bind these two soulmates together mean. And it was lovely to hear something that was meaningful and that embraced the community.
It was a lovely event, and it made me want to have more celebrations like this for our friends and family as we get older. Throwing a large and fabulous party where all of the many connections that we have made as we have lived our lives should be something that we do more often as we get older and not just reserve these gatherings for our younger and oblivious selves. We shouldn’t leave get-togethers for later in life to just be relegated to funerals, don’t you think?
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