Wedding or Not...

By Morgan Karpiel

Ah, weddings…I’ve been there twice and can honestly say the next time is going to be strictly between me and me. Me in the dress. Me in the suit. The Reverend Jack Daniels presiding. Oh, I know. We’re supposed to be conjuring images of white frosting and lace, things blue and Mom crying tears of joy. But there’s always one person in the room who can’t take it, and today that person is me.

I’ve been invited to a lot of weddings lately, which seems to happen when you’re at that listless phase of depression where everything becomes either inappropriately funny or inexplicably sad. In marriage, in relationships, I’m a veteran of all the great wars: good boy, bad boy, toy boy…and I’ve played the best parts: the co-dependent, the selfless savior, the self destructive nemesis, the blushing bride, the good wife, the not-so-good wife, both the first and the last to let go.

How to capture that realm of possibility into a piece of cake with frosted flowers, or the swirl of snow white dress? A wedding is a ritual of hope, of celebration. I get that. I do. I also understand that those who turn it into a long-term marriage have found a kind of bliss, a friendship that braids together years of things going wrong and things going right, a rich history that lives in two people alone. That’s powerful, and precious, and rare.

But for those of us who never make it to that state of timeless synchronization formed from a perfect arrangement of pink roses and baby’s breath, I say fear not, because you’re not wrong and you’re certainly not alone. Rather than being etched in icing, your adventure is fluid and introspective, your journey no less powerful for being sometimes duet and sometimes solo, committed and/or alone.

Single sojourners eat cake too. So as a million sequins are sewn onto a million copies of Kate Middleton’s dress, and millions of plastic brides and grooms are placed on smooth fondant, I raise my glass to those who have found a different set of expectations, a different kind beauty, and all those (married or not) who’ve discovered that some of life’s greatest revelations can never truly be shared.