I’ve been married twice. Let’s just get that out there right now. Today I’m shame-free (okay, 88%), but when I went through the second divorce, I was ahead of many people in my generation who hadn’t got the memo… their marriage was over. I was like a white knight soaked in a lot of red wine. I was working at Trader Joe’s when my second marriage bit the dust, and women would corner me in the cracker aisle. How did you do it? they would whisper like we were bugged. How did I do it? Painfully, awkwardly and definitely not consciously uncoupling (fuck you Gwyneth.) It’s a happy co-parenting story today, eleven years later, but my divorces were as unconscious as my marriages… here’s the rub. You go into the marriage lacking choice and clarity… you leave the marriage the same way. Both in and out I felt powerless and like I had no agency… I just knew I was supposed to do something so I planned a wedding. Hence, the booming wedding industry. I am not saying you all who are married are clueless, and I am proud of people who make it far far past the wedding day and are still in love, but many many people don’t know what the fuck a wedding means. It’s not the dinnerware or the DJ… although that stuff is fun. It is the way you believe you should be getting married to this person FOREVER.
As I stood in David’s Bridal yesterday watching my stunning daughter get alterations for her prom dress, I had a flashback to fittings for my first wedding. My sister was the same age as my daughter - 17 - and no one had a freaking clue what was going on. While now, as a evolved (somewhat) fifty-something mom, I am on top of the care of my teenagers. My daughter needed me as back up helping to explain to the seamstress why this area needed tucking or that area needed cinching. She is just learning to ask for exactly what she wants to feel comfortable. My 17 year old sister, not so much. I recall her feeling so out of place in a plunging sequined lame gown as my maid of honor. I had no tools to help her. Heck, some make up artist on a movie I was producing plucked my eyebrows so thin I looked like the clown in It. That alone was enough reason to cancel the wedding (or get tattooed eyebrows) but I didn’t. I wasn’t “me” in those pictures (which I have long since thrown away.) I don’t know where any “real” adults were at the time of that wedding, but at 25, I was not one. Sure, I had an apartment and a car and a bank account, and I loved my husband to be, but I was not connected to the reality that is marriage. We had already been living together…. this was just a party to take it to the next place right? Wrong.
As the woman next to my daughter was fit for her wedding dress, I observed her sense of agency. She had bought it off the rack for cost purposes and was now getting as many alterations it was going to take to make her feel good about how she looked on her special day. That said, she was headed into couture pricing. She wanted the neckline to plunge less, and the waist to come in. “It’s a pretty dress,” I told her. (As an empath, it’s painful to watch a woman hoist her breasts up so many times with that look of panic in the mirror, and not try and make the energy more positive.) “Yeah but I don’t want to walk around my family with my boobs hanging out on my wedding day,” she said. Good point I thought, but that IS the dress you bought. Then again, she was making a choice based on another decision that hadn’t worked out. Except she kept saying it was fine, it was fine. I wanted to yell, don’t say it’s fine! It’s your wedding day. Don’t walk around with your boobs hanging out if you don’t want to! They continued to try and suggest other alteration alternatives, but she felt they compromised the cut. They went on to buttons down the back for $8 a pop and a underskirt for $250 and then a bustle. Eventually they found a solution for the neck line and you could feel the relief pervading the whole room. Thank God. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I had done NONE of this for my weddings.
What I would redo about my weddings (the second happening one week after my dad died of a massive heart attack on my sister’s couch) is I would have the peace, calm and fun of who I am in my 50’s. I totally get the wedding in your 50’s. Or even older. I know the right professionals, I can take as long as I damn please to get the dress. I can make intentions lists and meditate on them. I can call other women and ask their advice on costs and venues. I can also wait until the time is right, and I know. I can make the guest list to who I want. If I even changed my mind, I could, and know it was in the best of integrity for me. The first time I was married, I don’t remember buying the dress, but I do recall the pain for my sister and her misguided youth with the fitting of that dress. In my second wedding, I couldn’t bear a wedding dress and I remember buying an Anna Sui cocktail dress and crazy expensive gold shoes at Nordstrom shoe salon. It was painful and not fun. It was a hurried experience. I had a one year old and I was in pain from my dad’s death. I didn’t need to have either of those weddings, and my relationships with both men would have been the exact same had I not gone down the aisle or not. The wedding meant nothing. I had no idea what it meant to get married or what a wedding was for me. Today I get that better understanding.
In my third marriage, I would have my girlfriends all around me. I would be in the splendor of making a decision to love someone as my partner for ever. Add in the fact that I took the holy plunge last year to be a Christian and I truly would be lying if I said I didn’t want to walk down the aisle in the church. No it wouldn’t be traditional at all, my dad is long dead and as my childhood abuser, he wouldn’t be invited. And I don’t have any other father figures (which is kind of a thank God at this point..) so I would have to pray to God to figure out that configuration, but I know that my friend Charlene got married recently in her mid 60’s and she had a friend walk her down the aisle… or maybe she just walked down herself now that I think about it. Note to self to ask.
It’s okay to want a redo. I don’t care if you have been married three times. We know what we know when we know it. I didn’t know shit about love in my 20’s and barely did in my 30’s, and I think after eleven years of research, I have a good idea now of who I would want to tether myself to. Is there a wedding in my future? I don’t know… but it would be definitely “the great redo.”
Whether becoming officially married or entering a new relationship multiple times, one hopes to have learned something from the previous episode that can be carried over into the new one. Being aware of mistakes made and learning from them is a primary goal in life we should all follow, although some of us are better at this than others. We all get "redos" at some point and the goal is to make it a better version of the first attempt that was not successful. There are no guarantees for success, but if nothing is ventured, nothing is gained, even if you have to try more than once.