Weekend Wedding Update #8

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Last week it hit me: I have been preparing for the wedding as though it is the only thing that matters, but in reality the wedding is actually just the start of something much bigger: our marriage. I have been getting increasingly caught up in dresses, registries, dates, times, themes and venues, when the wedding day is actually pretty minor compared to what we are embarking on together. A lifetime. We want to be faithful to one another for a whole lifetime, Lord willing. It has only just now begun to sink in for me. 

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One of my favourite novel is Anna Karenina. I love it because it is like getting to watch your favourite period drama, like Downton Abbey or Little Dorrit, in book form. You are given the private thoughts and motives of each character and allowed to see everything from their eyes. But one of my favourite things about the novel is the way that Tolstoy writes about marriage, in particular the marriage of Levin and Katya.

Half the novel is devoted to the courtship of Katya by the woefully awkward and idealistic Levin, but rather than stop the novel with the wedding, we watch the relationship continue to unfold as they become parents and deepen their love for one another. I adore Jane Austen, but each novel ends with the wedding. We are never allowed the pleasure of watching the rest of the journey.

So as I consider our impending marriage I look to Tolstoy, not Austen, for my literary guide to marriage. I have decided that I need to be preparing my heart and my soul as well as my dress for the next several decades of being with this guy. We have started our premarital counselling with our pastor and his wife. I am hoping this will be one way to prepare. I have also been treating my engagement ring as a reminder.

I know that it symbolises a promise by Sheldon to marry me, but I have been training myself to think, "This is a commitment to Sheldon for our whole lives. This is real and it has to last." whenever I find myself looking at my ring.

In short, we have moved forward with some of the wedding planning. We have rented chairs. We have contacted a photographer. We are working on food and invitations. But the wedding is just the beginning.