From my experience, weddings ALWAYS have drama, even with the most supportive of families. Now drama can come from many places, but a year after my own wonderful wedding I am soundly convinced that my wedding drama largely stemmed from a single source: expectations.
At first, I thought the only drama around the time of my wedding was going to come from Game of Thrones. Boy was I wrong. In fact, vying for the iron throne would have been a welcome reprieve from running the gauntlet of other people’s expectations for my big day.
Family, friends, coworkers, even my rabbi felt so inclined as to weigh in on what they thought my wedding should look like, from the wedding color palette to who the best man should be to exactly how kosher the hors d’oeuvres at the reception should be. Side note: there’s kosher and non-kosher. There’s nothing in between. It’s sort of like how you can’t be half pregnant; you either are or you’re not.
It was as if people had lost their minds, forgetting how this was our wedding, emphasis on the “our” as in my soon-to-be-spouse and mine. And by “mine” I mean mostly hers, of course, because I’d be the dumbest groom alive to suggest otherwise. But that’s another story.
Honestly though, what was it about weddings that made people feel the need to weigh in, lob their opinions or feelings into the fray, and tell me how we needed to celebrate our own wedding?
It took me just about 365 days, almost to the day, to figure it out. Seriously. Now I won’t argue that the mandatory quarantine of a global pandemic certainly afforded me the alone time to put my thoughts together, but that’s neither here nor there. What my wife and I realized as we had our one-year anniversary dinner on lockdown was that expectations make the world go ‘round. For example:
I expect the federal government to have an off-the-shelf plan to deal with a pandemic.
I expect the IRS to take about half my paycheck for taxes (presumably to fund said pandemic response).
I expect English muffins to have little nooks and crannies for butter or jam, and for my smoke detectors to go off if there’s a fire.
I expect the post-person to deliver my mail and for the local Starbucks attendant to know my regular tall double pump vanilla latte skim milk extra whip order (because I’m in there most mornings).
My expectations range from the very reasonable to the highly suspect. Expectations for myself have driven me to be an ambitious self-starter. Expectations for my morning coffee not so much. Jason Parham summed it up best in an article he wrote for Wired magazine entitled, “Depth of Field: Game of Thrones Was Always Doomed to Disappoint.” “Expectations,” he noted, “are like organic sesame rice cakes—good in theory but seldom nourishing.”
Photo by Getúlio Moraes on Unsplash
So, despite how prevalent expectations are, and how nourishing or ridiculous they seem to be, why then would I expect those people who have been so fundamental in my life—those who have been present for my greatest success and worst failures—to have so few of them when it came to my wedding?
My mother expected me to marry a Jewish woman.
The male friend I’ve known the longest expected to be my best man and to give a speech in my honor at the reception.
My bride expected a stereotypically voiceless groom who didn’t give an iota about what the wedding looked like.
And me. I expected a western-looking, black tie affair with a 10 person-strong bridal party near my childhood home.
The funny thing is, despite how closely held all of these expectations were, mine included, none of those expectations ever came to be. Life, compromise, finances, kismet, whatever you want to call it, got in the way. I discovered nearly a year after my sari and kurta-clad Hind-Jewish destination wedding that we all have our own movie reels for ourselves, each other, even of the world. The hardest battles I had to fight in planning my wedding were when my decisions clashed with other people’s expectations.
It’s as if each person has a movie reel going on in their minds as to how the world ought to be: a mother has a movie reel for her son’s life, a bride has a movie reel of her perfect wedding, a veteran and real-life battle buddy has a movie reel of the best man he’s supposed to be. What weddings do is they often force people to edit, splice, wholesale cut, and fundamentally change the preconceived movie reel they had in their mind’s eye. In fact, perhaps the even greater lesson I realized was despite my own ongoing movie reel for the future, planning a wedding and being married at its core means co-directing the film.
Sometimes planning a wedding can be the first true test of a marriage. You’ve just found the co-director for the feature film of your life. You’ve screen tested other people’s movie reels, painstakingly (or perhaps not) encouraging them to splice together whole new narratives into how they see the world. Keep in mind that a little bit of compassion in the editing room goes a long way, both for yourself and for others.
So, keep hope and keep on plugging away at those wedding plans. And remember: though having to change a movie reel is a labor-intensive and time-consuming task, it’s better to reinvent expectations of a happy ending than end up with something like the Game of Thrones finale. Am I right?!?
Writer Eric is a U.S. Air Force veteran and lover of all things history. He enjoys sushi, superhero movies, and the thrill of a good taco truck. When he’s not writing, he’s gallivanting around the world hoping to discover something profound and new amongst all the clutter.
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Cover photo by AMISH THAKKAR on Unsplash
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