Praise the Lord, the clock continues to tick down towards our wedding! We’ve been engaged 3 months today and there are just 133 days left until we get married. I’ll do another general update post later, but in the meantime . . .
One does a lot of reading and browsing as you plan for a wedding. The tricky thing (for me) is to train yourself to look for *ahem* legitimately useful information, and not necessarily affirmation, from the internet. (Wedding websites are fun but can also be replete with worldliness, silliness, and downright non-weddings . . . one has to be careful . . .)
I’ve dealt with a small case of that (“that” being not looking for online affirmation) lately in the realm of wedding day traditions – especially as it pertains to reading some online discussions in Catholic circles.
I’m not going to call these laymen’s discussions good or bad or indifferent . . . after all, who I am I to say what’s definitively best when it comes to these things? . . . but there seems to be a current trend of some Catholics nay-saying older wedding-day traditions because, in their minds, they’re potentially theologically unsound or don’t represent the Sacrament well. Now, I may agree with some of these things. But with other arguments, I kind of wonder what the hullabaloo’s about, and if maybe some of these dear faithful are thinking a little too hard . . . but I’m not an expert . . .
Anyway, I don’t want to write a theological dissertation on this – instead, it’s just been on my mind to share a few of the wedding day traditions The Dash and I are keeping, and why we were drawn to keeping them in the first place.
1. Saving the First Look
Nowadays, a lot of couples (Catholic and non-Catholic alike) are bypassing the custom of saving the “first look” until the altar, and are instead having a private “first look” pre-wedding.
I don’t have the smallest problem with this – and trust me, when you’re typing out your wedding day timeline and juggling the thousand logistical pieces that must take place even for a “simple wedding,” the option of taking bride and groom photos before the wedding is very appealing. And plus, you get to see the person you are 100% keen on spending the rest of your life with. You might get to pray together, or do any number of spiritually beautiful and sentimental things.
And as for me, I hate being apart from The Dash at any time. I am also an addicted communicator. Initially, I was anything but mooning over the idea of saving the first look because, of course, it meant being separated our entire wedding morning. However, I discovered The Dash was leaning in the direction of saving our first look, and so it became something we discussed in more depth.
Some Catholics’ arguments against this tradition seem to arise because the practice, at one point, was tied to the superstition of “bad luck” being incurred if the groom saw his future bride in her wedding gown. Some also say that saving the first look makes it all about the glorious emergence of the bride and less about the intentions of the couple to enter into the Sacrament together.
I understand where they’re coming from, although I think it may be helpful to point out that so many Catholic customs and feast days are truth-filled “makeovers” of pagan or superstitious customs. Now, I’m not going to make a case for one practice over another, especially because it appears that 99% of their worth depends on the intentions and dispositions of the couple in question, and less about any underlying theology (or lack thereof) to a simple custom.
However, I do want to give a small defense of saving the first look. The Dash and I eventually decided that we wanted to save the first look for the altar, and it had nothing to do with superstition.
To us, it serves as a reminder of all sorts of things: the special and sacred unveiling that occurs in marriage; how, even though we have spent most of our lives as total strangers to one another, God allowed us to come into one another’s lives and is blessing our union in marriage until death do us part, and making us one. Not seeing one another during the morning evokes memories of all that time we spent “not knowing” one another and makes our encounter at the altar all the more poignant. It also reminds one of how Tobias and Sarah were literally promised to one another the day they met.
And, on a merely natural level, saving the first look builds love and anticipation of seeing one another . . . which isn’t a bad thing. It’s pretty safe to say we’ll be equally anxious to see one another on our wedding day – it isn’t all about me making a glorious entrance. That could very well be the motivation for some, but while I want to look my best for The Dash like any bride wants to on her wedding day, I don’t want to be making a spectacle – I want to see him!
In a way, saving the first look also represents how we’ve refrained from some “good things” (or at least, appealing things) in courtship and engagement for the sake waiting for the “best things” in marriage. In something as simple as holding hands, we learned in the transition from courtship to engagement that it makes those “best things” all the sweeter if you wait for them.
As a bride, I want my encounter with The Dash at the altar to be surrounded with the emotional and (more importantly) spiritual sweetness of having waited for the moment, as we’ve waited for so many other things.
Finally, on another level, it’s the last morning I’ll be spending with my family as an unmarried woman. Making the choice to wait to see The Dash until our wedding begins means that I can spend my wedding morning with my family in a special way that I might not be able to otherwise.
2. My Dad Escorting Me Down the Aisle
I’ll admit that this topic gets my feathers ruffled much more easily than disagreements over saving the first look 😉
Now, I definitely want to be clear that I don’t frown at Catholic couples who decide they want to process in together to their wedding, most likely to emphasize their free consent in entering into the Sacrament. They are seeking to point towards a truth, after all. And if the bride’s father is tragically not a part of her life, or has already passed away, this choice makes all the more sense.
However, it really (really) bothers me when people who are of this mentality go on to argue that having the father of the bride escort his daughter down the aisle is a “Protestant” choice, and misrepresents the Sacrament. I’ve been surprised over the past few years to discover how many well-meaning Catholics feel this way. It is very common!
My dad is certainly going to escort me down the aisle . . . I wouldn’t have it any other way.
My fear is that these Catholics, who focus their disapproval on the historical aspect of some brides being escorted by their fathers in a “transactional marriage,” are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. In their zeal for doing things correctly, they seem a little too eager say, “To have the bride escorted by her father is a Protestant tradition when marriages were simply transactions and the bride had no say. A far more Catholic way of doing things is for the bride and groom to process in together.”
My fear is that they’re neglecting to see and acknowledge a deeply Catholic truth concerning fatherhood and family order, and unintentionally sweeping it away in tandem with our modern culture that also denigrates these things.
A child is never their parent’s property. But the Church has always taught that the husband and father is the spiritual head of his family. St. John Chrysostom wrote clearly to husbands in Homily 20: “Let us then be very thoughtful both for our wives, and children, and servants; knowing that we shall thus be establishing for ourselves an easy government, and shall have our accounts with them gentle and lenient, and say, ‘Behold I, and the children which God has given me.’
(Isaiah 8:18) If the husband command respect, and the head be honorable, then will the rest of the body sustain no violence.”
Husbands, despite their sins and imperfections as all humans are capable of, are made by God to be the leaders and protectors of the family. The father of the bride has been, since her conception, her spiritual “head.” This does not mean her “owner;” she is not his possession or his slave. But she has been placed under his protection and authority all throughout her childhood. This does not discount that she’s now an adult and makes the choice to marry of her own free will. If her relationship with her father is intact, she seeks his blessing on her marriage, because she loves him, and also because he is the head of the family she came from.
And . . . standing at the end of the aisle is her beloved, her future husband, who once the vows have been said will be instituted as the head, leader and protector of her new family. She is not being passed from one “owner” to the other. But, of her own free will, she is entering under a new holy headship in marriage in relation to her husband. They are equal in dignity, one in flesh, must abide in mutual love and help, knowing that what profits one of them profits both, and what harms one of them harms both. But her husband has been given the headship, while she resides at the heart. Though some have unfortunately watered this reality down in modern times, this is authentic Catholic teaching.
I do not disagree that the bride and groom processing in together points out a beautiful truth of marriage – that of their free consent. However, any valid wedding points to that same truth already when the couple exchanges their separate vows. Because . . . that is why the vows are there to begin with. They indicate free, individual and mutual consent.
Any catechized Catholic couple who desires to get married knows that the marriage cannot happen if either party does not consent of their free will. They administer the Sacrament to one another, with the priest presiding, witnessing, blessing. This is very basic Church teaching and every priest is required to ascertain the free will of both parties during marriage preparation.
Having the father of the bride escort his daughter down the aisle as a loving custom does not negate this truth. Rather, it points to a sister truth – that of the family structure God ordained from the creation of man. Matrimony, taken from Latin, literally means “making a mother.” (Not that many modern brides are thinking along those lines.) The purpose of marriage is salvation and the begetting of a new family. So, if matrimony means “making a mother,” then we cannot honor motherhood without honoring fatherhood. We cannot rightly begin a new family without honoring the essential roles that uphold and sanctify the family.
The father of the bride lovingly escorts his God-given daughter down the aisle to the man who stands waiting to become the father of his own family. Both men’s hearts are full of love and awe at the beauty and sacredness of the woman who will make this possible through God’s design. Matrimony: making a mother. What a beautiful thing this is!
120 days left until our wedding! Here’s an update on what we‘ve gotten done since I last posted here . . . can’t promise that it will be anywhere near in order, but here goes!
Mary Jimenez :: That Sweet "Ave" 