Eco-Vintage Weddings

Showcase Wednesday: Wedding & Love Advice from my Mom!

Happy Wednesday, readers! Two weeks ago, my parents unearthed from storage their wedding photos from 30 years ago (!!). While I’ve seen these photos a few times in my life before recently, this was the first time I saw these photos since embarking on my own wedding planning.

My mother looked beautiful in her long organza gown, complete with a full circle skirt and a stand-up split neckline. The whole gown was trimmed with Chantilly lace. The dress was only the second gown that she tried on! Instead of a veil, my mother wore instead a lace-embellished hat with a wide brim. My father wore a white tuxedo – he looked sharp (and he looked SO MUCH like my brother!).

Along with the wedding pictures was a memory book that my mother kept while planning their wedding. Covering everything from bridal showers to their first home, each page is bursting with memories. I had never seen this book until recently, so it was such a treat for me to read through and imagine how excited my parents must have been to marry each other.

While the memory book is full of gift lists and guest book signatures, I took away a few life lessons that I thought I’d share with all of you:

-          Remember that the wedding is only one day in your lives, and act accordingly. My parents were high school sweethearts that married at 19 and 21 years old, so they had a modest wedding. My mother found her wedding dress at a local department store, and she split the cost of it with her father, my grandfather. My father, who was leaving for basic training for the Army, proposed to my mother with a diamond less than one month before he left. Throughout the memory book, I could feel my mother’s excitement – “Went to the church around 5:00 p.m. to get dressed. Forgot everything – my tote bag and my clothes for the next day! Where was my mind?!” Just before the wedding, my mother wrote this: “Time for the wedding; pretty soon my dream would come true!!” My parents served their guests cake, roast buns, mints, nuts, coffee and punch. Instead of embarking on a honeymoon cruise or a week-long vacation to Mexico, my parents moved to Colorado, where my father was stationed with the Army.

In reading her memory book, my mother has reminded me time and time again that all that matters is that Jordan and I end up married at the end of the day. The details of the day (like the wedding dress, the food, and the decorations) are literally just icing on the cake.

-          The wedding day may feel like living a dream, but day-to-day marriage is real life. One of my favorite parts of this memory book is the space where my mother wrote a letter to my father. While she admits that she should have written this letter shortly after their wedding, my mother instead wrote it two weeks before their 4^th wedding anniversary. In her letter, my mother talked about moving to Colorado and what an adventure their first year of marriage was (“the first year was so terrific – but more of a dream than reality”). My mother then talked about how difficult the second and third years of their marriage were, since my father was stationed in Germany during that time. My mother wrote, “We lived through it – and the meaning of trust and faithfulness took on a new light for us.”

Reading these words, and hearing my father tell stories of his life in Germany and my mother’s memories of her life in Colorado, only further illustrates the struggles that come along with marriage. But instead of lamenting that life wasn’t like their wedding day, my mother wrote about how their struggles made their marriage stronger. I can only hope that when I think back to the struggles that Jordan and I will encounter in our marriage that I have that outlook five, ten, twenty years from now.

Happy Wednesday!