Wedding Bell Chimes of Couplehood and Community

It isn’t every day that you get to go to a wedding, which is a sad departure, I think, from the way summers used to be. There was a time when June and July seemed a cavalcade of seed pearl bodices and beer-sodden receptions at which somebody’s out-of-town relative would inevitably belt out “Kansas City.” Then times changed, and we became the out-of-town relatives, and you could no longer count on elaborate nuptials to keep you up on the nuances of family.

So when the invitation came in the mail, all white and engraved last month, we stuck it on the refrigerator with our finest magnet, treasuring it in the tradition of out-of-town relatives everywhere. This, and we weren’t even technically related to the happy couple: my husband’s old college roommate from Berkeley and the sweetheart who, not a moment too soon, was ending his long, long, extraordinarily long, really much-too-drawn-out bachelorhood.

“Mind if I stay home?” begged the teenager. “I have a tournament and the team needs me and it’s just gonna be a bunch of old hippies. I know. I saw

‘The Big Chill.’ ” We noted that “The Big Chill” involved a funeral, but as the old hippies say, we heard what she was saying. You had to have been there to regard the union of two, as the teenagers say, geezers, as any kind of romantic thrill.

But it was thrilling, there in the rose garden among the old hippies, as we stood with our littler children, watching our blushing, middle-aged friends walk down the aisle. More thrilling than we’d expected, and this, too, seemed a departure, though that realization didn’t sink in for a little while.

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What does it take to create a perfect union? Some people consider this question for years. Their friends tsk-tsk and tut-tut and their mothers drop broad hints about grandchildren and still nothing disturbs that unshakable balance between their hearts and their fears.

Our friend was well into his late 40s when he finally married; he had lived in his house with his dog for almost as long as anyone could recall. At the wedding, people joked about the way his rosebushes finally began to blossom when love found its way past those bachelor-pad walls.

But there are all sorts of unions and many ways to stay single. Blessing the couple, the minister spoke eloquently of connectedness. Holding our squirming children, we looked around from one familiar face to another. What good was couplehood, we wondered, if it didn’t make you more than just a twosome? Wasn’t community also a connection to be blessed?

To everything, there is--well, you old hippies know how it goes. At some point, you look around and see, not just couples, but people who’ve taken that next step and pledged their troth to life. Doctors. Lawyers. High school teachers and university professors. People who organize laborers and volunteer and do corporate philanthropy. People who don’t buy the idea that you can’t do good while doing business. People whose idea of a perfect union goes beyond the love of husbands and wives.

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Of course, this thought was fleeting, more a mood than a notion as we retired to the reception for cake and booze and those strange, sweaty dances that always get danced at weddings by out-of-town relatives. And there’s no way of knowing how much of our euphoria was just the standard rush of validation that married couples feel when two more wayfarers join the home-n-hearth club.

But we came away from the celebration with a new appreciation for old rituals, glad that seed pearl bodices and beer-sodden receptions haven’t entirely gone away. The nuances of family, of connection, are so much broader and more precious than we tend to remember. Weddings remind us. You don’t get a gift like that every day.

Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is [email protected]