Wedding Season
The temporary microcosms of our most important gatherings
As I drove home from a friend’s wedding last fall, lines from a favorite poem kept rolling around in my mind. Strangely, not a poem about love or marriage, but a poem about school. I found it in 2015 in an AT shelter journal while backpacking with friends in Grayson Highlands and now I have shared the poem, called “Did I Miss Anything?” by Tom Wayman, with my students at the beginning of class ever since. I recommend you read it in whole, but to summarize, it consists of a teacher giving possible answers to a student inquiring about what happened when they missed class. The answers alternate between two extremes, from “Nothing… we sat in silence… for the full two hours,” to “Everything… an angel or other heavenly being appeared…” Then it ends with this:
“Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human experience
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been gatheredbut it was one place
And you weren’t here”
Of course, when I read this poem with students, we discuss the privilege of education and the importance of class community and conversation. But I thought of that poem on my long drive from upstate New York to Virginia and I’ve been thinking of it again this week because it also captures my feelings about a powerful aspect of weddings. A wedding is its own microcosm—one that is unique to the couple, the place they’ve chosen for their celebration, the days over which it occurs, and the people they have assembled to query and examine and celebrate love.
What is wonderful about a wedding? The reunion with family or friends. The elevated food and the often free drinks. The general pomp and circumstance. I am fortunate to have friends who are thoughtful with their events, and every wedding I’ve been to has been meaningful and moving in ways unique to the couple. Personal vows read to the crowd, expressions of their love conveyed by the officiant, or other rituals they weave into the ceremony which express their essence as individuals and couples.
This past weekend, my Spring 2023 wedding season closed with a series of events so special they’re hard to find words for. My childhood friend Elizabeth married her long-time partner Will in a palace thirty minutes outside Stockholm, situated on a beautiful property on the Baltic Sea. On Friday we came together for lunch in an orchard in a park in the middle of Sweden, as green and idyllic as you’re imagining. On Saturday we set out on a boat cruise through the Stockholm archipelago, during which we spied rocky beaches and red houses as we sipped on spritzes and snacked on canapés while clad in our Midsommar whites. After returning to shore, buses took us to Häringe Slott, the palace we’d call home for the next two days. We changed into bathing suits for a DJ’d pool party and sipped more wine while we explored the grounds. Then we gathered in the candlelit dining hall for dinner before moving upstairs for a reception in our New Year's Eve best.
The next morning, I joined dozens of other guests for a sea and sauna rotation, moving a few times between soaking in the Baltic and meditating in the steamy sauna. Later I played Catan with my friend’s friends in the parlor. Just as the afternoon rain paused we gathered in a circular courtyard for the ceremony, which Elizabeth and Will walked in together and, after a beautiful speech by their officiant, gave equally beautiful vows to each to each other. We began imbibing with cake and champagne in the parlor, then had a plated dinner in a tent outside. Later the next DJ kicked off the dance party which went on until 2:30 am—but not before the kitchen staff brought out a vat of hot dogs for us to midnight-snack on. The sun, which didn’t set till 10 pm, began to rise again at 3, and some twenty of us headed back to the dock for a final swim in the day’s first light.
The glamour of the event is what felt most remarkable, of course, in comparison to my normal life. It was exciting and revelatory and such a treat. But besides the couple’s powerful commitment and their expressions of love, what I find most beautiful about this event and the other weddings I’ve attended is the creation of that temporary microcosm, the blip in time and space where they bring together the people most important to them. And what a privilege it is to not only be a guest, to be chosen to be there as part of that group, but also to witness this community. What joy it is to meet a friend’s friends or family from an era of their life you weren’t a part of or close to. How wonderful to be reunited with the roommates you met a decade ago at a college party or the cousins you danced with as kids at a relative’s wedding, to come together again as adults or even to meet people you’ve only heard of. And not only to put faces to names but to see your friend in their friends, and then build your own relationships with them—even if just for the weekend. How wonderful to be strangers but, as part of this ritual, exchange heartfelt memories over dinner and then share a private dance floor. In daily life, we are at the center of our own universes, with our chosen people orbiting around us. Then for these events, we get to become a planet, learning about all the other planets as they pass by.
In many ways, a wedding is like a festival. Vendors descend on a site and build the infrastructure, then guests arrive from different corners of the country or world to populate it. Everyone meets under a big tent, then a day later they all disperse back to their normal lives or their next events. It’s a pop-up party that unfolds and folds back up again.
But in that brief microcosm, that short opening, we all assemble to recognize and celebrate the people we cherish. To witness them promise their love and for us to support it publicly. It is not the only place such an opportunity can be gathered, but it is a unique one. Something I’ve found myself expressing at more than one post-wedding brunch parting is how previously when I met a friend’s friend who lives elsewhere we could say “See you at their wedding!” But now, at their wedding, there is no clear reunion ahead. We all exist together in this temporary snow globe of the couple’s life and we appreciate it even more for its temporariness.
This magic of the microcosm is true for the equally gorgeous and moving weddings I attended earlier this month and for all of my friends’ weddings before that. How beautiful it is to enter the microcosm of their communities, how fun to be privy to the people of their worlds, how lucky to be invited to that “one place”—and to be there.