Monday, September 12, 2016

It was the wedding of the year

I've been saving up my holiday time all year so that we could participate in two of the most important events in our family life. The first was the birth of our third grandchild, little Rebekah. We took time to go and meet her and to celebrate with her family in August. That was very sweet.

The second event was the wedding our our son, Thomas to Terri Lynn Paulson.

So we booked off a week to go and help them run errands, set up, clean up, provide meals, and just invest in them and their day. It was an exhausting, wonderful week. :)

And what a wedding.  People ask how it was and my reply has been that is was a wonderful day, because it was a wedding that was who they are as a couple. It wasn't a wedding based on who the parents are or what Pinterest is saying. It wasn't a day based on societies expectations of weddings or how much money you could burn up for it. It was based on who these two are. People of community, people of the table, people of simple intentional lives, people of Jesus.

An outdoor wedding in the treed church alcove, surrounded by tall trees and the wide open blue skies above. A time for refreshments and visiting and games right there after the service. Then into the church hall for the dinner and a few speeches and live music from many of their friends.

They grew the vegetables for the meal, and their chef friend prepared the gourmet meal. They chose instead of a wedding cake, a fruit and chocolate crumble sort of thing that they served themselves. They had no bridal parties but many friends. They had no flower girls but had significant people in their lives bring forward real sunflowers they had been given, during the service. She came down the aisle to him reading a love poem he had written just for her. Her wedding dress was borrowed from a friend and she was beautiful in it.

Yeah it was an amazing day.

Terri Lynn is a delight and her family were great to meet and to work with. They are good Saskatchewan farm people. :)  And I met her grandparents who are Amateur Radio people themselves, so win, I got to talk ham radio at the wedding!


I officiate at weddings for my work, and often they are about somebody else's personality, wants, and desires. I always work to pull it back to the couple and what they want, but depending on the couple and the extended family, that sometimes doesn't work.

I see thousands of dollars put into those days, and huge expectations and thin relationships stretched to the breaking point. Just to have a wedding like others have.

That's why this was so fresh and real and alive and good.

I've seen that in both our children's weddings and that pleases me more than I realized it would. That their wedding days were consistent with who they are, or were at the time. That makes me happy.


Thomas and Terri Lynn with Lauralea's parents and my mom