As the sun dipped behind the Santa Rosa mountains, I walked down the aisle, wearing a Westwood classic and a coat-hanger smile. Enveloped by the apricot-tinged sky, I was struck by the profound difference between weddings that celebrate the promise of a future rather than its accomplishment.
I’ve been married twice, you see – a starter marriage in my mid-twenties and the second just last month in my forties. It goes without saying that there are pros and cons to both. Looking back, I pine for the gravity-defying bosom and skin as yet unlined by life’s vices and vicissitudes. The childlike excitement about bridesmaids’ dresses and favours, plus the fact that someone else paid for most of it.
Conversely, as an older bride who has already done the whole palaver before, I’ll admit to initially lacking comparable enthusiasm for the Big Day 2.0. My fantasy of an intimate dinner was nixed immediately by my husband, who wanted to run the full nine yards. I definitely had to wind myself up and I guess there is a sense of remorse that I didn’t meet the real ‘one’ before a level of worldly cynicism took hold.
Culturally, we’ve been schooled to see weddings as something for young people, so much so that brides my age have confessed they feel too embarrassed to wear white or make a ‘big deal’. There is this residual belief that there’s something a bit tragic about a bride in her forties or beyond. As a fictional magazine editor says to Carrie Bradshaw in the first Sex And The City movie, ‘Forty is the last age a woman can be photographed in a wedding gown without the unintended Diane Arbus subtext.’ While this comment hasn’t aged well, the sentiment still prevails – even if it’s more privately kept these days.
Now I feel very differently. In fact, I think everyone should consider waiting until their forties to get married, because who the hell really knows themselves before then? Who really knows their partner? When I think of the humans my husband and I are now in comparison to when we met a decade ago, it makes me realise how differently things could have gone. We’ve grown together, entwining our vines around each other’s foundations, sanding down the edges of our jigsaw pieces until they fit more or less seamlessly. But 10 years ago? Even five? Our roots were far more independent and just as liable to grow towards disparate lights.
There’s a lot in the institution of marriage that relates to family but, having gone through that particular valley, it’s wild to me that we see the ‘right’ order to be marriage first, children second. When I told my Great Aunt Greta that I was pregnant with my first son, she pointedly said, ‘Shame the cart came before the horse.’ Yet parenthood changes so many elements of you. My kids, whether they made it Earthside or not, shattered then remade me in a new mould. I have different dreams, desires and dilemmas.
Some 40% of couples divorce within five years of having their first child. Two out of five. That flimsy piece of paper is no panacea when it comes to keeping families together. Aside from the sometimes suffocating challenges of raising young kids, I believe it’s the transformative aspect of matrescence and its male equivalent that causes the rupture for so many. The fact that I still want to walk forward holding Daddy’s hand wasn’t a given and in nearly every way I’m happy we entered parenthood before we were bound by (in our case, secular) prayer.
In the run-up to my second wedding, I was unusually calm. The internal serenity didn’t come about because I was marrying the right man, but because I’ve finally learned how to deal with the worst of myself. Through my twenties and thirties, I shed bucket loads of shame, forgave myself for failings and decided that I deserve joy. These are literally souvenirs of the ageing process, with no shortcuts available.
What else? Well, I no longer care what anyone thinks about what I’m wearing or how I’m spending my money. At 26, I wasted so much time and energy on self-judgement and second-guessing myself. Is this dress chic? Do people think I’m too young to get married? Are my flowers clichéd? What will all my fashion friends think? All that’s gone and, in the hush, there is clarity and a deep sense of self. Choosing a dress was one of the most fun experiences of my life and I’m now confident enough to break the rules. A dip- dyed veil to match the sunset? Why not? Vampy talons in rouge noir? Bien sûr. It’s not to everyone’s taste, but that’s the point. Bridal isn’t one thing, because women aren’t one thing, especially not older birds like me!
On that note, so many of my friends have admitted they’d do things differently now and regret not standing their ground. From being dominated by overbearing in-laws, to guilted into huge guest lists or traditional ceremonies, it’s harder to push back when you’re young. By midlife, lots of couples dream of a do-over, because they’ve been redone themselves by the years that have passed, finding their voice, agency and power.
I guess it’s really a question of perspective. Outside of a really bad bout of food poisoning, I knew not much could really go wrong and it was happening. And happen it did, changing both everything and nothing on that unseasonably mild October evening under a candy-coloured Californian sky.