Wedding Traditions

As I prepare for my wedding in May I am surrounded by various conflict as I make decisions for my big day.  I receive so much advice, wanted and unwanted, when it comes to planning my big day. One thing I am conflicted with is traditions and wedding etiquette. This day and age we are able to have wedding websites, and register for gifts without leaving the house, things that are far from anything that has been done long ago. Weddings have come a long way, but traditions typically stay the same… Something borrowed, something blue, something old, and something new. Small things that seem silly, but brides continue to follow what their mothers and grandmothers have done in the past.

This post has nothing to do with my wedding, or how I plan to follow tradition, but rather it is about another bride who did something differently, and although I was not present for her big day, she filled my heart with joy and my eyes with tears.

She took a different rout than what has typically been done, and it couldn’t have been more brilliant.

After the couple shared their first dance as husband and wife they asked all couples who were married to join them on the dance floor. As the song got going they asked all couples who have been married for one year or less to kindly take their seat. They continued to ask those to leave the dance floor until there was only one couple left, that couple had been married for 55 years. The bride then gave her bouquet to couple. In my opinion it was an exchange between the newest marriage and the most seasoned marriage.

The couple left standing on the dance floor was my Grandparents.  After 55 years, three daughters, and five grandkids, they have stuck by one another and still love each other as much as they did in 1960; decades before wedding websites, and online registries. I feel that the true tradition to be recognized is that of love. This bride went outside the box. Instead of tossing a bouquet in hopes to start a new marriage, she shared the flowers with a couple who has already proved they can handle a marriage for over half a century.