“People Are Still Getting Married”
Ray and I married on a chilly Friday night in December of 1974. We said “I do” in the church building where I had worshipped since I was four years old. Following the ceremony and a few pictures, we joined our guests in the fellowship hall in the basement where we had wedding cake, punch, mixed nuts, and mints of pastel pink, yellow, white, and green. Then we ran to Ray’s maroon Chevy Nova through a shower of rice and rain.
Except for the vows we wrote ourselves and the Christmas trees and candles — instead of flowers and candles — that decorated the front of the church, our wedding was like almost every other wedding I had ever attended. Brides and grooms were having fancier weddings in the 1970s, but not in Ashland City. For us, our wedding was a dream come true, special because we were getting married and special because of the loved ones who surrounded us.
On the first day of our On the Traces of Pierre Boucher tour, we spent a few hours in Montreal’s Old Town after our visits to the La Maison Amérindienne (translated American Indian House) and Fort Chambly. Ray and I stuck close to Place d’Armes square where the statue of Montreal’s founder, Paul Chomeday de Maisonneuve, . . .
. . . faces the ornate Notre-Dame Basilica.
In front of the basilica, a photographer snapped photos of a beautiful bride in white standing on the sidewalk, surrounded by the groom, the wedding party, and the wedding guests, and by spectators. It was a far cry from our wedding over 42 years before.
By the time Ray and I finished our walk through Old Montreal, . . .
. . . enjoying the architecture, . . .
. . . and the shops, . . .
. . . the flowers, . . .
. . . and the people, . . .
. . . we had seen two or three more brides on the sidewalks, including this one in bare feet.
As we gathered with the other members of our tour to walk to dinner, I told someone about all the brides we had seen. “People are still getting married,” she replied, almost as if she was surprised.
I have been in a couple of conversations recently in which people of my generation have lamented the fact that, among young people they know, marriage seems to be a novelty. Of course, this truth has dire consequences for families and children and our country and the world.
As beautiful as the brides were that afternoon and evening in Montreal, . . .
. . . the most beautiful thing that happens when a man and woman “join together in holy matrimony” is that God is the One Who joins them.
And He answered and said,
“Have you not read
that He who created them from the beginning
made them male and female,
and said, ‘For this reason
a man shall leave his father and mother
and be joined to his wife,
and the two shall become one flesh’?
So they are no longer two, but one flesh.
What therefore God has joined together,
let no man separate.”
Matthew 19:4-6