Personal Story - Why Do We Get Married?
I asked myself this question many times during the last 6 weeks prior to our wedding. Why do we get married?
The pressure of executing the most special event I ever organized got to me.
Even though I used to organize large scale events in my previous career, this one challenged me in different ways. Our beautiful wedding took place in Romania, my country of origin. Oooh, how lovely it is to organize a wedding while living miles away, dealing with Romanian suppliers…
Half of our guests were travelling from different countries to be there with us for a weekend while the other half would spend 4 hours in the car (on Romanian poor roads) to get to enjoy a bit more than a day with us. Not only this, but the emotional aspect of our wedding led to anxiety, overthinking and definitely a degree of stress.
Hence, I took time to reflect and go back to this question “Why do we get married?”. Searching for the why, I was hoping to find motivation, strength and the essence of this event.
Only after the wedding, I got the chance to truly relax, slow down and that gave me the clear understanding of how much this experience meant to me. Here is a short summary of unexpected lessons I learned from his memorable event:
Strength in vulnerability
By being open and in touch with your emotions, you influence people’s experience! We didn’t know how much impact this would have in the way our guests will open up towards us and each other on an emotional level. We shared laughter and cried together in different special moments. We spoke from the heart in our vows and we welcomed our guests into our hearts.
Bridging cultural gaps
The big difference in culture and religion in which we each were raised, let us to choose to design a church ceremony that was very personal and combined these two worlds (the protestant and orthodox religion and the Dutch and Romanian culture). We are grateful for my father in law, Henk, who led a beautiful church ceremony.
Exposing ourselves in a vulnerable way in front of our friends and family provided the opportunity to strengthen bonds and to get to know our loved ones in a much more profound way!
That doesn’t mean our church ceremony was perfect. We had some hiccups as well, such as almost forgetting to put our rings on, but all of them made this experience a beautiful mirror of our own relationship.
This wedding has been a great channel for us to share our love and to receive love!
My intention for these days was to be present, to share and receive love of our beloved community who gathered to celebrate us. My brother-in-law has organized such a special moment of stujkes (which is a Dutch tradition), where family and friends gave speeches or presented unique moments from their relationship with each the bride and the groom. In this photo you can see how much joy and emotions these moments brought and we are grateful for all their efforts and love!
The power of music has been an unexpected channel for us to receive love. My parents have booked a live band for us, as a wedding gift. When I found out, I thought: oooh how extravagant! I am not sure this fits our style..
How little I knew.. This has been such a powerful way for us to enjoy the wedding evening together, to share Romanian culture and music with our international friends and mostly, to bond through dance, laughter and singing.
Our Romanian family and friends have provided us a great lesson and reminder: how easy it can be to enjoy life!
In our house, I am always the one to tell my husband: Let’s relax, let’s not take life too serios! However, we are both very ambitious and responsible and having fun hasn’t been our priority in the last two years.
Looking back, during our wedding we felt loved by our community, friends and family. We also got a reminder of how much we enjoy dancing, how powerful music can be and how important is to prioritise these activities so we can feel free, alive and happy!
Certain experiences come into our lives with a set of lessons. I would love to encourage each of you to open your heart, let go of expectations and sparkle your intentions before you begin to live beautiful and special days.
P.S: The photos might not have captured it, but our wedding was far from being perfect. Since 4pm it has been raining cats and dogs. Before I got to dance on our opening song, I had to first wash and dry my wedding dress in the toilet. A moment I will never forget!
