There And Back Again

I am not unfamiliar with weddings.

In fact, weddings and I are old friends.

No matter how much I may roll my eyes derisively at the concept of marriage in general, argue that a piece of paper does not a proper, functional, happy union between two people make, or constantly deride the possibility of ever being able to have (or even want) one of my own in my lifetime…we are old friends.

I have mocked the sanctity of marriage with various close friends of both genders throughout prep school. I have helped other close friends of both genders plan their impending nuptials (either real or hopeful) during college. I have sat stoically, yet smiling widely, on the bride’s side of a Catholic cathedral, as the bride’s best male friend from prep school (my boyfriend at the time, standing up with her like a sore thumb in the bride’s party, many years after he lost his virginity to her, before he accepted that he was gay) essentially gave her away. I have even, far more recently, began to entertain ideas of what my own marriage ceremony (commitment ceremony, what have you) would entail.

And then I moved to Hawaii.

(Possibly second only to Las Vegas in terms of United States wedding destinations.)

Here, I have aided in the orchestration of a boyfriend’s sibling’s beachfront wedding, at sunset, at Ko`Olina. Here, I have designed all of the print collateral for a past supervisor’s long-overdue wedding and reception. Here, I typeset the Hawaiian Marriage Prayer (interlinearly, in both Hawaiian and English) on the invitation of another senior colleague’s wedding invitation, and subsequently attended said wedding in the shadows and the mists and the memories of the Valley of the Temples that still haunts me to this day.

And here, today, I experienced the most amazing wedding yet. It was not an inaugural vow kind of ceremony. It was a renewal of vows, already pledged long ago. It was witnessing two people, at the edge of the Waikiki shores, beneath the wedding day good luck rain of Oahu, look into each other’s eyes, and immediately see every good thing, every bad thing, every joy, every sorrow, every happiness, and every imperfection, that they had shared, and return once again to the present, to see, and embrace, and kiss, as they did once before.

It was seeing two people, looking back on the forty years of their lives together, and returning again, and saying to each other, “I would choose you. Again. And again. And still again. Just like before. And over and over and over again.”

It was, without doubt, the best wedding I have ever attended.

Filed under: Relationships, Writing , a-list, emotional landscapes, hawaii, home, honolulu, memories, needful reminders, oahu