One of my earliest memories is standing in a garden, blinking into the light. I am wearing a soft pink dress (with frills and lace), holding the hand of my older cousin, who is about double my height and the most impressive person in the world.
I am three years old and have been given the exquisitely important job of Flower Girl at my uncle’s wedding.
It’s the best day of my young life.
I think I can safely say that this is where my love of weddings began. And while the magic of them, for me, may have started with the dresses (I won’t lie, I still love a wedding dress), the thing I love most about them is that everything is so heightened. Even as a witness, the feeling just before the start of the ceremony, as two people are about to stand up in front of the people who form the fabric of their lives, and make promises with such hope and emotion and extreme vulnerability, is so intense and beautiful. So life-affirming.
My favourite wedding ceremonies are always those where the couple’s story is woven into the ritual. Where, if you’re lucky enough to be part of it, you learn more about them as individuals and as a couple. Where the vows are so personal and real that the alchemy of their specific relationship and love is so tangible you can almost feel it perfume around you.
Over the years, I had a few forays into wedding writing. A friend once asked me to write her bridesmaid speech for her because there were so many big feelings, she couldn’t turn them into words that felt right. I’d never met the bride, but that didn’t really matter. I’d met my friend and I knew what it felt like to be loved by her.
I’ve MC’ed a few weddings too. At one of them, the groom had an extreme stomach bug in the days leading up to the wedding and hadn’t been able to write his speech. As we were all setting up at the venue the day before, I heard a whispered shout of my name and turned to see him peeking out of a room, beckoning me stealthily. When I got to him he looked at me with slightly bigger eyes than usual, pen and paper in hand, and said, “Help…”
In planning my own wedding, the officiant we had our hearts set on wasn’t available, and, because the way she approached ceremonies felt quite special, we weren’t sure if anyone else would be able to incorporate our story into the ceremony as much as we wanted it to be.
So we wrote our own.
We didn’t just tell our story, we did different things – like surprising everyone with our first dance as we were pronounced married. It felt so personal and real and true to who we are as a couple, and the journey we’ve travelled together, and we loved it. The amazing messages we got from our guests told me that they did too.
It was then that I thought – what if I helped other people do this too, but in their own way? Would such a personal offering even work?
In that strange full-circle way of the universe, I was asked to do just this by the daughter of the bride and groom of that very first wedding I went to, wearing that little pink dress.
I loved it. She loved it. They loved it.
And so, it all began. Weaving something old, something new, perhaps even something borrowed all together into words that feel like you.
Tell me your story. And I will write you something true.