This is what I’ve discovered. Weddings should be preceded by an eight-day vacation followed by a three-day cool-down.
This gives families an opportunity to bond over their fabulous children, eat way too much and enjoy refreshments while getting sunburned and developing obscenely frizzy hair.
But if you put all this together, it is a stress-free we’re-at-the-beach experience that happens to include a wedding we’ve all been anticipating for ten years.
Wedding week started two days early when we got a call from the beach house owner that we could move in right away – an enormous gift! Because there was no way in the universe we were going to let that beach house sit down there waiting for us, my carefully crafted two-day list of pre-wedding errands was immediately kicked into the “get-er-done” category.
The one timeline that could not be adjusted was our Friday night drive to Charlotte’s Douglas Airport to retrieve the wedding couple from their flight from Oregon.
We found them in the baggage claim area, she holding her wedding dress bag as other travelers wished them well. (I got a little misty-eyed.)
By Saturday night we’d joined our excellent in-laws-to-be at the beach house. Over the ten years our children have been a couple, we parents and extended families have become good friends. We’ve vacationed together for the last few years at Folly Beach, the site of the impending wedding. The washout, a draw for area surfers, would be their chapel.
Would it rain? No, it would not. Would it? No way.
As the week wore on, the days were filled with sunshine, blue skies and soft breezes. At night we watched the weather report. The big day came into the five-day forecast – a 50 percent chance of rain on Friday and 70 percent on Saturday.
We talked to the wedding planner and she said it would not rain on Folly Beach. It might rain everywhere else, but not on our wedding. “If we make a plan – just in case – to have the wedding inside or under the big reception tent, then it certainly won’t rain.”
The days were filled with swimming and surfing. At night we all gathered for enormous family dinners. As the week skipped on, our numbers (and joviality) grew. The houses we inhabited expanded from one to ten as family groups arrived and the wedding couple’s friends from across the country flew in. Treks to the airport (including one to fetch our own Manchild #2 from his flight from Houston) were daily occurrences.
Excitement built among the most congenial group of people in the world as we vacationed our way to the wedding parties to come: a bridal luncheon on Friday morning, rehearsal dinner that night, and the big day.
First up was the gathering of the women as we showered and feted the bride-to-be.
This traditional gathering of the women is important. It is the passing of the marriage torch from one generation to the next.
The bridal luncheon/shower is a time for the managers of family life to bond over common goals like getting men to buy new underwear at least once a decade.
There was great sharing of recipes, giving of wispy lingerie, presenting of meaningful family artifacts and photos – and the dispensing of excellent advice.
We bonded in a way that only women can.
We were one, united over the wonderful woman who was now embraced as “our girl.”
She was headed for married life and we were there to see her into it.

Next week: Dressing for the big event: Men in Skirts

Contact Judy Watts at 873-9424 or jwatts@journalscene.com