ARTICLE 16. A Wedding in the Rain...

It’s my sweet friend Ca’s wedding today.

For months, with her closest friends behind her and her husband- to- be in tow, she had art directed and styled her own wedding, the way she’s always envisioned it to be. All the commercials she’s written in her 9-year career in advertising will not hold a candle to this, her own personal mega-production. She had everything scripted, and everything will wonderfully fall into place… from the stars in her hair… to the stars in her eyes. But still, even the most well- rehearsed plays get glitches, and it seems that summer has decided to bow out way ahead of time, depriving Ca of a sunshine-dappled garden wedding. Still , we her friends are still praying for the sun to make an appearance today. But in case it doesn’t, I will just tell ca that maybe the rains serve as a gentle reminder -- to us all, and to her especially, that into one’s life---and marriage, a little rain does fall.

I know that the rains will not make Ca less beautiful on her wedding day. The same way that a little rain cannot undo a marriage.

Weddings bolster my belief in love. It restores my faith in everyone’s desire to find that one person to whom one will pledge one’s love and life to. Someone to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, or to paraphrase two great songs, to have someone to watch over, someone to love and feed and shelter, when you’re both 64 —or better yet, 104.

Weddings reaffirm my faith in hope.

At that point in the ceremony when the bride and groom say their I do’s, believing that their shared life with this person will be wonderful ---even if at the back of their minds, they fully accept that bad times may come (for don’t they all happen to everyone?), I smile and say to myself that well, that’s hope.

Right in front of everyone, they both publicly declare their intentions, part of which is to build a home with this other person --- who may one day prove to be different from that person they married, or will grow to become the opposite of the person they loved in the first place. Still, that’s hope.

And when they both pledge their love for the other person, knowing that they themselves may become different people down the road, that more than anything else, is hope.

One knows all these after having been married for sometime. Been there, done that, yet still at it. Luckily, and wonderfully, still to the same person all these time, even if we’ve grown so much all these years----happily, not apart.

Hope is the thing with feathers after all. It gives wings to dreams--- and what better dream than to live together happily with your spouse ---at least most of the time ----for ever after ?

That’s why you also put in more than 100% of yourself to make not just a wedding work, but more so a marriage.

Long after the wedding bells have stopped ringing, marriage is a live thing that has to be fed and nourished.

In fact, like other brides, Ca has already put in so much into her marriage from the way she poured her heart into her wedding preparations. I remember how she came back from somewhere one time, all sweaty and stressed, for she herself rushed to a store where she could get her dream souvenirs. I took one look at that bulky, huge package ---that must at least have been 5 kilos ( and she’s but a slip of a gir!) , and I imagined her lugging that box up the MRT station and down.

Triple A for effort!

But then, the efforts of both Rex and Ca to make this wedding a success are of course Herculean. Like any other couple facing matrimony, they had a hundred and one other errands and chores and decisions needing their attention before the wedding. But that image of Ca in my mind, lugging that 5 kilo box is my personal favorite. That alone already shows you that she’s made of sterner stuff. Which is a wonderful gift for her husband to be , and even more for the children their marriage will be blessed with.

Alongside that gift, I humbly offer the thought that fittingly, it’s not just the bride and the groom who have invested in this coming marriage. I think of Ca’s dear friends who flew in from the other side of the globe to be with the couple on this day, and equally precious friends and family who bent backwards to make this day the most special of days. They they too then bless this marriage with their gifts.

Ca told me hours before the wedding that she’s having the jitters. In fact, I am positive that she used the words “ nasusuka ako.” Derive comfort from this Woody Allen quip then, my friend which I paraphrase :

“I knew I was in love. Why? Well, first of all, I was very nauseous”. Your nausea, Ca, is love. And together with hope, they are the best reasons to get, and stay married.

BOOTS MA. GARCIA-SISON IS A WIFE, MOTHER, DAUGHTER, SISTER, SOCCER GROUPIE AND ADVERTISING CREATIVE DIRECTOR, MORE ON SOME DAYS THAN OTHERS. IT WAS HER ELEVEN YEAR OLD SON WHO THOUGHT OF HER COLUMN’S NAME.