By Aly Ferris
My old best friend got married this weekend. She's the first of any of my friends to get married, and though we're not that close anymore it sent me into a tailspin. It shouldn't have come as a shock. She's been dating the guy for three years, he's changed both religion and geographical states to be with her and they love each other a lot. But still, I was taken aback.
Growing up, she and I were inseparable. We had the same schedules, the same friends, the same soccer games on Saturday mornings. We had been on the same life trajectory for so long that I hardly noticed when our roads diverged. That is, until the day last November when I received a wedding invite via text message: "Hey guess what? I'm getting married! Be a bridesmaid?" What was I supposed to say to that? We hadn't spoken in six months and had hung out only a handful of times since high school graduation, yet she wanted me to be a part of the most important day of her life? Come again?
As the weeks flew by and The Big Day started getting closer and closer, I started to freak out. It's difficult fielding questions about a wedding ("Wait, is it YOUR wedding?" or "But it's a Mormon wedding, you can't even go in right?" or "So who are you going with?") that you are becoming more scared of by the day.
It didn't make me feel any more at ease that it was Mormon wedding. I'm not saying Mormons are scary, far from it. This family has fed me, loved me and taught me a lot over the past eight years - hell, they've been half-raising me since I was 12. I have an immense amount of love, gratitude and respect for them.
But I'd never been to a Mormon wedding before! If there's one thing I know, it's that the unknown is scary. As a general practice, if I don't know much about something I tend to fear it, avoid it and/or hide from it. A Mormon wedding would be no different. I haven't even been to that many regular weddings. I'm 20 years old - who do I know that's getting married?
At the last wedding I attended, there was an open bar and everyone got so drunk that it was 2 a.m. before anyone stopped dancing and went home. (These weren't college kids either: These are Baby Boomers drunkenly bemoaning the loss of their own babies.) Needless to say, with that wedding, I knew what I was getting into. All I knew about this one was that it would probably not involve dancing until two in the morning.
I was right.
"Aly!" the photographer shouted at me. "We need you in this picture! Do you have a husband or a boyfriend or anything?" Ouch. Was this a requirement? Perhaps I hadn't read the invitation closely enough. Lacking either of the two - at 20 years of age I was under the impression that husbands and/or boyfriends were optional - I offered up the best thing I had: "Um. No. I have a Derek?" (Derek being my best friend and the only reason that I made it through the wedding with my sanity in tact. He even offered to be my husband for the day, if that's what it took for me to stay in the wedding.) The photographer looked confused. Giving me up as a lost cause, she shrugged and ushered "my Derek" up the steps in front of the Temple to stand next to me in the picture. Next to him she placed my younger sister's boyfriend, who was meeting both the bride and the groom for the first time that day. Next to him went my sister, giggling at both the photographer and the look on my face. There we were, the four of us immortalized in a wedding photo: Back row, smiling uncomfortably, not sure whether or not we belonged.
If you're not a baptized Mormon over a certain age you can't watch the formal wedding ceremony because it is in one of the most private rooms in the Temple. We sat in a waiting room until the ceremony was over. I also missed the ring ceremony - a peace offering for those of us that weren't allowed to see the actual ceremony - because we were 15 minutes late to the reception. So much for weddings always starting late.
At this point, I was downright flustered. I had waited awkwardly in the Temple, standing around in uncomfortable shoes, smiling for a photographer that judged me because I didn't have as many children or husbands as the rest of the bridesmaids, and now I had missed the ring ceremony: The only part of the wedding that I was allowed to see.
There's nothing like your former best friend getting married to make you feel insignificant. Sure, I've been in college for three years, I've had amazing experiences and made great friends. I've grown as a person and I've changed for the better (hopefully). And no, I don't want to get married right now. Not even a little. But now my best friend - whose life used to be so similar to my own that we could hardly tell the difference between the two - is married. It was like losing a race that I didn't even know I was running.
But in the end, it didn't matter. This was not about me. I gave my speech, I smiled when I should, I hugged who I was supposed to hug. I even got the bride to line dance. I played my part. But when the bride and the groom danced together for the first time after being pronounced husband and wife and genuinely smiled for the first time all night, I realized that my part was insignificant. It doesn't matter how terrified I was of the Big Scary Mormon Wedding. It doesn't matter that a wedding is not what I want in my life right now. What's important is that two people love each other enough to commit to spending the rest of their lives together. And nothing else matters.
Aly Ferris is the Design Editor for The Beacon
