My wedding in May canceled.
Chances are good that I’ll still be there. Yesterday, on our call, my heart nearly burst when the couple told me, “We honestly can’t see getting married without you.”
I tried not to cry as I told them, yes, yes, of course, if that’s what you want, knowing in the back of my head that the wedding planner shouldn’t take a spot from their new 10-person guest list.
But that’s a problem to solve in the unknowable weeks ahead. Right now, I want to talk about language.
Second choice
During our conversation, this couple started referring to their wedding as an elopement, as in, “We’re canceling the wedding and eloping instead.”
Canceling the wedding and eloping instead is a common choice right now, and, I believe, the most responsible and safe if your wedding falls during March, April, and May. What I’ve noticed, however, is how couples refer to this new plan.
They say “elopement” like a dirty word, like a second choice. That’s fair. For these particular couples, their first choice was to have a completely different party. Now, their hand has been forced by an invisible foe. There is pain here. There is grief.
But we can grieve what might have been and still recognize that we’re gathered here today for the very same reason: To have a wedding, even if that wedding looks so different from what we originally planned that we gave it a whole new name.
The heat of the moment
The term “eloping” always makes me think of Gretna Green.
For more than a century, this southern Scottish hamlet was the destination du jour for couples on the run. You could marry on the spot in Scotland, unlikely in neighboring England where strict age requirements and required parental consent stymied many a marriage.
My fellow Jane Austen fans will know: Gretna Green was the site of an ill-advised wedding or two. It’s where Lydia runs off with Wickham in Pride & Prejudice. “They are certainly not gone to Scotland,” a horrified Lizzy tells Mr. Darcy when she shares the news.
But lovers found happily ever afters in Scotland, too. Couples were so eager to wed that they would disembark as soon as they crossed the border, stopping at the first building they reached in Gretna Green: the blacksmith shop.
The blacksmith, an entrepreneurial minded fellow it seems, offered his shop as a wedding venue. “A hotbed of scandal and intrigue,” the town’s tourist bureau crows. “The ‘Anvil Priests’ would perform the ceremony for ‘a wee dram or a few guineas’ … The hammering of the anvil soon became a notorious sound.”
Like the metals he forged, the tourist bureau continues, “the blacksmith would join couples together in the heat of the moment but bind them for eternity.”
Whatever you call it, you’re still getting married
Your wedding looks different now. It is different now. You are entering your marriage under circumstances you did not plan for, that you did not want. You have lost money, probably a lot of it. People you love — people who taught you what love is so that you could in turn love another person as much as you love your person — are not here to celebrate alongside. It is OK to feel sad. It is human to grieve.
But this is still your wedding, no matter what we call it. This is still the day that you do the one thing that you always wanted to do: You get to marry the person you love.
Let’s take a cue from the lovers of Gretna Green and imagine ourselves racing at midnight, the horses steaming, the stagecoach jostling. Outside, the moon our only light. We are running away from a world that didn’t want this love to happen, that tried to prevent this marriage from being born. And still, we won.
Ahead, the anvil hammers, a battle cry. Something new is about to be made. Joined in the heat of the moment, bound for eternity — what emerges from the fire is stronger than it might have been. It is beautiful. It is made to last.