This Magic Moment?

As women, it is socially expected that we posses some innate female gene that excites and encourages us to plan and prepare for that big special day—the wedding. For me, that gene is missing. During the first wedding I attended, I failed to see the forced “magic” rumored to linger in the air. I was nine years old and one of the few children privileged to be invited to my older cousins affair. Aunt someone, who smelled of old musky perfume and had orange lipstick coated on her teeth bent down and told me…

“Don’t forget to take your cake home and put it under your pillow, you’ll dream of the man you’ll marry.”

Maybe it’s because this woman was so old that her scratchy voice sounded like a witch revealing some secret of the universe, but I did as she said. I sacrificed my craving to inhale the sugary delight and I carried the dessert home. I gingerly placed that cake bag under my pillow and feel asleep. With childhood innocence on my side, I expected to dream of my very own “Mr. Right.” The next morning, I woke without any recollection of dreams and crumbled yellow cake in my hair.

Maybe the magic died the day I woke up with dessert matted to my head? But somewhere along the line a wedding has morphed from a party to a production; Resulting in families arguing, bank accounts depleting and brains going to mush with the colossal decisions of vanilla pound cake or red velvet cake. There are too many things to accomplish as per the bridal-etiquette book du jour that there isn’t time for little moments.

My brother had a “wedding production” five years ago. It wasn’t until all the picture posing, bouquet tossing and obligatory speeches were complete that a magical moment snuck in. It happened when the DJ played “Shakin” by Eddie Money. A song my siblings and I grew up singing while buckled into the backseat of our parent’s car.

As the sound of the guitar blasted through the speakers, I reached over and plucked the single rose boutineer off my brother’s vest and proceeded to sing into it as if it were a microphone. My siblings and I sang into that flower like our lives depended on it. Karaoke at its worst and finest.

The photographer snapped a picture which now sits on the coffee table in my mother’s formal room. Of all the pictures that we posed for and forced smiles in, the rose picture won the prime real estate. The real magic was lurking in an old 80’s song and a single boutineer.

Although the flowers wilt, the cake doesn’t induce special dreams and most of the pictures snapped will never find a home on the coffee table; small moments are trapped within the production. I, just believe that without all the fuss, without the “supposed to’s”, without the production, it will be easier for the real magic to peek through.