Wedding Cake

            We had a wedding to attend this past weekend.  I decided to bring my 3 year old daughter because she has been asked to be a flower girl in a wedding this summer.  On the way to the wedding I told my daughter that we were going to wedding and that she would need to be quiet during the wedding.  I also told her that after the wedding there would be a party and there would be cake. The mention of cake made her face light up and a huge smile formed on her face. 


          We enter the church and are met with dimmed lights, violinists playing beautiful music, fresh flowers, and men waiting in tuxedos to escort us to our seat.  We are seated and Meritt is completely entertained with the violinists and the people being seated all around us...5 minutes later she is asking when is the wedding going to start.  I do my best to distract her for a few more minutes and then the wedding begins.  Grandparents are seated, parents are seated and then the bridesmaids and groomsmen come down the aisle and take their places on the stage.  With each person escorted down, Meritts eyes are glued on them.  Next, the bridal processional begins, the mother of the bride stands, the rest of the church stands and the bride and her father come down the aisle.  Meritt asks "mommy is that a princess?" I say yes because for the day the bride is a princess.  Next, Meritt says "now do we get cake?" I smile and tell her that we have to watch the wedding first. 



         A three year olds innocent question, "now do we get cake?" reminds me of my very own wedding.  I got engaged and immediately began the wedding planning.  My parents blessed me with the wedding of my dreams and at the time I thought it had to be that way now I look at how much they spent and it makes me sick to my stomach.  During my engagement, I spent time searching shopping finding the perfect dress, the perfect reception hall, the perfect cake, the perfect flowers.  The search for planning the perfect wedding consumed me for 11 months. 


         I spent my entire engagement zoned in on my wedding ceremony and yes we did a little counseling but if I am honest we were clueless as to what marriage was.  When planning my wedding I didn't dream of days that my husband would come home to me not having had a shower and smelling like spit up, I didn't dream that our grandparents would die and we would need each others shoulders to cry on, I didn't dream that my dad would get sick, I didn't dream that there would be times when he was in dental school that we couldn't afford to go out to eat (at a chain restaurant), I didn't dream that I would run over our mailbox, or that he would lose his keys (a billion times).  I didn't dream these things instead I dreamed of things like wedding cake.

        What 9.5 years of marriage has taught me is that the real cake can't be eaten.  The real cake is having his shoulder to cry on, the real cake is looking into his eyes and making up after a silly fight, the real cake is seeing his grin when the ultrasound tech says "its a boy", the real cake is seeing how soft and gentle he is with our little girl, the real cake is remembering that on July 9th we committed to God to be one and to love each other on the sunny days and the stormy days.  My greatest hope is that we are able to lead by example and give our kids a "taste" of real wedding cake.