The Wedding

Grace slit open Howard's letter and ran her eyes down the page. She let it drop beside her plate and looked up at her and mother with wide eyes.

"Anything wrong, Grace? That's from Howard, isn't it?"

"Mother, what day is this?"

"Thursday, Grace. Why, whatever is the matter?"

"Mother, Howard wants me to marry him this Saturday."

"Good heavens, he might have given us more warning."

Her father got up from the breakfast table and pushed the seat of his chair under the table and stood there leaning on the back, looking down at his wife and his daughter.

"Well, what of it? You were expecting this, weren't you? What's all this you have been getting ready for? You want it, don't you?"

Grace put the letter in her pocket. A faint red crept up over her face and neck. "Of course I want it. But it took me so by surprise. I suppose I hadn't expected it to come so soon. He says he may be sent to the West Coast next week, and he wants me to go out with him. He thinks he'll be stationed there at least several weeks."

Grace took a big breath and the red flamed in her cheeks. She stood up and looked at her father and her mother. "Of course I want it, of course, I'm glad. I don't know how I'll ever get ready in time, but I'll be ready."

Her father began to laugh. "Just like two women. Been getting ready for a thing for three months now, expecting it and planning it, and then bowled over by it as if it were a piece of news. I've the fee for the minister. What else do you want, Grace?"

Grace ran around the table and leaned against her father's shoulder. "I don't need anything, Dad. I have everything ready, really. I'm not as foolish as I sounded. I'll have to go to the doctor for my physical and my blood test. I'll have to do that right away today. Howard said he was attending to his at once."

Grace's father left the room and the two women sat down to plan the details of the wedding. "Howard says he doesn't care where we are married. I did want to have a big wedding and be a regular bride a white satin dress with a train and a veil and orange blossoms in my hair. It would seem more like being married than anything else."

Grace looked at herself in the long mirror across the mantelpiece. She knew she would look lovely in bridal white, with her fair hair, her blue eyes, and her tall slimness. She was just the right kind of girl for a big wedding. But she and Howard had talked all that over long ago and had decided upon a very simple wedding at the minister's house. For one thing, Howard had never been able to set the date till this very moment, and they couldn't very well send out invitations for a big ceremony. And now that it had come so suddenly, there seemed no time for anything else.

Besides, if she was going out West, if she were going to set housekeeping afterward with Howard even for three weeks, she would want all her money for that. She wouldn't want to spend it on a big wedding.

"I'd like to see you in white anyway, Grace. I think Howard would, too. When is he coming?"

"Not till Saturday morning. He said noon Saturday; high noon. It sounds so important. Shall I wear a white dress? I can always step into a ready-to-wear. And then who'll we have?"

"If the wedding is to be at the minister's we'll have just his father and mother and Dad and me. That will be all for the ceremony. And then we'll come home and have a reception here for everyone we can squeeze into the house."

One girl will be married in bridal white in a church, with Mendelssohn's Wedding March pealing down the arched aisle and the fragrance of the banked flowers rising up to the vaulted ceiling, with the church filled with friends and relatives, and an ordered and stately ceremony will make her wedding. Even if the bride goes back to work the next day, even if the bridegroom goes overseas, some couples will want the ancient wedding ceremony with all that goes to make it memorable and important in the life of the bride and groom. The moment a girl falls in love, the moment she goes one step further and says yes to the man's wooing, that moment she sees herself in her bridal dress.

If the bride is marrying an officer, she should by all means have a military wedding and all the spectacle, display, and importance it entails. For once the bridegroom will look as handsome as the bride. In this war, when the soldier and the sailor leave home, they pass out of the lives of their families to such an extent that we could almost believe they were whisked away by magic into a ghostly war. But the war is, after all, the great single reality of this moment—its greatness and its terror, its ugliness and its heroism. And the military wedding that brings the pomp and ceremony of military life, that displays its disciplines and its rank, will stand in the mind of the girl and her guests for the power and strength of the armed forces.

But other girls in this wartime have no opportunity for a formal church ceremony. They will buy a new silk dress, blue taffeta if their eyes are blue, pink or gold if their eyes are brown, and be married at home or at the minister's. Few want merely the legal ceremony. Everyone feels that, though the law underlies all marriage contracts, her marriage is a far different thing from a legalized love affair. For love eludes the law. Love is related to eternal verities, love concerns life, love is up and above and beyond the law. And though the pair wish to follow all the legal procedure, the sanction they want is the sanction of religion and of society.

So the wedding of the soldier's bride may be simple or it may be elaborate. It may be homelike or it may be military. But in this planning of the kind of wedding she will have, the bride must think not only of herself but of the desires of the two families and the ceremony they want. For even in wartime, if not rather especially in wartime, the events of life should be marked by ceremonies. No important event should slip into its place in the twenty-four hours and slip out again unheralded and unremembered. In the fighting forces events are always celebrated. The psychology of fighting has always been the psychology of the medal—the ribbon of heroism, the Congressional Medal. And the soldier has to wear his medals, his ribbons. His past deeds of heroism lay their glow above his heart, and no one ever forgets them. A mere stranger, just shaking hands with a man with a row of ribbons and medals across his chest, knows at once that he is meeting a hero of many high deeds. The man's greatness is never forgotten. And the ceremony, when the ranking officer pins the medal on his coat, is not a hidden secret carried out in the privacy of the man's own room, or even in the officer's room, with one or two friends looking on as the only witnesses. No, the bestowal of such an honor is always made a public ceremony, with the whole regiment present and saluting. The moment of greatness, the moment of heroism, may have been seen by only three or four people, or it may have been seen by hundreds; chance determines that. But the moment of honoring the man for the deed is always a public ceremony.

Such a ceremony contains in itself a power. The fighting forces insist upon public ceremonies, for they know that such occasions not only honor and distinguish the soldier but cement the men of the regiment together. The spirit of the hero pervades every soldier. Heroism becomes the very nature of every man in the regiment.

And not only does the army find the power of the ceremony worth while, but also the power of the symbol. In civil life so many symbols have been discarded that it looks as if people were almost ashamed to display their feelings about anything. Flags, the national anthem, patriotic marching songs, the procession, are symbols the army uses.

The engagement ring, the wedding ring, the church wedding, are all symbols the church uses to enhance the importance of the wedding in the hearts and minds not only of the couple themselves but of all the wedding guests. The cohesion of society, pressing against the young married couple, helps to unite them. The more they are treated as an entity, as a couple, and the less they are remembered as two separate creatures, the more the pair are apt to feel that unity in themselves.

Since time is the one great element lacking in a war marriage, all the stages in the courtship and marriage must be rather overemphasized than underemphasized. Every ceremony is of value both to the girl who is going to be left at home and to the man who is going away. The couple marrying in wartime will usually have to forego the establishment of a permanent home and taking a definite place in the community—the very thing that usually makes them feel married. For marriage is a very different thing from a love affair. It is the greatest experience two people can male of sex attraction and spiritual love. Out of these two enormous variables they make the most solid relationship in the world.

And so everything that emphasizes the importance and the permanence of the marriage is a worthwhile ceremony.

There are many things to be done to prepare for a wedding, and if the time is short these things will have to be attended to with expediency and dispatch. First of all there will be the arrangements for the marriage license, for the physical examination and blood test. The groom will attend to the marriage license, but the girl will have to see about her physical examination and her blood test. If she has a family doctor whom she knows and likes, the simplest thing is for her to go to him. If she has no family doctor, she can ask a friend to recommend one or call a hospital and ask for the name of a gynecologist. Some girls will prefer a woman doctor. If they know no woman doctor, every hospital in a large city now has women doctors on its staff. The doctor will make the physical examination and answer any questions the girl may have about the physical basis of marriage. Modern girls have been taught sex and the anatomy of the reproductive organs, in school and in college, and they usually have a fairly clear idea of what marriage relations are, but there are often some details about which they would like to consult a doctor. It is especially valuable for a girl to assure herself before her wedding that she is physically ready for marriage, and this the doctor's examination will tell her. The doctor also will give her advice about the conduct of the wedding night and explain to her about the gradual adjustment of two people to each other. Married bliss is not always an instantaneous affair, but has to be reached by practice and co-operation and mutual adjustment. The girl should also know what is the woman's rôe in the sex life. There are very valuable books written on this subject, especially for the guidance of the young girl, and it is most important that she should read and understand them and know not only what to expect but what is expected of her. She should not pin the success of a marriage upon the emotions and sensations of her marriage night, but should realize that marriage is a thing of growth, both physically and emotionally. She will often want to ask the doctor whether there is any reason why she shouldn't have a baby whenever she wants one, and the doctor's answer on this matter will be a great reassurance. If she is a Catholic, she will want to talk with the priest.

If the marriage is to be entirely informal, the invitations can be given in person by word of mouth; if it is to be more formal the girl will have to see about having the invitations printed or announcements sent out. At the reception afterward, whether a marriage breakfast or a more formal reception, she will have the sandwiches and wedding cake, or perhaps the whole menu for the meal, to plan for. If her parents are behind her in her marriage, usually the girl's mother will do all this so as not to overfatigue the bride. But sometimes, for some reason or other, the girl will have to attend to it herself.

All this takes both time and the ability to assume responsibility and to organize events. It represents a kind of self-sufficiency and self-reliance that a girl making a war marriage should certainly have.

The girl will also have to have her trousseau ready, her clothes laid out to pack in her going-away suitcase, her overnight bag. She will know, of course, what kind of honeymoon to look forward to, whether the wedding night will be in a hotel, or even at home or at the family of her husband, whether they can take a long week-end and go away to the seashore or to the country, or whether they will have time for a real honeymoon of ten days or so. She will have planned her clothes for whatever kind she is expecting to enjoy. And in making these plans the young couple should not strain their finances too much in any effort to go to some showy place or to do something out of the ordinary. They should go to a place where they will feel natural and in their own usual environment; they should not aim at any unfamiliar luxury or elegance. If they have some special taste in common, such as skiing, or swimming, they should go where they can indulge it. Though on the honeymoon their great absorption will be with each other, still their surroundings will linger in their memories as the setting of their first married happiness.

The bride should remember that brides are often pale and tired; that they are always high strung; that sometimes the bridegroom has been to a stag party the night before; that many emotional moods can intervene between her and her married happiness. She should endeavor not to be too tired, not to be too hurried, not to be overanxious that everything go off well.

This responsibility for the success of social events is always the woman's. No matter whether or not she has her family approval, the bride feels she is the pivot of the entertainment and her mind is set on doing her part well. The bride is the center of the wedding. It is her high moment, for after marriage, slowly by the inevitable pressure of time and events, she ceases to be a girl and becomes a woman, a creature more beautiful, more entrancing, more powerful than a girl, but still not a girl. Her wedding is both a farewell and a greeting. It is a momentous step and must be taken only after due thought and with much love.

Humanity's tears well up in its eyes at a wedding. It is an inexplicable thing, beyond the knowledge or the control of the conscious will. Even more so do tears well up at the marriage of the young war bride. We want the world to go well for her, and her soldier to come back safe and sound after the war, but no matter what the future, in this one moment of the present, both he and she have their happiness. They have discounted the risk and taken their happiness with clear eyes into their own two hands, and we wish God's blessing on them.

PLANS FOR ACTION

Do not skimp on the wedding nor yet beggar yourself. Make it as lovely as your purse can afford.

Wear bridal white and a veil if possible; otherwise be married at home or at the minister's in a new dress. Take pains in its selection. Your husband will always remember you in it.

If your husband is an officer, have a military wedding, with due pomp and ceremony, for the wedding belongs to the two families, not only to the bride and groom.

Learn the power and value of great ceremonies. The Army and the Navy use them constantly.

Use the symbols of the occasion. A soldier is used to them.

Prepare with foreknowledge for the consummation of marriage. Go to your doctor and read the books on marriage that he advises. Avoid fatigue and worries and discount your own fears, anxieties, and uncertainties.

Live in the present moment of happiness.

From: Arms and the Girl
A Guide to Personal Adjustment in War Work and War Marriages
By Guliemlma Fell Alsom, M.D. and Mary F. McBride
1943