Editor's letter
"The first wedding invitation you get that’s not for a cousin or a family friend is such a thrill. The romance of it all!"
The first wedding invitation you get that’s not for a cousin or a family friend is such a thrill. The romance of it all! For them, and maybe also for you (after all, who knows who you might be sitting next to now that you’re no longer on the kids table?).
It doesn’t take long for the novelty to wear off though. Suddenly the year gets an additional season you need to grapple with (and dress for) — autumn, winter, spring, summer, weddings. More Saturdays than you want to calculate belong to other people’s love stories, a cascade of letterpressed dates that demand another dress, another gift, another weekend away, another spray tan. I refuse to even mention the hens and bucks and showers and engagement parties that come as part of this era. The air that once felt electric now takes on a familiar scent of bridal bouquets and post-dinner sparklers, and if you’re part of the bridal party (or even if you’re not) the costs stack up faster than the hours spent making yet another sweetly personalised hens slideshow.
At a certain point in the journey of life’s weddings, destination nuptials might start to overtake surf club or country winery ones, and I hope Capri or Mykonos are on your bucket list because if you have friends of marriageable age who have any kind of distant Italian heritage or once had the night of their life at Nammos, you will very likely be going there. There are certain places you will go to more than once in the name of making someone else’s dream come true. In the case of Queenstown for your straight friends and NYC for your gay ones, maybe more than once a year.
"It’s never really about the individual couple, but rather the RITUAL, the COLLECTIVE RELEASE, the shared nostalgia for something that feels so CEREMONIOUS and steeped in tradition (even if that tradition is a best man shoey)."
While you’re in the weddings stage, it can feel like a lot. You might feel like you can’t go on, that if you get the alternately plated chicken instead of the fish even one more time, you might completely lose it. (Just like in the summer every one of your friends turned 21, when you knew you if you had to drink one more Aperol Spritz, your sugar-coated tongue would no longer be able to be helpful for speaking.) But then will come the day when you realise you haven’t been to a wedding in a while. Nearly everyone you know who wants to be married already, is. Your calendar is clear, and the weekends stretch out, free for you to fill as you wish. You might even start to miss them, at least in flashes – the late-night dancing to Sweet Caroline, the father of the bride speeches that make you sob audibly even when you’re just there as a work friend of the groom and barely know the bride herself, the excuse to dress up. Because the thing is that it’s never really about the individual couple, but rather the ritual, the collective release, the shared nostalgia for something that feels so ceremonious and steeped in tradition (even if that tradition is a best man shoey).
What I’m looking forward to is what I imagine the next weddings stage will be — the quieter-but-chicer second weddings, the intimate and emotional ten or 20 year vow renewals. Less pomp but all the ceremony. Even more connection, just without the matching bridesmaids dresses. When those invites come, I’ll be there with bells on — ready to celebrate love and romance in all its forms.
Enjoy the Weddings issue,
Justine
Say love
Uptight, overdone, heavily staged wedding portraits are out. Let your big day be a celebration of love in all its messy, allconsuming glory (with any luck, the rest of your life together will be just as beautifully chaotic). The happily ever after is in the between moments.
Sweet somethings
No wedding party is complete without a fun, delicious cake (whether custom or Costco) and rings made for showing off.
All yours
Today’s brides know that perfect is the enemy of good. Celebrate your big day in a way that’s uniquely you and unashamedly now.