There is a notion in feminist writings that a woman's wedding day is a time when she rules in an ephemeral kingdom as compensation for a life of subservience which then follows through all the days of her life. While Kate and her bridesmaids were here last week, we watched a few episodes of Bridezillas, a long-running reality show of brides behaving badly. It is a TV experience that seems to support that acerbic view of The Big Day. One bride, Shandra, who especially struck me, repeatedly screeches, "This is my day! This isn't about you. This is about me!" We are meant to ridicule Shandra, but competing with that intent is the pathos of her disappointment at having to remind people what she believes ought to be apparent--this is the one day of her life that she gets to be important.
But while I think there is some truth in this cynical view, a more charitable interpretation is that a wedding represents the passing out of maidenhood--she is the unplucked rose, if you will--into marriage. It seems perhaps a bit quaint to us now to assume chastity in a bride, but the notion that a married woman's sexual life, sanctified by her vows, is one that gives her dignity and becomes her well. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Theseus asserts that "earthlier happy is the rose distilled/Than that which withering on the virgin thorn/Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness" (I.i.75-77). The "rose distilled," that is to say, perfume, is an apt trope for the essence of womanhood, and her essence lives again in her children.
I don't know whether I was watching the passage of my essence when Kate was getting her hair done, but when the hair vine (an ornament that can be woven throughout the coif) was put in place as trial run, I teared up a little. I could for the first time begin to visualize how she would look as a bride. The event had been a subject for idle meditation before, in spite of all the contact with vendors, clergy, musicians, and relatives, even in the choice of a wedding dress.
That moment had no doubt been masked by tensions about money (I think of the incredulity on Mayhew's face when Kate told him how much a bit of flour and sugar fashioned into a wedding cake was going to cost) and about differing notions of what this nuptial ritual should look like. The whimsical notion by Kate to dance down the aisle like the bridal party in that viral video (picked up by The Office in a wedding sequence) for example, resulted in a spirited and frank exchange of ideas. And my cherished, unique idea of having the closing blessing be "The Lord's Prayer" sung in Russian was beloved of no one but me. And more insidiously, seemingly trivial matters like these have become entrance ramps to air old resentments and hurts.
Still, whether it was an unguarded or just a serene moment, the bejeweled hair vine caught the light and the shine of Kate's curls, and connected me as if it were a thread with my daughter, and I thought that weddings really do have profound, transcendent uses.
