Being True To Yourself – Why I Know I’ll Have 2 Weddings Before I’ve Had My First

I get married tomorrow.  It will be my first marriage.  I’m going into this knowing that I will have a second marriage and I’m extremely happy with this.

You might think this odd, but my circumstances are odd too.

The Complications

My fiancee and I both live in UK.  That’s where I’m from but she’s a Californian girl, born and raised, and her family live there.  My family have emigrated to New Zealand.  So, in UK, we’re orphans (well, sort of).  So, we’re getting married twice – once in the UK and once in California.

The First Wedding

The first wedding is the legal ceremony in Oxford.  It’s all a bit of fun and will be a bit of a hen and stag do (bachelor party) all rolled into one. We’re going to be wearing costumes with a theme of Love Through The Ages.  People are dressing up in a variety of outfits such as Cleopatra and Caesar.  Some aren’t bothering about the theme and just wearing some fun costumes.  My wife-to-be and I are going to be hippies.  I’ll be wearing the biggest afro I could find.  It’s going to be great.

We’re going to a nice registry office in Oxford City centre.  They’re used to traditional weddings, not the Vegas-style Elvis weddings.  We haven’t shared everything about our plans with them so we’re expecting a little bit of shock and awe from the staff there.  We’re then going on a pub crawl around Oxford, which is likely to be busy on a Saturday.  A group of us parading through the town in a range of costumes, searching for our next pub, is going to be interesting.

The Second Wedding

In November we’re having our ‘Official’ Wedding in California.  We’ll have UK friends that can’t travel all that way (but we’re amazed at how many will be) but they’ll have been part of our previous wedding.  Elyse’s Californian friends and family will be there and it’s a shorter flight for my family than coming all the way to UK.  I even have family flying over from Australia as well.

This is the more formal affair.  We’ll be on the beach and enjoying the Californian sunshine before driving off on a Harley Davidson.

But Why?

To many, the first wedding will sound a bit strange.  It’s not what people do.  Normal people don’t joke about their wedding.  It’s a formal affair.  Marriage isn’t a joke.

Well, that’s true.  But it’s also about being true to yourself.  It’s not about what we should do, what we have to do, what we ought to do.  This is our day.  It’s about what we want to do, not about anyone else.  We’re not allowing anyone else to set the rules.  We’re making the rules.  We’re going to do this our way.  That’s how we want, and plan, to live the rest of our lives.  Smiling and enjoying ourselves in the way we want to.

This doesn’t mean we can break laws (although there might be some minor bending of them!) or be disrespectful of other people.  It just means we’ll live how we want to, not how we think people might want us to.  We’re going to be true to ourselves.

So we’re going to have lots of fun.  Sure, it won’t go text-book to plan.  We’ll have some hiccups on the day (and probably at some stage during our married lives) but we’re ok with that.  We’ve accepted it.  We’re going to start our married lives as we mean to go on.  Living our way, not how other people expect us to live, expect us to be and expect us to behave.

We’re going to do this our way and we’re going to enjoy our lives with the biggest smile on our faces.

Question: What do you do to ensure you live your way, being true to yourself, and not how you should do, ought to, have to?

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