It’s Not About the Wedding – Chapter 5 – It’s Not About the Location
This is the 5th in a series of 16 chapters from a new manuscript I am working on called It’s Not About the Wedding: A Common Sense Guide to Getting it Right the First Time, or Any Time. I would love to receive any and all positive or negative feedback on this topic, particularly from those of you who are perhaps currently engaged to be married! Stay tuned for subsequent chapters to follow…
Apparently, it was either the castle or guests...
Let me begin by stating that I completely understand why 80% of all weddings take place in a church. Being a Christian myself, and giving God all of the glory for bringing me this patient, loving, and forgiving woman – as well as the Biblical illustration of Christ as the bridegroom and the church as his bride – I get it. At the same time, I believe that God is bigger than one sanctuary, building, or denomination.
Look, even the most pious and “holier than thou” Christian can choose the most glorious and architecturally magnificent cathedral in the world for their wedding ceremony, but if their hearts are not bound together by a cord of three strands (husband, wife, and Christ), then the bond is easily broken. I’m reminded of a scene in the movie “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”, where Indy must choose from a vast array of chalices – silver, gold, jeweled – to find the chalice of Christ. In the end it was a simple earthenware jug – “the cup of a carpenter”. Sometimes the simplest choices are the best. If your hearts are in the right place, and you “gather in His name” and make your wedding a worship service, you can “have church” on the beach or anywhere else.
I remember driving all over town looking for a perfect (and affordable) church in which to get married. In the end, my wife and I got married beneath a Willow tree, beside a pond, on a friend’s property where our family had already created some wonderful memories. There were, at most, a dozen people there including us. The ceremony was performed by the ordained minister who teaches our Bible study class on Sundays at church, and let me tell you – God was there.
The truth is that people of all faiths get married in all kinds of different locations every day. The focus should not be so much upon where you get married. Instead, focus on where your heart is. A wedding that is all pomp and circumstance, all gothic cathedral and string quartet, all Scottish castle and bagpipes, but has no heart will surely fail.
So, tie the knot in church, or Vegas, or on the beach, or at city hall – wherever. If you’re like me, your surroundings will fade away as you gaze into the eyes of the one you love.
Little Drops of Nectar 