It's Not About the Cake

My older sister, Jill and I were talking about weddings the other day. Jill had just attended a wedding over the weekend and it happen to dovetail with a packet of pictures that ended up at my house due to my mother giving back photos she could no longer store. Going through the old photos with my sister we came across a few from my wedding. Jill grabbed one from the pack and starting laughing so hard she could hardly breathe. It was a picture of my wedding cake, a cake she had made for Ted and me.  I didn't remember either the cake or that she had made it so it was of great interest to me to see it. She shared the photo with me and we both laughed until tears rolled down our faces. OMG! At the time I'm sure I was delighted with the cake, and I must say, I still am. It's perfect. Jill is a creative person, an interior decorator, an artist, a fashion designer but baking may not be her forte. But the love and the effort was there and its always good to see something that she is not so good at, there isn't much. Compared to the cakes at weddings we have been attending this cake looked like something offered up during the Great Depression. You decide.

My parents, who had three daughters and one son, figured they would have to pony up for some weddings in their lifetime so they told us three girls that we could each have $3000 for a wedding, to be spent however we chose. We could elope like they did and take the cash for other uses or spend it on a wedding, adding to it from our own pockets as we felt necessary. Ted and I had full-time jobs, we didn't consider ourselves poor but we had not saved for a big wedding as we were marrying only nine months after we had met. No, I wasn't pregnant! Neither of us came from money or a tradition of big weddings so we weren't at all perturbed to be planning a wedding on $3000, we were grateful. Nowadays that might be the dress budget for a bride. Maybe.

My dress was bought wholesale through connections we had in the clothing business, I think it was $75. I did my own hair and make-up, I know, impossible to tell, right! There was no diamond ring, just gold bands. Ted bought a new tie. Jill was my bridesmaid and only attendant and she made her dress and did her own hair and make-up. Voila, a bridal party was created!

We were married a December 17, 1983, in the living room of my parents home and with some catered food, a full bar that was tended by a friend, and some music tapes lovingly compiled by my husband- to-be (way before iPods), we had a party.  It was imperfectly perfect and I have not regretted a thing. With the overblown media attention to celebrity weddings these days and sites like Pinterest offering unending ideas for novel themes and add-ons, the weddings of today are an expensive exercise in perfection. Exhausting for everyone involved.  It shouldn't be so much about the wedding, it's about a marriage. 

I've pinned the picture of my cake to my bulletin board in my office as a reminder of my sister's love and of the almost 33 years of happiness that my $3000 wedding has brought. Who could ask for anything more than that?