“The wedding is a day. Marriage is the ordinary life that comes after the photographs. Choose someone you can do ordinary life with.”
Beyond the glamour and glow of a wedding, marriage can be pretty much mundane.
Ordinary life: Between wedding and marriage
The real opening act of the rest of your lives is the shocking revelation of the mundanity of ordinary life, the ebb and flow of conflicts and resolutions, the routines, responsibilities and sometimes downright boring days that make up a marriage.
Perhaps, a lot of people are scared of what happens beyond the dating stage of relationships, the glitz of weddings and the euphoria of the honeymoon. But that is the reality of everyday marriage.
We spend so much time preparing for the wedding that sometimes we forget to prepare for the marriage.
We obsess over the venue, the dress, the photographs, the food, the guest list and the honeymoon. And understandably so; it is a beautiful day.
But the wedding is a day. Marriage is the ordinary life that comes after the photographs.
Choose someone you can do ordinary life with.
Choose someone you can sit beside on an uneventful Tuesday evening when there is nothing exciting happening…
Someone with whom silence is not uncomfortable…
Someone you can laugh with over the most ridiculous things and still have a serious conversation when life demands it.
Choose someone you can disagree with without turning every disagreement into a war…
Someone who can apologise… Someone who can forgive…
Someone whose values you respect, because attraction may draw you together, but values will often determine how you navigate the difficult seasons…
Choose someone who will sit with you through financial uncertainty, family responsibilities, career disappointments and the seasons when everything does not quite go according to plan…
Someone who will still be kind when both of you are tired…
Someone you can laugh with when the generator refuses to cooperate or the car refuses to start…
Because marriage is not permanently candlelit dinners, weekend getaways and beautiful photographs.
Sometimes it is deciding what to cook. Paying bills. Running errands. Looking after a sick spouse. Dealing with extended family. Sitting in traffic together.
Worrying about the children. Having an argument and then figuring out how to find your way back to each other.
It is the mundane.
And, perhaps, that is where the real beauty of marriage lies.
There is something beautiful about finding a person with whom you can make a home out of ordinary days.
The person you marry is not just the person you want to celebrate with. It is the person you will potentially share the uncelebrated moments with.
The tired mornings.
The difficult conversations.
The unexpected expenses.
The quiet victories.
The disappointments nobody else sees.
The seasons when one person needs to carry a little more because the other is struggling.
So, by all means, look for chemistry. Look for attraction. Fall in love. Enjoy the butterflies.
But look beyond the butterflies too.
Because butterflies are beautiful, but they are not particularly useful when the roof is leaking or your spouse is difficult or the kids are struggling with decisions.
At some point, life will become less about the excitement of discovering each other and more about the work of building together.
And, perhaps, the real question isn’t simply, “Who gives me butterflies?”
Perhaps it is:
“Who can I build a life with when the butterflies occasionally fly away?”
Choose someone you can do ordinary life with.
Because the wedding may be the celebration everyone witnesses, but the ordinary life that follows is where the marriage is actually lived.
