Two days ago my older sister got married in a semi-traditional Wiccan ceremony, it was definetly interesting but more importantly it was completely beatiful. It was all outside, you walked down this winding path down a hill into this circular area that was mowed out in the middle of an expansive meadow. Seriously gorgeous. Now, while I’ve been looking forward to this wedding for months; she is my sister and I was the Maid of Honor, what I was most looking forward to, perhaps in a perverse sort of way, was seeing how my conservative mormon father would react to a wiccan cermony. I was not dissapointed.
Behind the relationship that my siblings and I have with our father is a lifetime of hurt, emotional abuse, and just being generally forgotten in luie of his new family. It’s complicated, I won’t go into it. A few years ago he, his wife, her daughter, and their 7 year old son converted to mormonism and has been getting further and further into it since. Now, I’m not looking down on faith or beliefs, I think that they’re a good thing in life generally. However, he judges everyone terribly who doesn’t share the same faith as he does, case in point, my wiccan sister. For this very reason he never knew she was a wiccian or that the wedding he was to be attenting would be “different”, or he wouldn’t have shown up.
But the wedding itself was really neat, we actually ate the dinner and had wine before hand, which was really nice because everyone got to mingle, get full, and get any stress out of the way. This started at five with the ceremony starting at seven, my dad and his family come at six. Awkwardness aside we all play nice. The ceremony is beatiful and ridiculously short, only 15 minutes. The whole time I’m eyeing my father and step mother, my step mother Kendra just looks generally annoyed and displeased the whole time, but it’s kind of hard to tell, that’s sort of just her face. My father has this overly exaggerated open frown face that only grows throughout the ceremony. It was a combination of horror and confusion that I can’t even describe. By the time that the preistess was tying the ribbon around their hands and holding up the broom for them to jump over he resembled the angry old muppet in Seseme Street.
After a few toasts, of which I’d like to say I hit mine out of the park; I had everyone crying- awesome, we had the bouqet toss, which I freaking caught. Immedately thereafter my father left without a formal goodbye to any of us, although apparently he did ask my aunts “What the hell was that down there?” and they had to explain the facts of life to him. But honestly, good riddance, if you can’t stay at your own daughter’s wedding for more than an hour and a half because you want to drive back early the next morning for your parent’s 62nd wedding anniversary (WHAT?!? How is that more important?) then maybe you just shouldn’t come in the first place. That’s what I’m thinking when it comes time for my wedding. Speaking of, my boyfriend caught the garter, I think it’s meant to be.
But all in all it was a really nice weekend, they even threw me an impromptu birthday party, so sweet. The only thing that I know is that now everyone is looking to me to be the next one to get hitched, we’ll see…
Such fun! I would have loved to be there to see your father’s face. If he’s that way, no wonder his daughters didn’t follow him down the LDS path.
BTW, I’m pretty sure it’s “Wiccan.”
I had no idea about any details relating to your relationship with your father-I’m sorry it was awkward but the wedding sounds beautiful. And uh…is the race really on for the next one of us to get engaged? I think you’re def. a step ahead of me, what with the bouquet and garter catching.
yeah. Gingers next. I can feel it.