Authenticity Amid Anxiety: 5 Wedding Guideposts

— -- I asked my son, Daniel Dowd, and my daughter-in-law, Rebecca Carton, on their first anniversary to give a reflection on weddings and what they learned along the way. They came up with five pillars in protecting their union.

Rebecca: Marriage was never something I thought about when I was growing up. I never had the little girl fantasy of finding the perfect partner and the perfect dress and walking down the aisle as everyone celebrated my husband and me. Maybe I just assumed it would happen at some point in my life or maybe I didn't really care if it did or not. So the traditions that have grown and stuck with marriage -- all of the do's and don'ts, all of the rules and expectations, the pressures -- none of that ever mattered to me. In fact, I found myself wanting to rebel from it all, because none of that is me or how I choose to operate. So when Daniel, my high school sweetheart (I know, sickening right?!), asked me to marry him, for me, the process of planning and executing the wedding was very exciting. It was completely ours to shape.

Daniel: Marriage was always something that I knew I wanted growing up as a child. I’ve been a serial monogamist since I was 5 years old and had the same girlfriend (if you can even call it that) from age 5 to age 10, and then only a few other relationships in between age 10 and when I met Becca at age 15. Between ages 15 and 28 I proposed marriage to Becca approximately 50 times in varying degrees of sincerity at different times in our life and relationship. Luckily, Becca had the foresight and maturity to refuse my inopportune proposals until the time was right for both of us. By the time we decided to seriously consider getting married we were already living together and were very aligned on what it meant to us to be lifelong companions, and so the whole process was all the more enjoyable. Because we waited until we were truly ready we were able to focus on building a wedding that would be ours and a reflection of each of us, our love and our union.

Here is our list of five guideposts we held onto for our wedding in an attempt to ensure authenticity as anxiety surfaced:

1. Don’t start your guest list with a number

List out the people that you want to share your wedding with. Try not to say "Well, we have to invite that person," or, "If we don’t invite them they will be upset." Obligation and guilt should not be dictating your guest list. People are forgiving. It should be intimate. You will want to be able to have a real conversation with every person that you invite to your wedding. This will not be easy but it is very important. Controlling your guest list is going to involve tough decisions and hard conversations with people you love very much in which you have to say "no" and sometimes justify this decision. Be ready for it and don’t shy away from necessary confrontation to make your wedding yours. For our wedding, we ended up with about 50 people. Doing this enabled us to speak to each person several times throughout the night and in turn everyone there felt that they were an important part of our celebration.