Bay Weekly’s Wedding Guide
Marriage is a big tent with room for everybody who wants in.
That’s one of our time’s great changes in law and custom. It’s so new, and so big a break from past values, that it can make you stop and think — once you get over your surprise — how powerfully important marriage is to many, many people.
About half of us are married, including about 10 percent of LGBTQ couples. For more than 80 percent of all Americans, love is a top reason for marrying. Maybe it feels like good luck to see a bride because it’s a reminder that we value deep human connection.
Bay Weekly’s annual Wedding Guide invites you inside the tent to see love flourishing.
You’ll see 14 beaming couples inside that tent in the photo feature I Do. It’s a gift to all of us from our readers, who’ve shared their wedding photos. You can see just what happiness looks like on their faces. Their happiness is contagious.
Isn’t love wonderful, the couples seem to say.
Isn’t it wonderful, I agree, what happens when we find one another.
I also find myself imagining how they’ll adapt over the years to these new roles. Will the dashing guy, proud to have caught the girl, mature into a loving husband who finds his equal in his wife? If they become fathers, will they throw themselves into that role?
Some of these couples have already become what lies ahead. For not all these wedding photos are current. Doug and Teri Sisk, for example, married in 1975. As owners of Sisk Auto Body, they have been with Bay Weekly since the beginning. We’ve seen their daughters grow up and marry, and we’ve seen their grandchildren. Barbara Chase in these pages is one of the Sisk daughters.
So you look at these wedding pictures not only to see happiness but also to imagine a life story.
Many of the photos show not only the happy couple but also the setting of their wedding. It’s like being at the party without the trouble of getting dressed up and finding the right gift.
Under the big tent that is marriage, weddings are the star-studded acts. Brides and grooms get to stage their own drama, and nowadays many do that with extraordinary style and support. The scope of it all is awesome to some of us.
If you’re preparing for a wedding, turn to our Wedding Directory, another part of this special edition, for ideas, inspiration and help — from wedding arrangers to romantic venues, from restaurants to caterers, from travel planners to DJs.
As I said, marriage is a big tent, with plenty of room for everybody — even us onlookers.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.
As well as advice on love — and loving well — you’ll also find all you expect from your weekly paper: news, calendar, columns, News of the Weird and Free Will Astrology. This week brings astrologer Rob Breszny’s own birthday, so you’ll want to see his vision for himself (and the rest of us Cancerians).