Trip to Boston and Jeffrey’s Wedding
The Holliston Town Hall, where they were married, though it was not so decked out in Fourth of July decor at the time. Image from the Holliston Town website.
Last weekend, I was in Boston with all my friends from college because our friends Jeffrey and Julia were getting married. The wedding was in the style of the Quakers, which means it was part of a Meeting for Worship. If you don’t know, the way Quakers meet for worship is they all sit together in silence for a while, and if somebody is moved to speak, he does. There is no liturgy or anything, just people sitting together. I worshiped with the Quakers for a summer, and all the meetings I have been to were at Pendle Hill. They were about half an hour or an hour long, and usually only one or two people would get up to speak. (Sometimes Quakers have programmed meetings; they work differently, but I have never been to one so I don’t know what they are like).
Anyway, the way the wedding worked is, we all sat there quietly for about twenty or thirty minutes, and then Jeff and Julia got up, exchanged their vows, and exchanged rings. After that, people began to get up and say things: about marriage, about the two of them, about growing up. We hard stories about Jeff’s childhood, about Julia’s sister thinking Julia was crazy to get married already, and about seeing the relationship between the two of them.
This way of getting married was rather different from any wedding I had ever been to (I’ve been to a few: some of my aunts’ and uncles’ weddings, and the wedding of one of my mom’s friends; all were quite some time ago). There was no minister, no flower girls, no readings, and no real pomp of any sort. It was all pretty simple and low-key. Well, that is in character for Jeff and Julia. It was very different from anything Episcopalian, most obviously because there was no liturgy, just people getting up and speaking as they were moved. It was different, but I think it was quite beautiful, hearing what everybody had to say to them. Some if it might have seemed a bit inane, but it was all heartfelt. It was particularly moving hearing my friends getting up and saying the things I felt but did not have the words for.
The tree swing we swung on.
For me and many of my friends, Jeff and Julia are the first of our friends to get married, so for us the wedding was not only a sign that the two of them were growing up, but also a sign that we were. I remember when, the fall of our senior year, Jeff first asked us whether he ought to accept Julia’s proposal of marriage. One or two of my friends and I ran off to the nearest tree swing to swing on it. We were, we felt, not old enough for our friends to start getting married. As time passed, though, it became more and more obvious that the two of them should get married, and if that meant we would all have to grow up a little, maybe that was not so bad after all.
