October 18, 2014

How To Be A Child Bride

child bride sitting outside cabin

It's simple really.

Be a teenager in love.  Dress your stubbornness in a white dress. March yourself down an aisle.

Oh my poor parents.  God bless them for not throwing a fit.

I was a girl who {thought I} knew what I wanted and that meant marrying the boy who handed me Phillipians 1:3 while I was wearing saggy old man Adidas track pants.  You don't come back from that. The deal was sealed before we'd even had our first kiss.

getting ready for wedding

I was 18. Eighteen! I knew nothing about the world or about love or about how to cook chicken. I was completely gaga for this boy who looked like John Lennon and played Skydiggers on the guitar and grinned at me while I sang harmony against his melody.

walking down the aisle with both parents, signing the register

A child bride doesn't care about the little things {like the decoupaged pop bottle bottoms that became candy dishes on the reception table}. I cared about my dress and I cared that I had a center aisle to walk down. The rest didn't matter.

It would be so different if I was doing it today.  Today, with Pinterest and digital photography and bridesmaids that are no longer children themselves.

It took me an hour yesterday to find our wedding photos - tucked back in a dusty corner.  They are not good pictures. They are a huge regret. But it was 1998 - people had little 110 cameras.  {I would consider a vow renewal ceremony now just for the photos.}

But the message that pours out from those old pages is one of forever - that we knew and believed and promised and vowed that we meant everything that day stood for - and you could see it all over our faces.

How to be a child bride - SelfBinding Retrospect by Alanna Rusnak

I have regrets about our wedding day.

He is not one of them.

Somehow we've navigated the inevitable ups and downs and now, sixteen years later, I still choose him as my life partner.

So, the question isn't 'How To Be A Child Bride'. It should be 'How To Be A Child Wife.'

But perhaps that's a story for another time...

Read about our perfectly imperfect wedding night by clicking the Slum Love photo on the left.

p.s. Today was my first day blogging from my new writing room.  I'll be showing it off soon!!

p.p.s. Thrift Blitz goes live on Monday - be ready to link up your super great finds!
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3 comments:

  1. Heidi EastmanOctober 18, 2014

    I didn't know he used a Bible verse as a pickup line! That's wonderfully cheesy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh yeah...perhaps a future post should be 'How To Trick A Naive Christian Into Being Your Girlfriend' Not that he tricked me...but I think it was kind of a move...wonderfully cheesy though it may have been ;)

      Delete
    2. Heidi EastmanOctober 19, 2014

      Do it! I had a guy tell me once that God told him to date Christian people. It didn't work, but it was a funny line.

      Delete

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