Small Strokes Big Oaks

I absolutely cannot wait to tell you all about my wedding ceremony and all of the wonderful personal touches we added that made our nods toward traditional wedding ceremonies feel completely unique.  But I really feel these stories will not be complete without their accompanying pictures, and since we do not have our CD of pictures yet (we have the proofs, but they all say PROOF across them in big letters, so that does me absolutely no good!), you’ll have to wait on that.  But it is coming, I promise!

In the meantime, it’s time for a little story.  This story is about our wedding preparation, organized chaos, and our guest room.  And weddings and feminism, of course.

In the weeks before our wedding, when the countdown was reaching its final days, our guest room/office (where I am sitting right now, actually) was almost filled to capacity.  The entire double bed was covered with gifts that we were preparing to give our parents, bridal party, and other friends and family who had helped us out.  The floor was covered with gifts we had received that were sent to us before the wedding and that we hadn’t had a chance to put away.  My desk was covered with to do lists and receipts and post-it notes with reminders not to forget last minute things.  Mr. Samsanator’s desk was covered with lord knows what, but, then again, it’s always covered with something.  (He is a fan of organized chaos.  I am, too, but I like mine in drawers and closets rather than out in the open.)  The corner next to my desk was off-limits to all but me, and reserved for bags and boxes of printed material – programs, place cards, thank you notes, extra invitations.  The spaces between this stuff, and sometimes spilling out into the family room, were filled with stuff we had to remember to bring to the venue the night before – champagne toasting flutes, the cake cutting set, the wish jar, my shoes.  It was chaos.  I so wish I had a picture of what our guest room looked like in the weeks before the wedding, because this is no exaggeration.  The room was filled to the brim, and those of you who know me well, you know that I would absolutely never let this happen under normal circumstances.  But these were no normal circumstances, after all.

However, that didn’t stop my guest room from being the bane of my existence.  I’d leave the door closed to hide the mess and wouldn’t go in there unless it was really necessary.  Every few days, I’d try to unload some of the gifts we received and put them away, but it never seemed to make a dent.  I was at the point where I was just short of having panic attacks thinking about all the work left to be done and the post-wedding to do list getting longer and longer before the pre-wedding to do list was even finished.  I wanted desperately to write more and sit at my desk and seek comfort in this blog at the very least, but I just couldn’t even bring myself to go in the room to get my computer out of it.

In short, it just wasn’t pretty.

My feelings about our guest room were very similar to my feelings about being a feminist and planning a wedding.  Since Mr. Samsanator asked the question: “Will you do me the honor of becoming Ms. Ashley Samsanator?”¹, I was consumed with guilt and doubts.  Could I be a feminist and plan the wedding I wanted?  Could I have a big, white wedding full of privilege and traditional gender roles while still keeping what was important to me at the core of the event?  I was just overtaken by thoughts of how I could subvert all of the patriarchal norms that came with weddings, but also with thoughts of how I just didn’t want to subvert some of them.  Some of those norms I really liked, and I felt bad about it because I knew what they meant and wanted to go through with them anyway.

If you’re regular readers of this blog, you know most of this already because you’ve been reading about it for over a year now.  I wasn’t concerned with being a bad feminist so much as I was concerned with doing things at this wedding that I may not be able to live with later down the line.

In this way, my thoughts were becoming organized chaos very much like the guest room.  These thoughts piled up, each with their own little place so I could find them on command, but the piles were so high I was unable to clean them out.  If I could clean out a few, it didn’t even make a dent, and the holes were only filled up with other thoughts and concerns.  Only, my thoughts didn’t have a door I could close to let them rumble around unnoticed while I sat on the couch and watched TV.

About three weeks before the wedding, though, I gave in.  I let it all go.  Enough was enough, and it was time to enjoy the rest of the process.  I don’t know why it was three weeks before the wedding.  Maybe it was because the details had all been planned and it was what it was.  Maybe it was because the excitement was greater than the worry (mostly).  Maybe it was because I was finally seeing the big picture come together, and the message of the big picture was far greater than that of the smaller details.  Maybe it was all of the above.  All I know, though, is that there was a clear moment when I was able to quiet the feminist in my head and just enjoy the rest of the process worry-free.

Similarly with the guest room, I was able to leave the door open and look in, saying to myself, Don’t worry, Ashley.  It’ll all get done in time, and now is not the time.

The day before the wedding, we were able to clear off the bed of all the gifts for friends and family and pass them out at the rehearsal.  It felt right to be able to thank these people so personally.  Also at the rehearsal, when we ran through the ceremony with the music and the trumpet fanfare began at the beginning of “All You Need is Love,” I felt my mom and dad on either side of me grip my elbows a bit tighter and saw the tears streaming down their face – tears of pride, joy, anguish, remembrance, relief.  This was clarity.  This was feminism.  This was family.  This was love.

This was what a wedding should be about.

Those worries and that messy guest room were all worth it because they led me to that moment, making me comfortable in this love surrounding me and firm in my resolve to use this love to do good in the world.

I spent the night before the wedding at my mom’s house, and we spent the night of the wedding in the hotel with the rest of the guests.  When we came home the next day, I walked past the guest room and, though it was far from organized, I realized Mr. Samsanator had spent some time cleaning the night before the wedding, and much of the clutter was gone.  We stood there in the room, looking at the remnants of the night before and thinking of what was to come and what was left to be done, and I realized much of the feminist clutter in my brain was gone, as well.  His love and the love that surrounded us had helped me clear it out, and though the worries of who I am to become in this new partnership have far from completely disappeared – just like the guest room is still a hub for straggling gifts and other things we’re just not sure what to do with – I know that we’ll be in this together, and that he’ll step in when least expected (and most needed) to help clean house.