Monday, September 6, 2021

The Wedding Bouquet: My mother died before I got married, but she still bought me flowers

Me and my mother on our wedding days in Paisley.
I think it’s crazy how my parents got married. 
It’s 1965, she’s a 20-year-old Californian exploring Europe with her friends, he’s a 27-year-old Dane just bumming around and taking odd jobs to support his travels. He’s working at a ski resort in Germany when my mother arrives in town, and they meet that night in a bar. 
Just weeks later they are hitchhiking alone together through the Middle East, and before she brings him home with her to Los Angeles, they marry in a civil ceremony in Paisley, Scotland.
 
That was crazy cool.
 
And decades later when I was ready to get hitched, I decided I needed to do it in Paisley, too. Since my parents couldn’t be there in person (my mother had died when I was a teen and my father left my life soon after) I thought the best way to have them with me was to get married where they did. It would be hard to make that happen, but my husband agreed to my crazy plan and off we went.
 
Heather, my flower girl.
Our wedding party was very small, and the only family member who attended was my husband’s cousin Heather. 
The day of the ceremony, Heather woke up early with a plan to get me a wedding bouquet, and walked to the nearest shop so she could surprise me with flowers I didn’t know I wanted until she handed them to me.
 
And it turns out that without even trying, she had made me a bouquet that looked almost exactly like the one my mother had on her wedding day.
 
That was super cool.
 
But we didn’t realize that until this year, when I posted my parents’ wedding photo for another blog post
 
Thirteen years later, while looking at photos from both weddings, it struck me how much the bouquets looked alike. I asked Heather if she had done that on purpose, as I had brought my mother’s wedding photo with me, so she could have seen her bouquet.
 
Heather said she hadn't meant to create a similar bouquet, but definitely noticed how much they looked alike when seeing my mother's flowers again. 
 
“And I got a little teary-eyed. I actually think it’s cooler that it just happened that way. It’s a small town, maybe it was the same shop where she got hers.”

Or maybe my mother was there with Heather as she picked out the flowers, then shaped the bouquet in her hotel room before the ceremony. I like thinking she was.
 
 
Our wedding party after the ceremony, with me holding my parents' wedding photo.

 
 

1 comment:

  1. This is yet another example of your awesome writing making me so happy/sad.

    ReplyDelete