This summer we attended three weddings in three weeks.
Each wedding was totally beautiful and completely different.
Two were outside. One involved the bride and groom wearing art smocks. All three had fabulous dancing.
One ceremony lasted over an hour. Another lasted only ten minutes.
What I remember most were the vows.
At the super short wedding, the groom promised something I never heard at a wedding before.
He promised to never change.
He wanted his soon-to-be-wife to know that what she saw was what she got. He didn’t want her to have grand notions of making him a better person.
They had been dating for over five years. She knew his flaws. She knew his weak spots. She knew he was far from perfect. And he wanted her to know, this was the person she was marrying.
He also promised to love her just as she was. He didn’t expect her to change. He didn’t hope she would become something she is not. He was willing to commit knowing the good, the bad and the ugly.
Erv and I always counsel young couples that they need to marry with this mindset.
If you can’t marry someone the way they are right now, you shouldn’t marry them at all. If you’re hoping they will eventually change, grow up, mature, settle down, or whatever you’d like to call it, you should opt out and not get married.
Interestingly, at the very next wedding we attended, the pastor promised the couple that they were going to change. They were going to get old, perhaps get fat, maybe even become boring- and that they had to be willing to love each other anyway.
We all change, but we don’t all improve. We will all remain flawed no matter what. None of us will become perfect spouses.
We promise to marry the imperfect. And stay married to the imperfect.
That is the power of any wedding vows.