It’s all about Love

Posted on April 15, 2015 by Louise Gallagher

A friend asked me the other day what it was like getting married now, versus when I was younger.

I know me better, I said. I know what I want and I am consciously creating. When I was younger, I just sort of went along with the whole process, not really thinking about ‘what are the feelings I want to evoke, what is the tone/mood/ambience I want to embrace our guests’. What do I want to remember and what do I want people to remember from our wedding? About us? About possibility? Love? Marriage?

What I want to remember is that it’s all about LOVE. It’s expression. It’s presence. It’s many gifts.

I want to remember that this day was all about FAMILY. It’s expression. It’s presence. It’s many gifts.

All four of our children will be present. All four will be part of the ceremony, contributing their words and voices, their love and beauty. They are standing up with us. My daughters will walk down the aisle with me, C.Cs son and daughter will walk down the aisle with him. And we will all six stand together. While two of them witness our signatures on the marriage certificate, the other two will be singing a duet.

It’s all about FAMILY. My two sisters and their husbands will be there. Some of C.C.s siblings will be there as well as nephews and nieces. Even a great nephew!

It’s all about FRIENDS. Coming together, enjoying each other’s company. It’s about how we share from our hearts. How we laugh and dance and sing and tell stories on one another and share moments worth remembering and even, sometimes, reminding each other of the one’s we’d rather forget — but hey! Friends keep us humble.

It’s all about FUN. We are lighthearted and we want this day to be lighthearted. To be light-filled and heartfelt. We want people to feel the possibilities and the expansiveness of Love embracing them every moment of the day, lifting their spirits and opening their hearts.

And, it’s all about US. C.C. and me. It’s about the love we share. The beauty of our communion, the gifts of our union. It’s about how we complement one another. How we strengthen each other and how we support each other, in good times and in bad. It’s about being each other’s best friend, cheerleader, confidant and lover. It’s about deepening in love, every single day, with every breath we take.

It’s all about us and the memories we create on this day and every day that sparkle in the light of each new day rising.

Am I excited? Hell ya!

🙂

Love is. We are. All One.

Posted on April 7, 2015 by Louise Gallagher

The program

To say that I have enjoyed the preparation for our wedding this month would be an understatement.

I have loved it, delving into each element to create something that is a reflection of C.C. and I, our relationship and the atmosphere we want to create on our special day.

Yesterday, my dear friend WC finished my outfit. It was a bigger job than either of us anticipated and her commitment to getting it done, her gracious sharing of her time and talents is amazing. I’m not sharing pictures! That would ruin the big surprise! But I love the colours, the way the skirt flows and moves and how, because the fabric is from India, my mother’s heritage will be with me as I walk down the aisle. It is beautiful.

When I came home, I told C.C. I was going down to the studio to work on the programs. “But I thought you already had them worked out?” he said.

“I’ve changed my mind. I thought of a better way, something that’s more elegant than my original idea.”

He paused. Smiled and replied, “You know you are going to have to quit inventing things pretty soon, right?”

If I had long hair I would have flipped it over my shoulder and given him a coy, don’t state the obvious, kind of look. Instead, I shrugged one shoulder, and said, “eventually.” And headed down to the studio.

We are less than 3 weeks away from our wedding date and I am almost done. Almost.

In the meantime, I will continue to enjoy the creating for the sake of creating. I have a vision of what our day will feel and look like and I want to ensure I have all the elements that will surround each and everyone of us in beauty. I want our guests to feel that what they are experiencing is a special day, a day to celebrate, to connect, to know that love is not just ‘in the air’ but all around, in our hearts and minds and every breath we take.

For C.C., I want him to know that there is nothing in this world I would rather do than be married to him. That our love is deep. That our love is a forever kind of love capable of weathering stormy weather and blue skies flowing into tomorrow. That even though we are marrying in, ‘our later years’, we can celebrate and be excited and be happy and be in awe of this thing called love and our decision to be married, forever.

For our children, I want them to know that love is enduring. That while their parents have taken circuitous routes and along the way, stepped away from love they thought they never would, we are the cummulation of all our missteps and footsteps to this altar where their father from one marriage, and their mother from another, join together to say, I do, take this man/woman and these children to be my family. My tribe. My home.

And for our guests, I want them to know that love is eternal. It is filled with hope and promise. It is a covenant that even when we have taken missteps in our journey they were not in the wrong direction because they lead us here, to this moment, this possibility of turning towards another and connecting in love.

Love is a circle. A constant sea flowing all around us. Love is perfect but we forget sometimes, to see it through open eyes and caring hearts, allowing instead our fears and limitations to hold us separate from the promise of its presence.

Sometimes, in our belief we don’t fit into the circle, we move in and out of love, fearing it is not for us, believing it will not find us. Love never has to find us. It is always present, always strong. And all we have to do to know its truth is believe with all our hearts we are worthy of the thing that connects us all, Love.

On April 25th, C.C. and I will be standing together with our children, stating for everyone to hear our belief in the power and the promise of love to heal, to connect, to create. And in our standing together, we will be the love we know is present.

Love is. We are. All One.

Love is the shortest distance between two hearts

Posted on January 23, 2015 by Louise Gallagher

EULALIE — A SONG.

by Edgar Alan Poe (excerpt)

I DWELT alone
In a world of moan,
And my soul was a stagnant tide,
Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride —
Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride.

I don’t know if there is a specific age limitation on the appropriate use of the term “blushing bride”, but I do know that at 61, and getting married for the third time, the term just doesn’t fit me. But then, I don’t like labels so this is one I have no desire to wear.

What I do want to wear is an outfit that reflects me — my personality, my nature, my style and my stage in life. And that’s where the real challenge lies in getting married at this age. Wedding dress-makers don’t cater to the mature bride, or any other term I’ve plugged into Google to try to find information and ideas about getting married in my sixties.

It’s funny. Okay, not really funny, more disheartening in a ‘if I don’t find the humour in this I might just cry’ kind of way, to be looking for dresses and wedding ideas in my sixties. So much of the online information is geared to young, ‘blushing’ brides who are embarking on married life for the first time.

And it’s understandable.

In 2008, there were 147,288 marriages in Canada. At 4.4 marriages per 1,000 people, the marriage rate was at the lowest level it has been in the last century and half of what it was in 1972. (Source) Given that the average age of a bride at first marriage is 28.9, focusing on ‘the mature bride’ is not a booming business. Focussing on second and more marriages is also not a growth area if the data is any indication. Only 10% of all marriages in Canada are thought to be ‘second time’ with only 1% attributed to more than two marriages. (Source)

So many of our social norms are focused on the notion that the wedding is all about the bride and groom. It’s their day and as many a first time bride has spent much of her life dreaming of this special day, it’s understandable that there’s a sense that for her, it just might be the most important day of her life.

There is a difference though when you’ve been married before and together have four adult children. This day is not just a statement about the two of us. It’s a statement about our families becoming one. About the six of us becoming united. It’s an opportunity to celebrate with our children, to involve them in a symbolic union of our families that states, we are family, we are united, we are together.

And, in that union, it is a recognition that we have thought long and hard about what we are doing. There is no reason for us to be married other than we want to do it. In our desire to wed, we are stating we are deeply committed to making it work, not just for our sakes, but for the sake of our children who have already suffered the stress and sadness of their parents’ divorce.

Getting married at this age is no light matter and while it may not be big business, it is serious business not to be stepped into lightly.

Though being light of heart does help!

And that’s where I struggle. I read the data. Search for articles on planning my ‘mature’ wedding and all I stumble upon are dire predictions of why second and third, and even first, marriages are not necessarily good predictors of future happiness.

According to Stats Can, forty-percent of first time marriages in Canada are predicted to end in divorce before the 30th anniversary. In a US infographic titled Divorce in America, it shows that 60% of second marriages are more likely to end in divorce, and 73% of third.

And I wonder, does it matter? Aren’t we more than the statistic? Aren’t we more than a prediction of failure, or success?

Isn’t this day and all the planning leading up to it, about focusing on happiness, fun, celebration? Isn’t it about celebrating family and all that binds us in Love? Isn’t our willingness to publicly declare our love for one another, no matter our age, a statement of our belief in the power and majesty of love to overcome the odds and not remain relegated to mere statistics? There’s also the consolation that getting married at this age is more likely to find its end in the demise of one or both of us, rather than divorce!

Ultimately, our wedding is our celebration. Though Google has not been a fount of wedding planning how-to’s in planning our big day, I’m no blushing bride. I don’t need anyone to tell me what is the right, or wrong way, to tie the knot. We don’t need anyone to tell us how to create memories. We’ve got lots of those already!

What we need is exactly what we’ve got, two people who love eachother deeply. Two people who have been willing to stand in the whole of their relationship, with all their pasts and broken places between them and acknowledge, the shortest distance between two hearts is always the path of love.

Namaste.