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When my daughter's boyfriend called to tell me he was going to ask her to marry him, I was thrilled. Colin is a solid guy who I know will take good care of Sasha, as she will of him. He showed me the engagement ring over a video call, and I was touched when he asked me to pay a surprise visit to Washington, DC to be there when he proposed.
I was even game when his increasingly baroque plan involved me hiding behind a tree while another friend wore a disguise to take pictures. Let’s just say things didn’t go according to plan, but that’s a story for another day.
The minute I got off the call, I found myself swirling in a tornado of emotions: happiness and melancholy, joy and loss. When Sasha was born, my husband and I talked about dancing together at her wedding, but life had other plans. He died just before her sixth birthday. I would be walking my daughter down the aisle alone.
Any single woman will tell you that among the most difficult moments can be going to a wedding solo. No matter how old you are. No matter how much you love the bride and groom. When it is your only child and the rest of your immediate family has also recently passed away, it can be even harder. This is beginning to sound all "woe is me." That’s not what I mean at all. I know I am among the most blessed people on earth. It’s just, well, complicated.
After the engagement — no, I did not end up hiding behind a tree — we began to tour wedding venues in the Hudson Valley region of New York. Sasha and Colin chose a beautiful organic farm, and the wedding planning commenced in earnest. Sasha, a lawyer, is the opposite of a bridezilla, but she is extremely logical. While she made spreadsheets and did complicated calculations, I began to obsess over with whom I would sit, and with whom I would dance.
Sasha was determined to keep the guest list to 150 people. Colin comes from a big, extended family while I have very few relatives. It made sense — logically — for his family to take up more tables. I am extremely lucky, though, to have a number of close friends that have become my chosen family.
As Sasha and Colin struggled to contain the guest list — weddings, as many of you know, are not cheap — my allotted spots for friends kept getting culled. And, I was growing increasingly upset.
“Mom, it just makes sense. We don’t have any family,” Sasha reminded me. The problem was that I didn’t just feel outnumbered, I felt unheard. Sasha and I are extremely close. She is a thoughtful, smart and successful young woman, but she was looking at the situation as a math problem. I was looking at it as an emotional abyss.
After a difficult phone call, I ended up writing her a long email explaining that as much as I love her and was beyond happy for her, the wedding was bringing up a lot of emotions for me. I had raised her on my own and that involved a number of sacrifices. These choices, I hastened to add, I would make again a hundred times over. Though, what had gotten me through the tough times as well as celebrations was my deep and abiding friendships with other women.
They were not seats to cut but rather they were the family I embrace and who embrace me. Sasha rejiggered the seating plan and told me to choose my own seatmates.
One of my close (single) friends relayed her recent experience attending a wedding alone. The hosts thought they were doing her a favor by seating her at a table with people she worked with to ensure she wasn’t with strangers. The problem was that they were all couples. When they all got up to dance, she was left seated, toying with her silverware. I didn’t want that for me or any of my single friends. I sat us all together.
It poured the morning of the wedding but a few hours before the outdoor ceremony was due to take place, the sun came out. It was shining brightly as Sasha and I prepared to walk arm in arm through the field to the ceremony sight. A bluegrass band was due to play the processional, but Sasha had refused to tell me what song she had chosen. “I want it to be a surprise,” she insisted.
The minute the first notes sounded I looked at her with tears in my eyes and whispered, “Thank you.” When I was pregnant, my husband had read that if you played a song enough times the baby would recognize it when she was born. He chose the James Taylor song, "Smiling Face." The lyrics include this line: “Whenever I see your smiling face, I have to smile myself because I love you, yes I do.” It was exactly how we felt when we first saw her.
Sasha didn’t recognize the tune when she was born, but she recognized now what it meant to me. She had heard me, after all. Her father was with me as I escorted her to the flower-strewn altar.
The dinner was held under a big white tent bedecked with strings of white lights; the amazing farm-to-table food was served family-style. I was filled with happiness as I looked over at my daughter about to start the next phase of her life and at the beloved people who had come to celebrate.
When the DJ began to play dance music, my friends and I all got up to dance together, joyously, crazily. Soon, Sasha and Colin danced their way over to join us, forming a giant circle.
I realized then that I had never been alone at all.
Have you ever attended a wedding alone? Would you want to? Let us know in the comments below.
Tara Anand
Follow Article Topics: Relationships
