Here Comes Treble: A Patchwork Of Weddings
"I’ve been privileged to have been married four times. No, I didn’t set out to break hearts or records, that’s just how life worked out. Each wedding was different from the others, wonderful in its own way...'' With self-confessional honesty, Isabel Bradley writes entertainingly and enthusiastically about the most important of all human ceremonies.
“Not only is a wedding the union of two happy people – it should also be the uniting of two families.”
This statement was part of a speech at my step-daughter’s wedding earlier this year.
Perhaps all brides expect their weddings to be transcendent. In most cases, that is wishful thinking. I’ve been privileged to have been married four times. No, I didn’t set out to break hearts or records, that’s just how life worked out. Each wedding was different from the others, wonderful in its own way.
At my first wedding, I was the young, almost-innocent bride of a man three years younger. He was eighteen. “A match made in heaven!” the delighted minister exclaimed, seeing us together. My husband was a trumpeter; I’m a flautist. What better match than two young musicians?
The ceremony was held in a blue and gold Catholic church in a garden suburb of Johannesburg. It lasted half an hour. I walked up the aisle in ivory satin and lace, the roughness of Dad’s suit sleeve under my hand. My brother played the organ – the music was lovely.
Afternoon tea at my parents’ home followed, with plenty of cakes, sausage rolls and scones accompanied by tea, and champagne for the toasts. Family and friends overflowed every available space and spilled into the garden. It was a happy occasion, though not deeply significant.
The match may have been made in heaven, but it had to be lived on earth. My beautiful daughter, Diane, was thirteen months old when, on our second anniversary, that marriage ended.
Thinking I had learnt my Life’s Lesson, I rushed off and married a man eighteen years my senior – after knowing him for only one week! He wasn’t a musician – he didn’t even enjoy classical music. I bought a glamorous outfit, new shoes and handbag; we married at the Pretoria Magistrates’ Court. The ceremony took less than five minutes. Photographs were taken in a park, we had lunch at a nearby restaurant with strangers. No-one knew about the marriage until we returned from a five-day honeymoon. At the time, I thought it brave and daring to elope. In retrospect, it was rather ordinary and somewhat tasteless.
Effectively, this marriage lasted about as long as I’d known my second husband before our wedding. However, for eighteen years I made one excuse after another for staying with him. The one great good that came of the relationship was our wonderful son, Bergen.
Leon and I met in the dying days of my second marriage. As well as being a music-lover, he is a gentle man and a gentleman, my soul mate.
As soon as my divorce was finalised, Leon and I were married in the Magistrate’s Court in Krugersdorp. This was a longer ceremony than the previous one, and much more dignified. It was followed by brunch at a country hotel with Bergen and our three best friends to help us celebrate. This ceremony, more than the other two, was deeply meaningful for me: I was moving into a happy and wonderful life with a man I loved truly and deeply, had taken his name, and promised to be with him forever. We belonged together.
Seven months later, to give our overseas family and friends a chance to reply to our invitations, we had a grand, formal celebration – my “fourth wedding”. It was glorious. It was quite the most beautiful I had ever attended. We wrote our own vows; we spent hours poring over the seating plan, mixing and matching our friends to their and our delight; instead of being numbered, the tables were given the names of musical compositions. The menus gave other information besides the details of dinner. There was a definition of the musical title, as well as the names and short introductions of each person sitting at the table. A quartet consisting of flute, clarinet, saxophone and ‘cello played carefully-selected classical music all evening. Red and white roses sat on mantle-pieces and hung above doorways and from the balcony; orchids were on every table and on the two-tier cake. Everyone had fun. I wore burgundy velvet, and a silver cape, and felt like a queen. Bergen “gave me away”; Leon’s son was his best man.
This wedding was the crowning glory of my life – and of Leon’s. It was our chance to tell the world of our love for each other, to declare the beauty of it to all the most important people in our lives. I believed that I would never again experience a wedding celebration that shone with such emotional significance.
Then came “Wedding of the Century”. Leon’s beautiful daughter, Vivienne, living far away in London, announced her engagement to a young Jewish man, Richard. Before they married, Vivienne decided that she would convert to Judaism. For eighteen months she studied Hebrew, the history of the Jews, celebrated all the festivals of the Jewish calendar, and embraced her new faith with all her heart and soul.
When the end of her conversion was near, she and Richard were permitted to set the date for their wedding – 18 September, 2005.
Of course we flew from South Africa to England for the Grand Occasion.
The Jewish wedding ceremony is filled with rich and beautiful symbolism, from the moment in The Bride’s Room when the bridegroom ensures that his bride is His Chosen and puts the veil over her face, through the blessings and prayers under the Chupah, to the moment when he breaks the glass with a stamp of his foot. There was not a dry eye in the synagogue – not even among the men – when Richard and Vivienne turned to each other for the Wedding Kiss. This fairy-princess bride floated through the evening in a cloud of white, smiling and occasionally wiping away happy tears.
When he said that a wedding should be a union of two families, Richard’s father defined the meaning of the entire evening. It was an occasion sprinkled with stardust and magic, perfumed with flowers. Richard’s grandmother and great-uncle, his parents, brother and sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins, down to a baby in arms, welcomed all of us: they made us feel, indeed, that we are bound to them in love and friendship. Rifts vanished as if they’d never been. This wedding was truly transcendent. Visually and emotionally, for all those who attended, it was, simply, exquisite.
The “Wedding of the Century” created what should become the norm in this age of broken homes, remarriages and often awkward step-relationships: a beautiful Patchwork Family. Like a patchwork quilt, this new and greater family is a thing of warmth and beauty, the glowing colours and golden threads of its diverse parts carefully stitched into patterns that create harmony and happiness for all who are part of it.
This beautiful occasion was the essence of what every wedding should be.
I’ll be back next week. Until then – watch out: “here comes Treble!”
Copyright Reserved ©
Isabel Bradley - Writer and Flautist
e-mail: flute@eject.co.za
