Candice and Curtis were married on the very bridge where they had gone to talk many times during their courting years. Bridges symbolize the transformative journey from one stage of life to the next, and so a bridge is the perfect spot for a wedding that takes a couple from their life as separate individuals to their life as one.
During the ceremony, I read from Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from
the Sea, these words that draw a
connection between the nature of water and of love:
When you love
someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from
moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And
yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb
and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide
and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on
permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in
life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the
dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same
pattern.
The only real security is not in owning or
possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a
relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward
to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present
relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands,
one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits -
islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and
abandoned by the tides.
“Stephen and Martha, It is
fitting that you have chosen to take your vows at this spot where the Chenango
and Susquehanna Rivers meet, for as you navigate the ups and downs of marriage
you will be reminded of the eddies and rapids of a river. And just as these two
rivers strengthen themselves by coming together, the confluence of your two
lives will strengthen your love and your ability to share yourselves with each other.”
~ Emily
VanLaeys
“Igor and Yana, you first embarked on your journey together with a
walk along the Charles River in Cambridge. Gradually you fell in love; and then
there was the romantic vacation in Jamaica where Igor proposed to Yana on a
cliff overlooking the beach. Now the river of life has led you to this gorgeous
waterfall in Ithaca where you will exchange your vows and become a family.”
~ Emily VanLaeys
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