i do.

Finding a life in your golden age, can actually be existentially relieving. I have just come from attending a location-wedding, literally at sunset - the ceremony was at 5pm. And the groom and bride were in their 50’s.

It was rather emotional.

Afterwards, we went to the beach to retreat to some R&R’s, and found some time to lay around on the beaches, sands, and some pool-side, spa, hotels, in-room dining, and morning buffet action. A blissful 9-day retreat. A wedding slash holiday.

Serenely, the roles of man and wife have long been questioned - and when accosted with its real-time implications, i feel it was timely to find it in myself to believe that the “i do’s” actually meant something, in the long run.

The ceremony of marriage had been traditionally a formalisation of two people’s engagement, and whether that was a result of : 1/ a really long engagement, spanning at least 2 years from the time of asking/ proposal, 2/ something simply agreed upon, among two friends over time, 3/ a romantic envisioning of a life, 4/ a real accidental find, or 5/ a shotgun marriage, we summon the conviction that at any age, we believe in the time taken to create a formalisation of the path of life propositioned for two.

I hadn’t the words to celebrate the ceremony, or cement the role that i was to occupy as informal matron-of-honour (it was controversially improper), and at the state of time running out, wasn’t really the point of being a status symbol - it was the day of the bride, and no longer a ceremony created to tailor to the guests’ (or even the wedding tradition itself, per se) comfort zones.

We are appreciated as the only guests that mattered enough to witness a very private ceremony, in willing the wedding party to exist, and become one in the currency of time, space, and the border-technicality of both parties’ originating country’s laws for validating their union, in recognising both as finally, mister and missus: mr & mrs. so-and-so.

I think it was certainly worth the trip.