May, June, July weddings are a good idea. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate,” trilled old Will Shakespeare. “When young lovers escape to the enchanted woods to sort out their romantic difficulties and thereby take their proper places in the adult world, it is a midsummer night,” writes Thomas C. Foster.[1]Skies are blue, the grass is green, the sun smiles.
October weddings are a bit chancier—more cello, less violin. The weather can swing either way on this one. A bride might seriously consider consulting literary symbolism prior to setting her wedding date, otherwise love-struck hearts begin a journey wherein every anniversary get-away thereafter is graced with spiders, witches and goblins hanging from the trees, the chandeliers, the bannisters of every resort or bed and breakfast getaway. Aye, the price to be paid for running contrary against time proven seasons of happiness. By no accident did the Beach Boys hit the jack pot with happy-summer-land surfing and all those cruising songs. Contrast Surfin’ Safari in Huntington and Malibu, anglin’ in Laguna in Cerro Azul to a Michigan January, for example.[2]Summer is all splashing water and heat. Winter? Windswept and frozen. Jamé and I innocently entered into this journey smack dab in the middle of the two.
“Sometimes hath the brightest day a cloud, / And after summer evermore succeeds / Barren winter, with his wrathful nipping cold; / So cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet.”[3]
Still, I would not change our wedding date.[4]Though I’m not altogether fond of pumpkin flavored anything, I’m sticking with F. Scott Fitzgerald who claims, “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” No day of June compares to the stunning grandeur of autumn east of the Mississippi. That, and we share at least one special day each year with my parents. On our wedding day, Jamé and I eloped and hopped a train to Canada. Only after crossing the border, safe in another country did I have the courage to call and announce that we were wed that morning, on their anniversary day.
[1]Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor.
[2]This goes far in explaining that naughty Bob Seger tune, “Night Moves”. Seger, who is from Michigan, can’t help but get nostalgic for that first summer of “freedom”!
[3]Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part II.
[4]When telling Jamé about my literary conundrum regarding the season of our I Do’s during the writing of this intro, he looked at me and quietly said, “Our journey was orchestrated as a warm up to the liturgical calendar, we just didn’t know it yet.” I love that.