Have I told you before how much I love the blog “A Practical Wedding?” My friend Molly told me about this blog, which she and her wife discovered when they were planning their wedding in 2011. Since she told me about it, I have been hooked. And not only because I find incredible clients whose weddings I have so much fun photographing, but also because it’s a darn good group of people working darn hard to keep weddings fun, unique, and relaxed.
If you don’t know about it yet, and you have a wedding coming up in your life (or if you just want to find a great blog populated with well written pieces by cool people) you should check it out: www.apracticalwedding.com
Claire and Ryan are an APW couple whose wedding I photographed earlier this month. They had a sweet ceremony in the Italian garden at the Codman Estate followed by a buffet dinner and dancing in the carriage house. It was beautiful and romantic and tons of fun. But the thing I want to tell you about was the reading that they had Ryan’s sister give during the ceremony.
One of the things that I love about going to dozens of weddings every year is that I get to witness dozens of different wedding ceremonies. Sometimes the couple say their vows aloud, sometimes they say them silently. Sometimes they exchange rings, sometimes they don’t. I have seen all kinds of officiants, all kinds of ways to “walk down the aisle,” heard all kinds of speeches and sermons and readings.
The reading at Claire and Ryan’s wedding was a new one for me. It’s called “Loving the Wrong Person,” by Andrew Boyd and it turns out it’s widely known out there on the internet. But I had never heard it before and I loved it. I love its honesty, its simplicity, and its humor. Here is the text and here is the website where I found it in its entirety:
Loving the Wrong Person
We’re all seeking that special person who is right for us.
But if you’ve been through enough relationships,
you begin to suspect there’s no right person,
just different flavors of wrong.
Why is this?
Because you yourself are wrong in some way,
and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complementary way.
But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness.
It isn’t until you finally run up against your deepest demons,
your unsolvable problems – the ones that make you truly who you are –
that you’re ready to find a life-long mate.
Only then do you finally know what you’re looking for.
You’re looking for the wrong person.
But not just any wrong person:
the right wrong person – someone you lovingly gaze upon and think,
“This is the problem I want to have.”
