It’s Their Wedding, and Their Wedding Planning

You may think you have her figured out: A woman of a certain age sits at a garden table in the waning hours of a Brooklyn Sunday brunch, reading a book while she finishes her meal. She considers the dappled sunlight filtered through the leaves, takes her time enjoying each bite, dawdles over her coffee. She lingers to jot a line or two in a tiny notebook. You might assume that she uses journal as a verb.

That’s my cover. In fact, I am here to check out the likely wedding venue. I travel incognito on purpose, to get a true reading, because if I’d identified myself as the mother of the bride they might have sent out a bigger salad or better coffee art. Not that I have veto power or even an equal vote. No, I visit Sarah and Jesse’s favored spot because I am genetically programmed to do so. Anything less would qualify as neglect.

The activity-director mutation runs strong among the women in my family. We are room mothers, troop leaders, refreshment committee co-chairs, PTA officers, sports team moms. My maternal grandmother volunteered for a charity called the Willing Workers, for heaven’s sake. We live to do.

But then, so does Sarah — and Jesse, as it turns out. They know what they want, which they turn into a set of priorities and a budget before I can assert the mother of the bride’s traditional right to run the show. Better yet, or worse in terms of maternal dominance, they are food-and-beverage professionals. If they were a dentist and a plumber I might be able to get some traction here, but who am I kidding. I may have thrown dinners for three dozen. They have expertise.

I am encouraged to kibitz and reminded that there will be plenty for me to do, but I will not be the wedding czar of yore, even though I know I could have pulled this off. My big challenge, it seems, will be to find ways to exercise my natural power-broker instincts.

In a rush of revisionist fervor, I see the whole thing fresh. Who’s getting married, after all? Sarah and Jesse should have exactly the wedding they want, and I should embrace my role as facilitator. I will execute; I will not even attempt to overrule. I will embrace a new, enlightened, selfless model of the mother of the bride.

And then, says the small voice of the sore loser, I will wait for them to need more from me than they think they do, because they will. I cannot utter the word “mindful” without irony, despite decades spent in Southern California, but that is what I aspire to be. Since I have to breathe to do anything else, I will start with mindful breathing, which I practice almost every night — at 3 a.m.

Breathe in. Nice empty brain. So far, so good.

Breathe out. Tally the out-of-town guests and wonder where to put them.

Breathe in. Refocus.

Breathe out. Get out of bed to search online for cheap full-length snap-front rain ponchos to get from the hotel to the venue in a downpour.

Breathe in.

Breathe out. Scrap current version of toast and start another rewrite.

Breathe in.

Breathe out. Jot down alternatives to “mother of the bride dress” on the notepad I now keep next to the bed, for tomorrow’s internet adventure, because I am not wearing a tasteful jewel-toned sheath with matching jacket.

I give up.

Rather than count sheep, I count candidates for the dance playlist we’re going to need. Before you can say Sam and Dave, I’m out.

But Sarah and Jesse don’t need my playlist, because they’re going with a guitar and a stand-up bass. Music to croon along to, maybe; not for the kind of dancing I associate with parties.

I don’t recall exactly what I said in response to the news, but whatever it was, it ended with an exclamation point and was a half-scale higher than my usual second alto. Shrill would not be an inaccurate description. My inner partyer cut loose before I could stop her — even as my inner hypocrite pointed out that we didn’t dance at my wedding, either.

I crossed the mindful line in a tone of voice I wouldn’t want to have directed at me. And though I backpedaled fast, it was not fast enough to avert our first mother-daughter wedding-related standoff. I was disappointed that we weren’t dancing. Sarah was disappointed that I was disappointed in such a screechy tone.

While it’s fine for me to have opinions, even strongly held ones, it is not OK to react in a way that pulls rank, or casts doubt on Sarah and Jesse’s mutual good judgment. I work on this for days, until I can see a danceless party in a more favorable light. What is the absence of dancing, after all, but the presence of conversation? Sarah and Jesse seem to think that their wedding guests will enjoy four hours of talk. I decide that not dancing is cause for optimism, and then I work very hard to believe me. Dancing comes up only rarely after that, sometimes as code when a conversation takes a treacherous turn, more often as a little joke when we need to acknowledge that we have different priorities. Sarah will suggest that I throw my own dance party sometime, her smile implying that if they’re in the neighborhood, she and Jesse might drop by.

That would be my party of choice. This wedding will be theirs. Although I will falter along the way — Did you think this transition would be easy? — I understand what I’m after. Party empathy; the ability to share and endorse the happy couple’s notion of happy.

I am glad to have my footing back for as long as it lasts.

When you think about it, a wedding is an earthquake on the family fault line, no matter how joyous the union. The landscape will never be the same, which might be what’s really behind the mythic temblors we sometimes hear about — the screaming fights, the tears, the huffy silences.

I don’t mean to depress you, but to raise the obvious question of who the mother of the bride is supposed to be once she’s stripped of her legal status as next of kin. The bride has a narrative arc ahead of her. The storyline for the mother-of-the-bride isn’t quite as clear, with a nameless gap between that job and potential grandmotherhood. The space in the middle might be full of work, one’s own marriage, a deepening commitment to exercise — whatever you’ve come to think of as daily life. I’m trying to figure out the part that’s up for grabs.

Maybe brides and their moms fight to distract us from the paradigm shift. Maybe some mothers go all in on the party because even arguing is more fun than a midlife identity crisis. Keeps us busy.

At one point I refer to myself as an emeritus parent, which goes over about as well as the business about dancing.

Sarah informs me that I will always be her mother, which was not in doubt, though I greatly appreciate the reassurance. The question is not whether but how I will always be her mother, and the answer is unknowable because we aren’t there yet. The trick, I guess, is to make my peace with not knowing.

So in one marathon late-nighter I make a list of every single wedding question I can think of, category by category, as micro as they get. Choice of song when Sarah walks down the aisle, where to stash the tote bag with comfortable contingency shoes, type of boutonniere, and I’m just warming up. Think Linda Blair in “The Exorcist” only not so green and with nicer eyes. I spew until there is just nothing left in me.

Or think instead — better, quietly, for a mindful moment — about how much you love that girl. How sometimes it’s a relief to download all the daily-life stuff, get rid of it, and reflect on who she is and how she got here and how fiercely lucky you are to be along for some portion of the ride. There. When Sarah was little I said that I loved her more than words, which raised a question: Did I mean more than I love words or more than words can tell?

Yes, I said. Then, and ever since.

The wedding czar sent off the list, which contained nothing Sarah and Jesse hadn’t already thought of. The wedding czar is done; long live whoever I’m about to be. It’ll come clear with time.