On weddings.

So my mom's wedding is over, meaning I don't have any more weddings to attend this summer and the only thing I have to worry about is dealing with two new stepparents and two stepbrothers. Fortunately (and unfortunately), I leave in less than two weeks, so I don't have too much time to worry about it.
I was talking to my grandfather's partner--a woman he's been with for as long as I can remember, but to whom he isn't married--and I let slip the phrase "When I get married for the first time..." She immediately caught it, and I realized what I'd said. I automatically assumed that there was more than one wedding in my future.
Which is really, if you think about it, not an unreasonable thing to assume. Out of anyone I know, I think I'm the person most genetically predispositioned towards remarriage. My parents were married, divorced, then remarried. My mom's mom was married, divorced, remarried, divorced, remarried and finally widowed. My mom's dad was married, divorced, remarried and again divorced. My dad's dad was married, widowed, remarried and re-widowed. My dad's mom died when I was three, so I'll never know what would've happened with her.
Aside from all that, there's the growing disregard that my generation has for marriage. I mean, last year my roomate kept saying she was going to marry our sponsor for a day in Vegas, then get the marriage annulled. When a celebrity marries, it's taken for granted that it won't last. Not to mention the 4,000 gay couples married this past year in San Francisco who were ordered to tear up their marriage licenses because of an inane court ruling. It seems like if we want to preserve the "sanctity of marriage," forbidding gay couples to get married is the LAST thing we should think about doing. Maybe there should just be one state in which it is legal for straight people to marry. It would make couples think a lot more before doing the deed.
My cousin, who is an Orthodox Jew, up and decided one day that he wanted to get married. He was twenty at the time. He notified his rabbi, who set him up on five blind dates with five different women. On the fifth one, he knew he had a winner. Several months later, they had an Orthodox wedding, meaning sideburns, klezmer and rampant sexism. It's been several years and they are still married, have a child and live by Orthodox rules, which dictate that the husband be in control at all times. I mean, the wife can't even let people other than her husband see her real hair--she has to wear a wig when she goes outside.
They are one of the happiest couples I know.
Should that mean something?