On Sunday, Newman University Church held our largest annual Mass outside of Christmas and Easter. For the second year in a row, we held a Mass honoring the couples who have been married in the church. We asked couples to submit photographs of themselves on their wedding day, which we hung up in the atrium, and we invited those couples to the church for our evening Mass. Following Mass, we held a social with champagne and chocolate and celebrated the hundreds of people who got married here.
It was a beautiful event, made even more special by the work that we put into making it a success. I spent the week leading up to the event combing through wedding photographs, uploading them into an online photo album. I hung up the physical copies of the photographs in the church and spent the weeks and months ahead of time promoting the event to as many people as I could. The day of, every surface of our office was covered in chocolate as we prepared plates on which to serve the treats. Every additional chair we could find was placed in the back of the church and the choir worked hard during rehearsal to prepare beautiful hymns, including “O Love,” one of my favorites.
All in all, our event brought in almost 300 pictures and over 400 attendees. It was exciting to see the church so full and to give couples an opportunity to relive their wedding day. At 22, I’m at the age when friends are starting to get married and it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of the day without thinking about what a wedding really means. With all of the planning and decisions that have to be made it’s easy to think of a wedding as a one-off celebration without thinking of what comes next—a marriage. We think of the dress, the venue, the music, the guest list, but rarely do we (or at least, do I) stop to take in just how significant a wedding truly is. It is the beginning of two people choosing to build a life together, promising to stand by one another in good times and in bad. That is a significant promise that deserves just as much, if not more, celebration than the wedding itself.
Our event Sunday evening gave couples, some of whom haven’t been back to the church since they’ve gotten married and some of whom have seen their children wed here, the chance to revisit their own wedding day with the knowledge of the successes and struggles of their lives together. It also served as a reminder to all people in attendance that marriage extends beyond a wedding celebration. Each day, these couples chose to honor the commitment that they made to one another years ago in Newman University Church. It was only right that we should celebrate that commitment in the place where it began. Couples spanning generations coming together to celebrate the same sacrament in the place that binds them together was beautiful. I consider myself lucky to have been a part of it.
