Getting Married Again

My children are currently completely obsessed with playing wedding. Of course, there are three of them so one is the bride, one is the groom, and one is the minister. Somewhere along the way they seem to have picked up quite a few of the details of a wedding. Leah told me she wants to get married just so she can ride in a limousine but I pointed out to her that you can ride in a limo any time you want to. We have only one book about weddings that I know of (Snapshots from the Wedding by Gary Soto -- it has really neat collage illustrations). The children are dying to see my wedding photos so I'll have to get them out soon. Natalie was telling me the other day during some one-on-one quiet discussion time that if I got married again and got her a new father (her words, not mine) that I would wear a white sparkly dress and he would wear a black or grey suit (her words, not mine) and she could be a flower girl and wear a yellow dress and scatter flower petals all down the aisle... I was kind of blown away. So I wondered is this something she's thinking a lot about and I said, were you thinking I was going to get married again because I'm kind of thinking I won't, and she said, I don't know, I only just thought about it. So I dropped it. It doesn't seem to be a source of stress for her and she pointed out that her dad could get married again too. We came on to it because she was saying was she in my tummy when I got married and I said no she had already been born and she said did I carry her down the aisle and I said no someone held her and she sat in the front row. And she said, that's not right mom, you should have been carrying me. Maybe she's right about that. So I joked that next time I get married I'll carry her and she said, no, that would be silly, I'm big enough to walk and then all these ideas just spilled out of her.

Who knows, perhaps she'll be a wedding planner when she grows up. The girl certainly has a passion for it. I remember being the same way when I was her age so maybe it's a little girl thing. I remember throwing silk flowers over a little boy in the street and yelling, now we're married. :-) Anyway, I don't mind if they dream but I just want them to know that there's more to life than just being married and there are lots of paths you can take to be happy. Leah's idea of getting married just for the limo ride isn't that far off... I know some people who want to get married just for the idea of being in the spotlight for a day.