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Wedding Busywork: Restless Hand Syndrome

June is the traditional month for weddings, but it turns out fall ceremonies are increasingly popular. 

Charlottesville author Janis Jaquith is looking forward to her daughter's wedding, and wondering why some people make the whole process much more complicated than necessary. 

I am not a crafty person. I don’t use “scrapbook” as a verb, and I don’t own a glue gun.

But now that my daughter is about to get married, some latent, ancient itch has overtaken me, and suddenly, I need to keep my hands moving, making wedding preparations.         

This is embarrassing, because ever since I discovered Facebook and Pinterest, I’ve been mystified by – and derisive of -- how much work brides to be, and their womenfolk, make for themselves by undertaking crafts projects for their weddings.

They stencil “Mr. and Mrs.” on burlap banners. They make flower vases by wrapping tin cans in twine.  They make candle holders by gluing glitter to the insides of mason jars.

And then there’s that trifecta of wedding decorations:  Wrapping burlap around a mason jar and securing it with twine.

A friend of mine spent the hectic days before her wedding decoupaging pictures of cats onto votive candle holders. It wasn’t easy, and involved several trips to the crafts store.

Isn’t there enough to do before a wedding without all this crafty busywork? Like dealing with seating assignments and finding out that your college roommate is on her way from Chicago, bringing her brand-new boyfriend AND his kids to the wedding, when only the roommate was invited.

Meanwhile, in the past few months, when I have not been on Facebook, I have been making Jill’s wedding veil – a task that should be easy. You get a big piece of tulle, you gather one end, and voila: You’ve just saved a couple hundred bucks.

And yet. I have lost count of how many veils I have made, trying to get it right. I think I’m on number seven. We have bits of ivory tulle and satin ribbon all over the house.

Turns out, keeping your hands busy with wedding preparations feels good, the way thoroughly cleaning the house feels when you’re nine months pregnant. (A few days before I gave birth to Jill, I scrubbed the INSIDE of our fireplace.)

My other project is finding the perfect necklace to wear on the big day. I decided to use my mother’s pearl choker. When I tried it on and looked in the mirror, one of the strings burst, and pearls went dancing all over the bathroom counter. A few went down the drain.

So now, I’m about to hunker down over my dining room table with a heap of pearls and a spool of jeweler’s wire. It suddenly seems crucial that I restring this necklace as a way of including my late mother in the wedding of her granddaughter.

This wedding busy-work has involved countless trips to crafts stores and hours of labor.

I could have bought her a veil. I could have taken the necklace to a jeweler. But, like my glue-gun wielding soul sisters on Pinterest, I find inexplicable pleasure in doing it with my own hands.

As I squint to find the tiny hole in the pearl and insert the silver wire, I think of generations of women, their hands busy preparing daughters for wedding ceremonies: etching henna patterns on the bride’s skin; embroidering fabrics; my Swedish ancestors, centuries ago, weaving bridal crowns from straw and wheat and flowers. All those busy hands – for tens of thousands of years.

Nowadays, we hire people to do most everything for a wedding: to cook, provide music, make the dresses, do the hair and makeup. The tasks are taken care of, but the fingers and hands of the womenfolk still need something to do. We don’t know why, any more than birds know why they rise up and fly in unison.

Hence the pearl-stringing, multiple veils, and -- God help us -- mason jars, twine, and burlap in every possible combination. We just cannot help ourselves.

You can find more essays from Janis Jaquith on on her website.

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