Wedding Gift to My Daughter and Her New Husband? Love and Letting Go

A wedding is always good news. I never knew why until my daughter became a bride.

Yes, I am the mother of the bride. And, I am learning to let go.

Because my daughter is stressed, I want to soothe her exactly the way I did when she was a small child, but that role is no longer exclusively mine. She usually knows how to soothe herself, or can turn to the man she is about to marry. My job is to continue to love her and to extend that love to him, her husband-to-be. Can I do that? Can I gracefully step aside? I will because I love her.

Brides are all about love. First, is the love between the new couple and what they will create together. They are the hope for the future. But there is also what I call surrounding love — the love of parents, the love of members of the family, and the love of all the friends, old and young, who come to celebrate the marriage of this bride and groom. Traditionally, parents “give away” their daughter. The father or the mother and father walk with the bride down the aisle and hand her over to the groom. They “give her away” and then step aside.

Years ago I attended a wedding where the father of the bride stood still, his hand tightly clutching his daughter’s arm. The groom waited patiently, but nothing happened. Finally, across the aisle, his wife called out, “Charlie, let go.”

In her bridal dress and veil, my daughter will walk down the aisle to meet the man she loves. I will step back and that will be my gift to her.

File photo by Robby Mueller (CC license)