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So, you’re getting married, and you want, in the words of AdvantageBridal.com, to “celebrate your Christianity along with your wedding day.” Some people get married in cowboy boots, and some people have dogs in their wedding parties, and some people get married skydiving; you want to express your personal preference for the Jesus lifestyle, and your friends understand that, which is why, when they throw you . . . how can I put this delicately? . . . a nightie shower, everyone gets cross-on-a-rope for a favor, and not something else.

I will say right now that I can think of worse favors. I’ve gotten them. A friend of mine, on the night before her wedding, hosted what in England is called a “hen party,” complete with the most obscene homemade lollipops I have ever seen in my life. Not gonna eat that in public, or anywhere. At least if you get cross soap, or a pink cross bookmark, or Faith-Hope-Love votive candles, you don’t have to try to slip them unnoticed into the trash can, or hide them under your napkin, or explain to your husband what that thing is doing in your purse with your car keys.

It is also true that being a nice Christian girl does not absolutely prevent your being feted with the kind of lingerie your grandmother would not buy you, and with winks and nudges and insinuations which your grandmother would blush to hear. At least, you hope she would. Nowadays grandmothers seem a lot more brazen than my grandmothers were. My paternal grandmother was born in 1898, and in her view you might as well not have had any body parts at all — hands, feet, and dewy complexion aside — because you certainly weren’t going to be talking about them.

Anyway, this idea of “celebrating your Christianity along with your wedding day” . . . It’s one more way to sing Just Who I Am . . .

Everybody sing!

Just who I am, it’s all about me,
Queen, for today, of all I see . . .


Company’s coming, and I have to go sweep the porch, but if you’d like to finish these alternative hymn words, do go right ahead.

Party favors?
[Rating: 48/100]

(there was supposed to be an image attached to this post, but the uploader seems not to be working at all today — as in, I click the button and nothing happens, which is a new development — and for some reason when I do the code by hand, that doesn’t work, either. So you’ll have to click the link to see the cross-on-a-rope and other party-favor items. We’re on our way out to Mass now, but I’ll try later today to edit an image in. Sorry, folks.)

More on: Weddings

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