Don't Tell The Bride

It had to happen!

Someone came up with a plan to thwart the Bridezillas of this world.

Leave it to the Brits to attempt a masculine mitigation to the matrimonial mayhem.

My bride of twenty-three years and I recently watched the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) second season of Don't Tell The Bride. This is a series where the groom must choose every detail of his wedding, from venue to cake to, in some cases, the wedding dress. The man is no longer a passive, almost rubber-stamp role; now he becomes the active, aggressive planner of THEIR day.

It's at this point, many of my female readers' blood may start to run cold. The very idea of letting a MAN, even one you love, take the reigns of YOUR special day is ANATHEMA!

After all, this is the day your mother has been planning for you since you were born. BOTH of you have very definite ideas how you want/wanted your wedding to be.

HOW DARE any male be allowed to interfere!

I may be stretching it a bit…but not far. Our culture has pushed the feminine ideal of weddings to icon status while doing little to address the post-ceremony reality which reduces the princess to a normal person. The dress is packed away. Guests go home. The new spouse has morning breath and irritating habits.

After watching a couple of these Don't Tell The Bride episodes, I noticed some interesting trends. First, with the stress of planning and keeping the wedding within a budget transferred to the shoulders of the man, they seemed to handle with the pressure better, though they did tended to be more last minute in their planning. The grooms tended to arrived at their big day without the wrangled nerves and fractured relationships a bride-planner left in her wake.
Secondly, freed the details about the day, the bride could focus on her dress, preparing herself, her bridesmaids, and getting ready. There was a sense of intense excitement about how her groom was picking her up, the way he was going to be dressed, where her wedding would take place, what it would look like, where the reception was scheduled, where the honeymoon was planned, etc.

Of the show's we watched, there wasn't a single bride who expressed disappointment in her man. What trust! What confidence! What love!

Americans look at a show like this and say, "It'll never work here!" Ours, you see, is a culture of control--a culture of mistrust.

Our women have been raised not to trust men. They must manipulate and control lest the male species take advantage of them. Then women wonder...after they have taken the helm of the relationship...from the ceremony to the check book...why their passive partners aren't more involved in the marital decision making process beyond the TV remote.

Some years ago, I did extensive research into the wedding customs of Jesus day. (There were some parallels with the BBC production.)

• After the engagement, the groom went away to prepare a place and the ceremony for his bride.
• The bride did not know when, and often not where, the wedding was to take place. Her responsibility was to keep herself and her wedding dress pure.
• The bride was to remain ready to be picked up, or "caught away" from her house. She and attendants were taken to a ceremony and reception or feast of the grooms choosing.

While Don't Tell The Bride will probably never resonate with American women, it should strike a cord with my readers who claim to be Christ-followers. It has long been taught in evangelical Christian circles, those who have embraced the forgiveness of their sins through the death of Christ, have a claim to the Heavenly Bridegroom, Jesus.

In the Upper Room, on the night before He was to face the torture and death on the Roman cross, Jesus spoke the last words a engaged man would tell his fiancé as He left the meal with His disciples

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am." John 14:1-3 (New International Version)

The word Jesus used for troubled is the idea of agitation, or "the inner commotion of parts in friction." That is a perfect description watching the prospective bride from an episode of Bridezillas.

And yet, Jesus' words that night are cautionary for me in 2009 AD. When I allow social and cultural circumstances to impact my spiritual purity, I experience the agitation they brings. I am flirting with "other lovers" just to get by in this life. His absence makes me want to call the shots. I design my own wedding-in-waiting from inferior, cheap earthly designs--forgetting He designed the cosmos, with colors yet unseen by human eyes.

"No one's ever seen or heard anything like this, Never so much as imagined anything quite like it—What God has arranged for those who love him." 1 Corinthians 2:9 (The Message)

The pressure is off of me to run the relationship I have with my Bridegroom. It is my responsibility to keep it clear from the interference of others who would clutter it with rules and regulations; doubts and discouragement.

Because He hasn't come for me and the others who make up the Bride is not the sign of a lack of love. He's still working on unfinished rooms.

"Verily I say unto you,...Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh." Matthew 25:12-13 (New International Version)