The Magic Room: A Story About the Love We Wish for Our Daughters

by Jeffrey Zaslow

  None of the people around the dance floor are aware of what he has said. They just see Danielle hugging her husband a little more tightly, as “Everything” fills the room.

  Meredith

  Though she turned forty a few weeks earlier, Meredith begins her wedding day as nervous as a schoolgirl on her first date. “I like to be nervous,” she tells her bridesmaids. “It’s my nature. If I’m not worried, there’s something wrong with me.”

  They’ve spent the morning at the hairdresser, where Meredith has tried to settle herself down with a glass of Champagne. Her mind is racing with all the logistical details of the wedding. She’s also thinking that she has spent her adult life as a single woman, and now, within hours, her status will change. The thought is more anxiety-provoking than she expected. She has a second glass of Champagne, which helps.

  Now it is early afternoon, and she arrives at the church, gets into her wedding gown, and enters the sanctuary, where her fiancé, Ron, is waiting for her and their photographer. As she walks toward him, and he sees her in her dress for the first time, she notices a look on his face that she’s never seen before. His smile, his eyes, his expression. “That’s a look of love,” she thinks. (It will be her favorite moment of the day.)

  After the photos, time seems to accelerate. People had told Meredith that a wedding day flies by, and that she should try hard to pay attention. They were right. Meredith can feel the day speeding away from her.

  As the ceremony gets under way, she’s surprised by how anxious she feels. At one point, she and Ron are seated in the front pew while her uncle recites inspirational readings. “I’m going to pass out,” Meredith thinks, and jumbled thoughts start piling up in her mind. “I have to leave the sanctuary and get fresh air. I can’t breathe! But wait. If I leave, Ron will think I don’t want to marry him. I do want to marry him. I do.”

  She hears the readings, but can’t focus on the words. She’s thinking: “I’ve waited forty friggin’ years for this, and now I’m wondering ‘What am I doing?’ I’m one freaky bride, aren’t I? I have to relax!” She takes Ron’s hand, and that calms her down.

  During the recessional, as Meredith walks back down the aisle, she remembers the advice she’d been given: “Pay attention.” And so she walks slowly and looks at people’s faces one by one. They’re almost all smiling at her, two hundred of them. Applauding. Taking photos. Everyone who ever mattered to her is here: friends, relatives, co-workers. And lots of unfamiliar faces are smiling at her: Ron’s relatives. “They seem happy for us too,” she thinks. Unlike her parents, these strangers weren’t waiting decades to see her married, but their smiles seem just as welcoming. Smiles without any baggage.

  After a great many hugs in the back of the church, the wedding party climbs aboard a rented bus and heads to downtown Grand Rapids to have more photos taken in a park. Everyone is cheering, drinking, and blowing bubbles out the bus windows.

  When they arrive, they see four other brides and grooms also posing for photos in the park. Meredith greets them all, wishes them well, and they say the same to her. “Each of these brides looks a decade or two younger than me,” Meredith thinks, but that’s fine. She does wish them well. And in a way, their youthful energy has enhanced her day. They’ve become snapshots in her mind, as she tries to hold on to each moment.

  At the reception, Meredith’s father says a prayer for her and Ron, and thanks everyone who tried to grow white pumpkins for the centerpieces. While planning this fall wedding, Meredith had thought white pumpkins would add a nice fairy-tale touch. She liked the Cinderella connection, though it wasn’t necessarily because she felt like a bride approaching the midnight of her marriageable years.

  She learned, however, that it’s not easy to grow white pumpkins; their seeds often yield orange pumpkins. The quest for white pumpkins turned into what she came to call “the pumpkin fiasco.” But then her parents found a friend who found a farmer who found a way to grow perfect white pumpkins in time for the wedding. Now here they are, forty of them, all beautifully carved with candles glowing orange inside of them.

  Ron’s brother, the best man, offers a toast: “I want to tell all of you that my new sister-in-law, Meredith, is one in a million. So it makes sense that it took Ron until he was forty-two years old to find her, because it takes time to go through a million people.”

  Everyone laughs, and Meredith thinks to herself, “They’re laughing, but I actually did date one million men before I found Ron!”

  At the end of the night, Meredith and Ron check into a hotel near the reception hall, and he disappears in the bathroom. Soon, he has prepared a bubble bath, and lined the tub with pumpkin candles he’s brought over from the reception.

  “It’s beautiful, Ron,” Meredith says, “but there aren’t enough bubbles.”

  He adds more bubble bath, runs more water, they get in the tub, and very quickly, they’re overwhelmed by bubbles. They can’t see each other. It’s like an I Love Lucy episode. “Honey,” Meredith says finally, “to be honest, I’m just exhausted. If I don’t get out of this tub I’m going to fall asleep and drown.”

  As they dry off and climb into bed, the anxiety that began Meredith’s day seems like half a lifetime ago. She finds herself feeling extraordinarily lucky.

  Yes, it’s true that she may be too old to bear children. She and Ron didn’t marry young, like their parents, so they may never see a fortieth or fiftieth wedding anniversary. Still, Meredith decides, after forty years, three weeks and two days of being single, after all her adventures and disappointments, after her personal million-man march, her journey has taken her to the right destination—right here, right now, cuddling with the right man, as they fall asleep together on their first day of marriage.

  Meredith, Ron, and their mostly middle-aged bridal party

  Ashley

  In the days leading up to her wedding, Ashley has been able to set aside the work she’s been doing to earn her PhD in French literature. But her fiancé, Drew, the materials engineer, can’t take time off. He will soon be defending his PhD dissertation, so he’s working feverishly right up until the wedding. He’s literally taking a quick break to get married, and then he’ll be back at work.

  For most of her wedding day, Ashley, the pragmatist, isn’t hugely emotional. She’s surprised when she feels teary walking down the aisle. She didn’t expect that.

  The person at the ceremony who seems most moved, it turns out, is the local judge who is officiating. No one knew she’d be such a softy. She’s so choked up that it’s hard for her to get the words out. “I apologize,” she says at one point. “I always get emotional when I do this.”

  Ashley can’t help but smile. It’s her wedding day, and yet she feels like reaching out to the officiant to calm her down.

  Most of the guests are Catholic or Jewish, and they aren’t accustomed to a nondenominational ceremony. But given that her dad is an atheist, and Ashley is close to defining herself the same way, she didn’t want the ceremony to be religious. Her Catholic relatives would just have to understand. (Drew, being Jewish, wanted to incorporate one Jewish tradition at the end of the ceremony. Ashley agreed it would be meaningful.)

  The couple put together the ceremony themselves, and the words spoken have been chosen carefully. “The union of Drew and Ashley brings together two family traditions, two systems of roots, in the hope that a new family tree may become strong and fruitful,” says the sniffling judge. She turns to Drew’s and Ashley’s parents. “Will you encourage them in their relationship?”

  “We will.”

  “Do you celebrate with them the decision they have made to choose each other?”

  “We do.”

  “Will you continue to stand beside them, yet not between them?”

  “We will.”

  After the vows, the judge reads: “May your house be a place of happiness for all who enter it, and a place where old and young are renewed in each others’ company, a place for growing, for music, for l
aughter. And when shadows and darkness fall within its rooms, may it still be a place of hope and strength.”

  The ceremony ends with the Jewish tradition of the groom stepping on a glass, shattering it. The tradition has several interpretations. Because it recalls the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, it reminds the bride and groom that even in their happiest moments, they should recognize the heartaches life will bring. The broken glass also tempers the wedding celebration by symbolizing the fragility of marriage—the need for a husband and wife to treat each other with care and respect. And so the breaking of the glass is a moment that all at once encompasses sadness, joy, and responsibility.

  When Drew steps on the glass, his Jewish relatives call out the congratulatory words “Mazel Tov!” The bride and groom kiss, then lead the recessional down the aisle.

  During the reception, Ashley agrees to another nod to Drew’s Jewish roots. The guests, led by his relatives, hold Drew and Ashley in chairs above their heads while they dance the Hora around them. It’s a tradition that suggests a bride and groom are like a king and queen, held up by their subjects—at least for the duration of a song.

  Ashley finds the experience kind of scary—she worries she’ll fall at any moment—but she smiles through it, waiting for the song to end. Her response is appropriate: Millions of Jewish brides before her have felt the same way.

  That mob-scene photo of Ashley’s mother’s family is taken during the reception, and comes off well. The fifty relatives smile, most don’t blink, and Ashley’s mom is grateful that time was carved out to get it done.

  At times, Ashley feels like an observer at her own wedding. A wedding is a pageant. She accepts that. But she has no urge to be the pageant queen. “I’m in the dress and I’m the center of attention, by necessity,” she thinks. “But I don’t need it to be ‘my special day.’ As long as everyone else likes the food and music, that’s enough for me.”

  Ashley’s dad, not a big dancer, isn’t gung-ho about the father-daughter dance, but he makes the best of it. As Elvis Presley’s “Memories” begins playing, he decides this is as good a time as any to share words of wisdom. “Drew is a really nice guy,” he tells Ashley while they dance. “I think you two are going to make it.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “But you know what’s most important in a marriage? Compromise.”

  “I know, Dad,” Ashley says. She finds it cute. Not wanting to dance, not knowing what else to say, her father has picked this awkward moment to advise his strong-willed daughter. “Compromise is the key,” he says, trying to make himself heard over Elvis.

  Ashley smiles at her father. She and Drew have so much to do; their dissertations await them, their new apartment awaits them . . . their lives await them. In that sense, the wedding is a distraction. But in this moment, she realizes, she’s content, holding on to her well-meaning dad, listening as he tells her things she already knows.

  Ashley and Rick: the father/daughter dance

  Julie

  As Julie Wieber’s bridal party walks down the aisle of the Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Fowler, it’s remarkable how fast everyone is moving. They’re almost trotting, and there’s hardly any space between all the bridesmaids and groomsmen.

  Between them, Julie and her fiancé, Dean, have seven daughters and two sons, ages fifteen to twenty-three. While they all whiz by, guests might think the kids just want the wedding behind them, given the family friction. But actually, it was the priest who set the pace. Before the wedding, he was almost stern. “Everyone wants their wedding to be a show,” he told the bridal party. “They forget the real marriage is with God; the uniting of two people. This isn’t a show. It’s a sacrament. Let’s keep things moving.”

  Julie walks fast, too, but she looks elegant in a non-extravagant gown suitable for a woman entering a second marriage. (Shelley had come over earlier to help Julie get into her dress, and told her she looked even more beautiful than the first time.)

  There are moments during the ceremony that lead people to think of Julie’s late husband Jeff. One reading includes the words “Allow us to live together to a happy old age,” a reminder that Jeff and Julie did not.

  But there are also moments when the priest seems to be speaking to Julie’s children, offering them the explanation that Julie and Dean didn’t find each other as much as they were delivered to each other. “We may be tempted to think this is chance,” the priest says, “but it is not. Julie and Dean never thought in a million years that they’d be here on this day, but God’s providential love brought them together.”

  Julie’s girls are trying to smile, but when the vows are recited, Camie, seventeen, lowers her head and her body actually starts shaking. Her younger sister, Macy, fifteen, and older sister Lauren, twenty, both put their arms around her. All are crying.

  A heavy rainstorm hits as the ceremony ends, and the guests huddle in the church hallway, standing in line to greet the newlyweds. It’s crowded, as people decide not to run for their cars until the rain eases. Dean is relieved when Julie’s daughters each give him a congratulatory hug; he had worried that they might not reach out to him at all.

  Later, however, at the reception, Julie’s daughters can’t fully contain how annoyed they are each time guests clink their glasses, encouraging Julie and Dean to kiss. Lauren and Stef do a lot of whispering and rolling their eyes at each other. “We shouldn’t be here in these dresses,” Lauren tells her sister. “Mom should still be married to Dad. Everything should be fine, like it was. Not like this.”

  Julie and Dean

  “And why does every kiss have to last like five minutes?” Stef asks.

  “I can’t even watch,” Lauren says. “The only person I’m thinking about is Dad.”

  More clinking. This time, Dean actually tips Julie back to kiss her.

  “This sucks,” Stef says.

  About sixty of Jeff’s relatives are among the 260 guests. The wedding is bittersweet for them, naturally, but many tell Julie that Jeff would be pleased to know she has found a partner, and a way out of her grief.

  Dean’s four children spend much of the night smiling. They’re glad to see him happy again; the kissing doesn’t bother them at all. But as Julie’s kids point out, the circumstances are different: Dean’s divorce may have been traumatic, but not as traumatic as losing a beloved father suddenly.

  As Julie’s children see it, people just have to accept that they need time to adjust. Their grandmother, Helen, joins them by their table. “We could sure do with a little less affection from the bride and groom over there,” one of the girls tells her.

  “Well, if you’re going to marry someone, and live and sleep with him, you have to love his skin, his face, his kiss . . . everything,” Helen says. Her granddaughters interrupt. “You can stop right there!” says one. “Way too much information!”

  Dean realizes that, as the years go by, he may end up being a part of the lives of Julie’s children longer than Jeff was. He can see a time where he’ll feel true love for these kids, and maybe they’ll love him in return. Before the wedding, he had told people: “I hope their grieving will turn into acceptance. I hope I can be a positive influence.”

  Near the end of the reception, as Dean holds Julie’s hand and thanks people for coming, his new stepchildren stand with their grandmother, off to the side, watching.

  “I can see he loves her,” Lauren says, softly and generously. “In a way, it’s good that they have each other.”

  Her grandmother smiles. “Honey, that’s how I see it too,” she says. “This will be a good thing for your mom, and for you kids, too. I can just feel it.”

  Erika

  Decades from now, Pastor Brad Klaver will look back and count hundreds of weddings that he’ll have performed. But tonight, at Berean Baptist Church in Grand Rapids, the twenty-seven-year-old rookie pastor is officiating at the very first wedding of his career.

  It’s fitting that he’s here for Erika and Reuben, the couple who
waited until they committed to each other before sharing even a kiss. Erika’s sisters, who started the family’s non-kissing tradition, are the bridesmaids. And so there’s a virginal feel in the air, from the tall, boyish pastor to the bride and groom to some of the young guests, who’ve made their own purity vows. It’s a time of new beginnings.

  Erika is preceded down the aisle by three flower girls, who haphazardly sprinkle fake snowflakes. Then Erika enters looking as lovely as she did in the Magic Room, holding the arm of her father, Vic.

  When they reach the altar, Pastor Klaver begins: “The book of Genesis describes a time in the life of a man and a woman when they will leave their parents and cleave unto each other. They will begin a new home and family. We are here today to witness the establishment of this new home.”

  He introduces Erika’s dad, who steps to the front, his voice cracking from the start. Vic quotes from Proverbs 22:6, which states: “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.”

  “Most people hear this verse and think the writer is talking about training of the law, morals, a good work ethic,” Vic says. “But it’s really telling parents to find out your child’s individual gifts, the way they are wired. Help them to become the person God intended them to be. Reuben, over the past twenty-three years, Lynn and I have tried to know Erika’s strengths, to help her develop them. As we have come to know you more, we realize that you have the strengths and desires to further that growth in Erika.”

  When Vic sits down, Pastor Klaver talks about the Bible’s call to wives to “submit to your husbands.” “‘Submit’ isn’t my word,” he says to Erika. “It’s God’s word. And maybe it would be helpful if I explain what this word doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean you are less than Reuben, or that you don’t have a voice. It means that you are making a choice to bring your life, your dreams and your will under the leadership of your husband. I know you wouldn’t be here today if you couldn’t trust Reuben to be the kind of man to whom you could confidently and joyfully entrust your life.”