Excerpted from From This Day Forward
SR: Over the years since our own wedding, lots of other Jewish-Christian couples have talked to us and some have asked our advice about how to handle the actual ceremony. We're careful to stress we have no formulas that work for everybody. But I do think we learned several things from that process, and one was inclusion. Every effort that makes people feel wanted or respected is worth doing. We have young friends, a Catholic-Jewish couple, who got married under a chuppah, but the canopy was draped with an Irish lace tablecloth. In another case the bride's elderly father insisted on bringing his homemade chopped liver to the reception -- that was his way of contributing. Each couple works out the details for itself, but the basic idea of inclusion is very important. The other thing I've always believed is that the wedding itself becomes a metaphor for how you solve problems in a relationship. Part of that is tolerance. Part of that is realizing that when one partner feels really strongly about something, they get a little more weight. Part of that is figuring out what is really important, just listening to the other person.
CR: And listening to yourself as well. Saying to yourself, "Hold on here, does this really matter to me?" There are so many times when I automatically react, "That's the way I thought it would be or that was my image of it." And then, at least on my better days, I say to myself, "Why? Does it really matter?" Actually, I found myself going through that with Becca's wedding, too. She would say to me, "I don't want a white bouquet, I want a multicolored bouquet of bright flowers." My first reaction was, "That's wrong, brides don't do that." Then I thought, "Why not? What's wrong with that?" I think that's a very good jumping-off point for a marriage, to say to yourself, "Hold on here, is this really important to me or is this just some notion that I have?"
