No Make-Up Bride #2: Reflecting Our Marriage (‘Why?’ Part II)

This blog is a platform for me to reach others, whether friends or strangers, with hopefully some at least mildly inspirational or helpful words. These words will primarily (at least for a while) be about beauty and its surrounding issues, as I outlined in my previous post. For this post, though, I need to talk about marriage. It’s something I’m even more passionate about and feel needs just as much tackling in general society. If it helps, you could think of the title of the blog (‘The No Make-Up Bride’) as a way of remembering what and when I’ll be blogging, i.e. during the period of my engagement, I’ll be focusing on the ‘no make-up’ part of it, and following the wedding, I’ll be focusing on the ‘bride’ part. So marriage is not the main focus just yet, but I do need to outline my thoughts on it now.

Whilst one of the main reasons I’m doing this is to be a positive voice about beauty (however small!), I’m also doing it for Sam. This, in turn, has two effects:
1. It reflects what we want our marriage to be by showing sacrificial love (albeit a small amount in this case!).
2. It reflects our marriage on the wedding day itself, by taking the focus off how I look as a bride, and putting it on the fact that we are getting married!

I am aware, of course, that the fact that I won’t be wearing make-up will probably still mean people are focused on what I look like, but as I mentioned in my first post, that can’t really be avoided. To stop attention being drawn to something, you have to draw attention to it. Reminds me of a similar sort of thing that happened when I used to go on summer camp and the girls in my dormitory would say ‘Don’t look, I’m getting changed!’ - some of us would turn around saying ‘What?’ and so inevitably found ourselves looking!

To expand on the first point first, though, I’m going to draw your attention to a blog post by Seth Adam Smith called ‘Marriage Isn’t For You’, which some of you may already be familiar with. If not, become familiar now! After reading it myself for the first time, it was like all my previous thoughts about marriage had suddenly been wrapped up and confirmed. Marriage is for serving the one you love, wholeheartedly and selflessly! Heck, love itself is about serving. Even when you don’t feel like it. And the more you give, the more you get.

Unless called to singleness, a spouse should be the most influential and loved human being in a person’s life. Unfortunately, it seems so few people are actually taught how to manage this relationship. It breaks my heart that a lot of couples don’t seem to realise the commitment a marriage requires unless they’ve tried and failed before (and sometimes not even then). I’m not saying I’m the bearer of all wisdom, or that I won’t face unexpected, painful challenges and experiences. But I do know one thing: a marriage requires work. It’s not enough to just be matched, although I’m super massively thankful that I am a true match for Sam and that he is my best friend; I think it’s just as important to be compatible if you can help it. But we’ll have to work at it when we face all of life’s challenges, from small to big. And if we’re both prepared for and committed to that, it won’t be work we won’t want to do. It may even become easy, joyful work. I don’t think it’s naïve to believe that, at all.

So, back to the deal. I’m not wearing make-up for the wedding as a way of reflecting my attitude to Sam as a (future) husband. This attitude is one of selflessness and sacrifice. I won’t be perfect, but I want to try my best, and for me it makes sense for the wedding to reflect that in some way. It’s not that Sam has asked me to do this - I thought of it. I knew it would be what he would personally prefer, though he wouldn’t be massively bothered either way because he’s still marrying me. I just thought it a small thing I could do to make him enjoy the day just a little bit more (and then I thought, why not blog about it and try to make a difference too!). If it were solely down to me I’d still wear at least a bit of make-up, which makes this a sacrifice, but it’s not too much of one. In fact, the more I think about why I’m doing it, the less bothered I am about what I end up looking like. I WANT what Sam wants as long as it doesn’t cause me serious harm. I’M happier if he’s happier, and I want to go one step further than my vows on the day to show my commitment. Hopefully this will serve as a reminder to me further down the line, and help others celebrating with us focus on what it’s really all about. It’s okay to want to feel visually beautiful (particularly as a girl – we seem to have some sort of inherent license :D), but I don’t personally want that to rule over my wedding, especially when Sam loves me even more as I am. 

Fully committing to someone is a one-time thing. That’s why it’s so important to know what you’re going into beforehand, and get to a place where you actually want what they want. It’s cool to want things yourself, it’s just about balancing that and making it work with another person so you can both benefit as much as possible. If you want your marriage to really flourish, you can’t be complacent; you should anticipate giving, and want to give, so much more than the bare minimum, so long as they are committed to that from the outset too. Then if at some point down the line there is a lack of general commitment from your spouse (I’m not talking about adultery here, just day-to-day commitment), you just have to keep giving more. Be an example. It’s what Jesus does. I suck at this, but I know it works. I believe it’s an equal balance of being naturally compatible with your partner and actively choosing to love them. Never give up!

It sounds overly obsessive, like a chore, like a constant source of stress. It’s certainly counter-cultural! But it won’t be overly obsessive if you know your partner truly loves you as you are, that you alone are enough and you don’t need to impress them (and if you put God above even your marriage, knowing you don’t need to impress Him either!). It won’t be a chore if you’re both committed to selflessly serving one another. But if (when) one of you fails, the other should be forgiving, reminding them a) what love is, and b) that they are loved. And it will be a lot less stressful than going down the route of divorce.

It won’t always be easy, but love conquers all*.

1 Corinthians 13v13 ‘And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.’

*(forgive the cheese!)