c. 2008 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) So I’m sitting around with some younger friends the other day and we start talking about what songs were played at their weddings.

At Josh and Rena’s wedding, they marched down the aisle to Queen’s version of the “Wedding March” and left the church to the Beatles’ “She’s So Heavy.”

This struck me as odd and perhaps unflattering to the bride (and therefore ominous for the honeymoon) until Josh reminded me that in that era “heavy” was a synonym for “cool.”

“The lyric,” he said, somewhat impatient with my out-of-touchness, “goes on to say, `I want you, I want you so bad, I want you so bad it’s driving me mad, its driving me mad.”’

I tried to imagine such a lyric (both its inane repetition and sultry sentiment) at my parent’s wedding in the golden age of crooning of the 1940s.

One of the nice things about XM radio is the ’40s channel, which, I’m embarrassed to say, I am completely hooked on. Though I hadn’t even been born then, the ’40s music still makes me nostalgic for the good old days of Bing Crosby, the Andrews Sisters and Frank Sinatra.

My euphoric ’40s daydream was shattered when Ed excitedly announced that they played “Highway to Hell” at his wedding. The lyrics to that one have no reasonable alternative interpretation. This couple simply came from completely dysfunctional families and had low expectations; they hoped by stating the worst they could exceed it.

These thoughts are swirling around my head as the June wedding season is upon us. In talk radio on a slow afternoon, if you want to guarantee full phone lines, just announce you want to take calls about wedding disasters and the stories will pour in like water over Niagara Falls.

A decade ago, I enjoyed hearing about these nuptial disasters, but with today’s high divorce rate, they somehow seem more prophetic than funny. As I get older, weddings seem bittersweet events, because more often than not hopefulness has been replaced by fear.

At our intergenerational church, many of the older couples tell remarkably romantic stories of how they met. Old white-haired Bob gazes adoringly at his bride of 40 years and tells how he looked across the room as a 17-year-old and saw Barbara, poked his buddy in the ribs and said, “That’s the girl I’m gonna marry.”

Tom tells me how he worked in a national park as a fire-spotter after graduating from college. One day from his lofty perch he spied a carload of girls in a convertible and picked up the binoculars, spying his future bride. As he tells it, he got a few other guys together and invited the girls to a campfire and marshmallow roast. “An innocent evening, not like kids these days,” Tom explains.

My dad tells me how he, a dour young man, curmudgeonly before his time, entered the dining hall during the first week of college and saw my mom. Even at a distance, her beaming smile lit the room and his first thought was, as it would be for any reasonable and despondent young Swiss man, “Nobody has the right to be that happy.”

Four years later, this chance meeting resulted in one of the world’s great romances, and it lasted until Mom died at 82.

These “love-at-first-sight” stories seemed more common in those days, and a surprising number of them resulted in durable marriages. Chalk it up to deep commitment, social convention, character _ whatever it was, that World War II generation had something we’ve lost, and I am not at all sure that we’ve traded up.

Last week over breakfast, I told my 20-year-old daughter these stories and she rolled her eyes. “Would you really want me marrying some guy who based his opinion of me on what he saw across a crowded room?” she asked.

Good point.

Back to the wedding songs. “We entered the church to the theme from `Star Wars,”’ my friend Jeff tells me.

Now there is the right mix of fear and hope. A dark side that seeks to do us harm can be defeated (or at least neutralized) if we learn to use the Force for good.

The good guy can get the girl and live happily ever after.

(Dick Staub is the author of “The Culturally Savvy Christian” and the host of The Kindlings Muse (http://www.thekindlings.com). His blog can be read at http://www.dickstaub.com)

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