Connor donned the morning coat. Elly grinned as she adjusted the cravat. “C’mon, admit it. Isn’t it fun getting dressed up like this?”
“Fun is not the word that springs to mind.” He glanced at his reflection in the mirror. “I look like a Japanese prime minister. Either that, or I’m about to surrender to General MacArthur.”
“I think you look quite fetching.”
“Fetching? How about a yukata? It’d be a lot more comfortable.”
“Nothing is tackier than a gaijin in a cheap kimono. We’ll get you a real one at Christmas.”
She kissed him until Melanie interrupted with an “Ahem.” She said, “I’ve been sent to get you two.”
Aunt Wanda’s living room was the most crowded Connor had ever seen. Melanie had come earlier with Elly. Elder and Sister Packard arrived shortly thereafter to confirm the final arrangements and get a rough head count for the sealing room.
Lynne stopped by. Glenn would go directly to the sealing, as would Bishop Ferguson. Uncle Martin bustled into the kitchen, where Wanda had laid out a buffet (and insisted that the two lovebirds eat. “Believe me, you don’t want to do this on an empty stomach”).
“How’re you holding up there, Connor?” Martin said. “My, that’s a smart outfit you’re wearing. And there’s the lovely Elly.”
“Thank you, Martin,” Elly said, and kissed him on the cheek, which pleased the old man to no end.
Lynne observed, “You’re remarkably calm, Elly. I was a nervous wreck the morning of my wedding.”
“I simply have to imagine what my mother will have in store for us at Christmas. This should be a piece of cake in comparison.”
Sister Packard joined them. “He cuts a dashing figure, doesn’t he,” she remarked to her granddaughter. “Now, where’s your wedding dress?”
“My aunt has it. They’re going to meet us at the temple.”
Elder Packard ducked into the conversation. “We probably should be going.” Never a man to refrain from leading others, he stood in the alcove between the living room and dining room and brought the congregation to order. “Brothers and sisters, I’m Elder Packard, Elly’s grandfather. I’ll be officiating at the wedding. The endowment session is scheduled for one-thirty. The sealing will start at three-forty. There’ll be time for photographs afterwards, and then we shall repair to the home of Elly’s aunt and uncle, Brother and Sister Oh, for the wedding dinner.”
Elly said, “I made maps if anybody needs directions.”
Her grandfather continued, “We’ll be leaving shortly with Connor and Elly. There’s still plenty of time. But be in the chapel by one-twenty.”
Back in the kitchen, he drew aside the bride and groom. “Do you have your marriage license?”
Connor nodded.
“Good. Many a marriage ceremony has been stalled on account of that particular piece of information. Let’s go.”
Elly remained behind in the kitchen a minute to speak with Melanie. “Will you come and help me with my kimono afterward?”
“Of course I will.”
“You’re the closest thing I have to a bridesmaid.”
Melanie nodded and smiled courageously.
Elder Packard held the door as Elly and Connor got into the Buick. It was a hot day, even hotter in the car. So they sat there, very still, in the sleepy contentment that warm, bright, still air will induce. Her grandfather started the engine and turned on the air conditioner. The cool blast flooded around them.
“I would have enjoyed going to the prom with you.” Elly touched his cheek. “The fancy dinner, the limo, the whole nine yards.”
“I would have, if you’d been around to be asked. In a heartbeat.”
Elder Packard pulled out of the driveway and wended his way through the Tree Streets. They climbed Ninth East to Temple Hill Drive, and then up and around the looping driveway, stopping in front of the portico that led to the temple lobby.
Aunt June and Oh Sensei were waiting inside. June had stacked the kimono boxes on the chairs next to her. Oh Sensei said to Connor, “You look like a Japanese prime minister.”
They checked in at the recommend desk and received colored tags identifying their party.
“There you are, Jack.” A stocky man Elder Packard’s age entered the atrium.
“President Wells,” said Elder Packard. “This is my granddaughter, Elaine, and her fiancé, Connor McKenzie.”
President Wells shook their hands in turn. “Do you have your marriage license?” he asked. Connor produced the document. “I’ll get this ready for processing,” he said. “It’s pretty busy today, but there shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll notify Elder Packard of your sealing room assignment.”
Sister Packard said to Aunt June, “These must be the kimonos. Let me help you with those.” Aunt June handed her the box holding the kosode. Sister Packard said, “Come along—Elly, you too—I’ll show you to the bride’s room.”
“There’s a bride’s room?”
“For exactly this purpose.”
Connor said, “I’ll meet you in the chapel,” and she had to let go of his hand.
In the men’s dressing room, Connor changed into white slacks (kept on the shirt), white tie (replacing the cravat), and white socks and slippers. Then he and Oh Sensei rode the escalator to the second floor chapel.
“McKenzie-Packard,” Oh Sensei said to the temple worker. He pushed Connor forward. “This is the McKenzie half.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, checking the tags they’d received at the recommend desk. She made two marks on her clipboard.
They sat on the pew that ran along the back of the chapel. Organ music played in the background. A couple came in and spoke to the temple worker. The woman was wearing a more conventional wedding dress. Elly finally appeared in the doorway, June a step behind her. Connor bounded to his feet.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, taking her hands in his. She smiled, her face aglow against the shimmering silk of the kosode.
The temple worker said to June. “The mother of the bride?”
“The aunt, in place of the mother.”
Elly said to Connor, “You wanted to see me in a kimono, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t know how much.”
Melanie and Lynne joined them. Wanda came in a few minutes later, and then Martin. Martin was so effusive in his compliments that Wanda finally shushed him.
Elder and Sister Packard were the last to arrive. Like the temple president, Elder Packard was wearing a white suit coat. Connor and Elly stood when he approached. “Now, aren’t you the prettiest bride in the world,” he said to his granddaughter.
A bell softly chimed, indicating that the next endowment session was about to begin. The McKenzie-Packard party filed out of the chapel.
A little over ninety minutes later, Elly and Connor sat together in the celestial room. It was a relief to sit back and relax and do nothing at all, if only for a few minutes.
Connor said, “I feel pretty married already.”
“Nice try,” Elly said, a twinkle in her eyes. “But I’m still going through with it.”
Sister Packard and a temple worker came around to collect them. They met up with Bishop Ferguson and Glenn on the way down to the sealing room.
The small sealing room glowed with light. The velour of the altar was a rich burgundy. Their perception of the room’s size changed considerably when they entered the room. The mirrored walls reflected each other into infinity, pushing the walls out and out, creating the illusion that they were standing in the midst of a large expanse.
Elly and Connor sat closest to the altar. There was no requirement that they sit on one side or the other, but that was what everybody did anyway.
After a moment of silence, Elder Packard stepped forward. “A marriage,” he began, “is also the union of two families, and by extension, the union of their friends and relatives. Today, in the somewhat unusual case of Elly and Connor, their relatives will represent their parents. While the bride and groom know each other, many here are strangers. So let’s begin with some introductions.”
He went around the room, eliciting a few words from each person about their relationship to Connor and Elly. It was corny, but had the desired effect—that Elder Packard had no doubt intended—of loosening things up a bit. Then he clapped his hands together and said, “I once had the wedding ceremony described to me as sixty sacred seconds preceded by thirty minutes of bad advice.”
The man knew how to work a room. He continued, “Keeping that in mind, I shall endeavor to keep the bad advice to a minimum.” He paused just long enough to turn a mental page to his more serious material.
“There’s no real need for me to justify the importance of marriage— the determination of Elly and Connor to be married speaks for itself. Even the Apostle Paul—and we all know the reservations with which he approached the subject—was moved to write that ‘marriage is honorable in all.’ More important is what we can say about the qualities that should govern the marriage from this day forward. And so we return to Paul and the fifth chapter of his letter to the Ephesians, in which he advised couples that ‘the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church.’ This scripture is easily misconstrued, and to say something in Paul’s defense, he notes only two verses later, ‘Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it’—a command equal in its severity.
“But we need only turn to Joseph Smith to put Paul in the proper context. ‘No power or influence,’ the prophet Joseph wrote in the 121st Section of the Doctrine & Covenants, ‘can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned.’ Dispelling any other doubts, the Lord had already commanded the elders of the Church, in Section 42, ‘Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else.’
“I’d like to further examine the two verbs in that verse. First, cleave, meaning ‘to adhere closely, to remain faithful.’ In other words, cleave unto your wife, not to the NFL football schedule. And not even the BYU football schedule.” Another round of smiles. “None else. I don’t see any wiggle room in that qualifier.
“Second, love. As Paul instructs us in the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians: ‘Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.’ It doesn’t matter if you can speak with the tongues of angels, Paul argues. Without love we are nothing.
“But what is this love, and how do we keep it alive? Ah, poets have sought the answer to that question since the beginning of time. And I’m afraid my thirty minutes is about up. But the answer is really this simple: ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.’ So said Shakespeare, and he was right as scripture.”
He looked at the bride and groom. “One last bit of advice, and this I consider the least useless of all I have to say. Too many practical and wise men, psychologists and counselors and advice columnists, tell us that the love of courtship will necessarily fade. You cannot stay in love forever, they say. Those giddy feelings won’t last, they warn. To which I answer: Nonsense! I’ll quote Brother Shakespeare again:
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
“Do not enter marriage expecting love to fade. Expect it to grow. You cannot know what will happen in the next year, the next five, the next fifty. No farmer plants in the spring expecting only weeds in the fall. Begin this marriage with faith that a richer harvest awaits than the one you can imagine now, and work toward it with all your effort and ingenuity. That faith, I promise you, will be rewarded.”
He stepped forward and held out his arms. Elly and Connor rose from their chairs and knelt at the altar. Elly still had questions. But no doubts or second thoughts. She answered without hesitation. His response was no less resolute.
After a moment of silence, Elder Packard took them behind the altar so they were standing on either side of him, facing the witnesses to their union. After another moment he asked in a muted voice, “Do you wish to exchange rings?”
The shocked look on Connor’s face answered for him. “No matter,” Elder Packard said with a soft chuckle and a pat on the back. “It’s a nod to tradition, not part of the ceremony.”
And then Elly, her face radiant with affection, took her husband’s face in her hands and kissed him thoroughly, making it clear that no rings were necessary.