Destination Weddings

     My son and his wife recently went to Belize for a destination wedding. Between the airfare, accommodations and a resort that charged a fee for everything but the view, they spent $5000. I don't remember even hearing of destination weddings when we married in the 70's. The location was the bride's hometown, usually her home church. Occasionally the wedding might be held in the groom's hometown. Of course, having just been in Bible college, most of our friends were having fairly low budget weddings. But we still had a destination--sex. That was the place we had waited all through our year long engagement, all our lives actually, to get to. When the anticipation on your wedding day is that unexplored three letter country, what sets the moment apart is the sex not the scenery.
    A couple who climbs out of the same bed in the morning to get ready for their wedding day, might need something special to rev up the romance. But when you are giving that once-in-a-lifetime gift to the person you have just committed to spend a lifetime with, you are not looking at the view. Not that a pure wedding night was common practice when we got married, living together was welcomed as if it had just been thought of. I knew couples who stayed pure until the night before their wedding and then "faltered at the finish line." I am not saying that we were not tempted. We had lots of time alone and unsupervised, but what stopped me was knowing that not doing sex God's way might screw up our future sex life. I did not just want our first time to be special, I wanted our future times to be special too.
     For a number of reasons, we had an incredibly low budget, low key wedding. I really did not care about the colors, decorations and ceremony. Several things went wrong on our wedding day: two car accidents, one of them our volunteer photographer, our car broke down, the pastor was almost hit by a falling tree branch. But one thing went right, we did sex God's way, and have been blessed with a sex life without guilt and without shadows of past lovers. We have also been blessed to stay at some beautiful resorts in some desirable destinations both for work and for leisure, for far less than $5000. Our wedding destination was to do it God's way and our final destination is heaven. Outstanding accommodations may get five stars, but heaven's fill the universe.