You're listening to the Allender Center podcast with Dr. Dan Allender. This week, Dan and I,

Rachel Clinton, begin a conversation about weddings. What makes a wedding such a dramatic event? How do we, depending on the

stage of life we find ourselves in, attend weddings? After remembering past weddings and looking

ahead to my own future wedding, we realize there is much we bring to these celebrations,

both in our joy and gratitude for others and in our own heartache.

I know that we are a podcast that addresses a wide variety of topics, but I can truly say,

I don't think I've ever been considered to be a bridal-oriented podcast.

And so, Rachel, welcome to the podcast, and we're going to do something of a wedding bridal focus.

I think it'd be helpful for people just to hear perhaps from you.

Why we would be doing this?

I see that look in your eye like, it's on you, buddy.

I will say, there are two things that we're hoping to accomplish, and that is we have a wedding that's coming up in the very near future that I'll let you talk about in a moment.

But what we're really trying to accomplish in this process is to say that almost everyone goes to a wedding at least once or twice a year.

And when we do, how do we go?

And a wedding, at least from my standpoint, is, and this will sound a little bizarre to use this phrase,

but a totemic event is an event with immense power, a kind of mythic, complex, rich, sweet, dramatic, crazy, insane.

It is one of the most energy-full events that I think anyone participates in,

whether it's your children getting married, whether you're getting married, whether you're

going to a friend's wedding. It's just children getting married, whether you're getting married, whether you're going to a friend's wedding.

It's just a dramatic process.

And how do we go to a wedding if we're married?

How do we go to a wedding if we're single?

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