Jackson Free Press

I'm a modern woman. I realize that many time-honored southern traditions, once revered as sacred, have become passé. But when I twisted my daughter's arm (I mean, when she asked me to help plan her wedding), there were some traditions I wasn't ready to shed. Knowing we would have to do some tweaking because we were no longer the traditional "dad, mom, two and a half kids and a dog" family, I immediately grabbed my Emily Post's Wedding Etiquette book. I was going to need all the help Emily could offer.

As I began to review Emily's thoughts with my daughter, she quickly reminded me that this was not my wedding and especially not Emily's. I quietly and swiftly closed my book, knowing I would have to approach this wedding from another angle—that of my daughter, my soon-to-be son-in-law and my ex-husband's wife.

Emily, honey, you will have to do some updating.

So with that, I began explaining—in a very casual, delicate way—that the invitation sets the tone of the wedding. I suggested a Crane invitation. I had been schooled in the knowledge that if you hold the back of the invitation up to the light and see the Crane logo, you have the best. After price comparisons, my ex-husband, who was paying for most of the wedding, didn't see the value of setting the tone and suggested we just write "Crane" on the back and save people the time of searching for the logo and tons of money. Needless to say, we compromised on an elegant non-Crane invitation.

With the details mounting, I gladly volunteered to be in charge of the wedding music. I went to our local Be-Bop Record Shop and purchased every CD with wedding music. I was so excited about being in control (I mean, helping out), I couldn't even wait to get home and listen to the music. As soon as I got into my SUV, I slit the cellophane wrapping off with my car keys, shoved the disk into the CD player, tilted my seat back, closed my eyes and let the sounds of traditional wedding music envelope me.

Tears rolled down my cheeks as I visualized my little girl getting married. When I had listened to several of my favorites, I pulled out my cell phone, called my daughter, and shared with her the songs that I thought would be perfect. Her first reaction: "Wasn't that a '70s song?"

"Well, of course it was," I said, "But it was sung at my wedding with your Dad."

"Y'all are divorced," she said.

Wow. I thought I had become a modern woman, but in that moment, I knew I had some more modernizing to do. Where I thought tradition should not be altered, she was willing to incorporate some of my traditions with her ideas. My daughter didn't need a how-to list from Emily; She could decide what she wanted on her own. She was a modern woman.

So when the wedding music began, two great-grandparents, six grandparents and four parents were seated. (I forgot to mention the groom was from a divorced family, too.) Someone sung a recomposed modern version of my '70s song, and the bells chimed the hour. The Wedding March started; the congregation stood; and there was my daughter in her wedding gown, more beautiful than any tradition I could imagine.