Emotional Intelligence is Appreciated at Weddings

Emotional Intelligence - appreciated at weddings.

Recently I attended a family wedding in D. C. Is there anything more beautiful than watching the bride and groom dance their first dance as married couple?

You wonder what goes through the mother-of-the-groom's mind as she watches ... here the reader and the groom await the procession to begin, while the mother obserces.

Those of us in the wedding party reminisced about other weddings and mishaps ... when dresses didn't arrive, the wedding had to be held up an hour awaiting the arrival of a grandmother who was lost, the one where it poured down rain, the guests wouldn't leave the reception bar bill became a hemorrhage of money ... the ones where the families were displeased with the choices and making things difficult ... when the ring bearer bolted at the last minute and ran from the church ... a rehearsal dinner in someone's home and a thunderstorm blew out all the electricity. The cousins who don't get along, the sister from N.C. who refuses to be seated near her brother from Pittsburgh, the bride who has a meltdown, and the groom's mother who has a migraine. Heck, at the last one I went to, the bride's grandfather had to be taken to the ER the night of the rehearsal dinner.

You simply can't plan for all that can happen!

And in this case, we prayed about the weather - scheduled outside for 8 hours, when there had been hurricane winds the week before. I'm not sure I'd have gone for that one - that's a lot of stress. Yet it was the most perfect of afternoons/evenings.

And I helped pull the decorations together. They'd been bought and were there, but no one knew what to do with them. I'm an old gala-giver and was thrilled to coordinate it all. And in my gala-giving days I learned that events always seem to unravel just before they begin, but then come back together nicely, with a little ingenuity. IF YOU STAY CALM. It also comes down to small, petty details that matter -- I knew we would have to go around and pull up the wicks on each of those 100s of tea lights!

What does this have to do with emotional intelligence?? Oh, all the things above. Any wedding is a time of high emotions. Much planning, lots to pull together, people coming together who don't get along (or didn't), and a million chances for things to go awry.

In fact the last outside wedding I went to, it POURED down rain the entire time. The immediate wedding party had a tent, but the rest of us didn't. Our heels were sinking into inches of mud, and we all felt like participants in a wet t-shirt contest.

We learn to cope, and we learn that things are rarely perfect. In this case, one of the men involved in the set-up learned an important lesson. He called the next day and said "I resented having to do all that work, but now I'm sad and lonely and sorry it's over."

With EQ we remember to enjoy each present moment ...because usually we are sad and lonely when they are over! We learn to enjoy our expectations (it's half the fun), and to adjust when our more fanciful expectations aren't met. And that you never know. The wedding the was deluged was Greek, and it turns out rain at a Greek wedding is a great sign of fertility and happiness. Who knew?

Take the EQ course and learn more about intelligent processing, use and management of emotions.