By Noémie & Loïc Marsh
Talking to various friends around our age, we discovered that they usually don’t seek or even appreciate having their parents enter the loop of their own marriage. What provokes the mindset of avoiding our parents when they approach the sphere of our personal love story?
We don’t exactly know why this fashion is spreading among young people, but let us share some of our experience :
We are Noémie and Loïc Marsh, we got married in the summer of 2018. We are fresh to this marital status but saw our parents’ marriages as we were growing-up and believe it or not, learned from their experience. Part of our education involved constantly honouring one another, to the point of never going to bed without asking forgiveness of one of our siblings. We learned to serve others and to value family time. Nevertheless, actually embracing these values and practicing them has been a journey in itself. Our parents never forced us into anything but rather led us by example. They would never ask us to behave in a certain way without themselves doing so.
Growing up, we each had a strong and loving relationship with both our parents. They made time to listen to us, play with us, explain us maths, cook with us, etc. This planted a seed of trust that made us come to them whenever we had questions, we were excited about something, or even worried. We believe this is the key to unblocking the question asked at the beginning of this article. Things don’t magically appear, they are like the hard work of a smith.
By the time we started thinking of marriage, our first reaction was to talk about it with our parents. We didn’t arrange an official meeting, gathering all 4 parents and taking notes ! We simply had a heart-to-heart conversation. Our parents were there to ask us pertinent questions and we were able to share our deepest fears (yup, getting married is exciting but there’s also quite some adrenaline in the process!). Some of the best advice we actually received was financial (sorry if you were expecting mind-blowing advice, but the basics truly helped us). Having our parents involved during our dating, engagement and wedding process was non-negotiable for us. Not for our parents. For us. We realised that if we are who we are today, it is strongly thanks to them.
Finally, coming back from our honeymoon, we received the most impactful advice from one of our parents: “Now, you’ll be enjoying HoneyEarthing.” And it’s true, this helped us launch into “real” life, but never forgetting the joys of being with one another.