The scroll is to be read from right to left, but for coherence in translation:
永结同心。
May your love blossom with time after tying the knot on your wedding day.
幸福伴侣。
May you enjoy long-lasting contentment throughout life, as a couple．
Gifted to: Newly-weds Anna & Samuel, 29 Aug 2022
Reflective note
Nothing beats weddings when it comes to the romanticisation of love. Not that it’s a bad thing, but I’ve noticed a lot of excitement revolving around the wedding conventions — gate crashing, pouring champagne over a pyramid of wine glasses, couple photoshoots, walking down the aisle, 8 course Chinese dinners etc. I wonder: are we aware of what love truly means, beyond the customs and bridal gowns?
Love is the excited feeling we get in the presence of someone of unusual accomplishment and talent – great intelligence or beauty for the most part – whom we hope will reciprocate our interest, whom we badly want to one day share our lives with.
It is love too, when our partner is – on this occasion – being plainly irrational, unfair, mean-spirited and maddening, and yet we do not direct back a full dose of righteous anger their way, but instead hold back a little and wonder why this formerly sane and interesting adult should have fallen apart in this manner. It is love — to hold open the idea that they are not merely awful but might inside be dealing with their own suffering and feelings of lacerating self-contempt they hardly know how to master. It would be love too, the proper and most serious variety in the universe, to go up to them at precisely the juncture when we would have so many reasons to slam the door on them, and instead extend our arms.
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