FIC : wedding speech (by luxury)
[Title:] Wedding Speech (By Luxury)
[Setting:] AU. Modern day.
[Character(s):] Mireille & Jean Louis
[Summary:] The wedding itself doesn't earn her praise as much as her husband does.
[Author's Notes:] Companion piece to this.
Since our wedding date was officially announced, an impressive interest has been paid to my expectations in regards to the impact the numerous differences between Jean Louis and myself may have. Our dissimilar choices in professional calling. The alleged irreconcilability of our social backgrounds. The ten-year age gap. In answer to this, a twofold truth must first be acknowledged. That all of the mentioned circumstances do hold validity. And that their influence is for us to dictate.
Seeing how nothing is more definite, more decisive than marriage, it appears that we have made this choice already, isn’t that so, Jean Louis?
Undoubtedly, everyone currently present has formed an opinion on each of us. Constructed an image of who we are and the probable outcome that must follow this clash of identities presumed. It is the consequence of publicity, of course, and thus there is no reason to bemoan it. Nevertheless, I have come to value greatly the privacy that exists between us. Being solely ours. Evidently, our wedding doesn’t fall under this category, but our marriage shall.
You have all been invited in recognition of your individual connection to our lives, out of professionalism and familiarity alike. The nation knows the both of us in extension of their relation to my father and it can’t be denied that Jean Louis and I are not exempt from this foundation either. Yet, many of you will never move beyond the particular link of the name ‘Barrault’. By adopting Jean Louis’ family name, it must be supposed that I already have. By asking me to marry him, Jean Louis has as well. Not to be understood as a rejection of the past, but as a welcome of the future, within this new framework. Father, too, would have wanted such a gesture, I’m certain. The future, more than anything, was his life’s work...
Although Jean Louis is surely much more adept in the art of making promises, a skill any talented politician must exhibit, I have decided to make one of my own. To him. I will, unquestioningly, accept the unrelenting severity with which you approach the world, because it is the insistence on truth, even when it might not be appreciated by the masses. Or by me. This insistence is the very reason that I stand here now, by your side. A position that I have no intention of abandoning.
Conclusively, I will have everyone raise their glasses in honour of Baudelaire’s words, By luxury and by disdain your bitter lip arouses us; an Eden is this very lip, offending as it captivates. What luxury! and what disdain! and to Jean Louis who embodies them fully.