Campbell talks not just about myth but also ritual, specifically rites of passage and the importance of them to humans.

….that the purpose and actual effect of these was to conduct people across those difficult thresholds of transformation that demand a change in the patterns not only of conscious but also of unconscious life (Campbell, Joseph. The hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton, New Jersey: Bollingen Series XVII. Princeton University Press, 1968, pg.10)

These rites are not just for the individual partaking them but also for their families and communities. By taking part in the rite, the family members can also learn to accept the individual’s new role. This resonated with me. Two years ago my eldest daughter married. As is the case in many marriages at this time, she and her husband did everything themselves. We provided them with some financial assistance but the rest was done by them. It was a lovely wedding. As the mother of the bride I had absolutely nothing to do. My daughter would call to solicit an opinion but I was pretty sure she was asking other’s as well so it wasn’t anything noteworthy. I found it interesting how bereft I felt at the wedding and after. I chalked it up to the first child getting married, and thought no more about it.

Last fall my middle daughter married. She was married in the United Kingdom and since we live on the other side of the pond it was pretty much impossible for me to help her. I was so impressed that she included her future mother-in-law in many of the traditional bridal jaunts, like picking out the wedding gown. It came as a horrendous surprise, then, when I felt as bereft at her wedding as I had at the first daughters! It wasn’t until I read the section in Campbell about rites of passage that I realised that the whole messy wedding planning was a rite of passage for a mother and her daughter.

It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those other constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back.  In fact, it may well be that the very high incidence of neuroticism among ourselves follows from the decline among us of such effective spiritual aid. (ibid p 11.)

The wedding planning provided an arena for the transformation of daughter to wife, from child who looked to our family unit for support to an adult creating her own family unit. But it also provided the transformation of the parents from seeing themselves as the ‘centre’ of their child’s life to seeing the child centering themselves on another person, their significant other. All these things are necessary and wonderful changes and the wedding is a rite of passage which marks it. But not having the opportunity to take part in the rite did not give me a chance to make my own transformation (and not because they did not wish it but because, for both of them, this is how weddings were planned by their contemporaries). Being the mother of the bride is not just a position in the wedding party, it represents a momentous change in the emotional fabric of the mother-daughter bond. The transformation happens on both sides of the mother-daughter equation and the wedding planning and day provides the rite of passage to mark this change for both.