Wedding dreams, which can occur at any stage of life, tend to be especially meaningful. For example, the first dream I ever recorded (see post from Aug. 31, 2010) occurred during a life-changing mid-life transition and featured a wedding.
As a brief aside, you should know that therapists who do dreamwork find the first dream a client brings them extremely significant. This is because the Dream Mother is not about to waste the initial collaboration between the ego and Self on trivialities! Because she knows us better than we know ourselves, she sees when our egos are ready to get serious and intentionally gives us a big dream that highlights our major life issues and sometimes even suggests their resolution.
Sure enough, my first dream marked the point at which I committed myself to inner work and was, indeed, a commentary on the major theme of my life’s journey. (For those of you new to my blog, at the age of 11 my parents divorced and then my father died three months later after remarrying. So my life’s theme of healing my inner masculine and feminine and trying to reunite them in the Sacred Marriage shouldn’t surprise you!) My dream said I was running from the passions of my masculine side (to understand myself and write about the inner life); had an immature view of Love; had a feminine shadow that was woefully uncreative, unfulfilled, and incomplete; and had better start taking my life seriously if I didn’t want to end up like her!
Wedding dreams mark transitions between outworn stages of growth and more mature ones.  Essentially, they symbolize the dreamer’s readiness for greater internal union, expanding consciousness, and new psycho-spiritual life.
For example, a young adult might dream about weddings around the time of college graduation. I would see this as a celebration of the successful completion of an early phase of integrating one’s “masculine” side (developing knowledge and skills in preparation for work) with one’s “feminine” side (growing emotionally stronger and forming new intimate relationships). I’d also see it as a rehearsal for the next phase in which the task of finding meaningful work and a life partner with whom to settle down, establish a home, etc. begins in earnest. Finally, I would expect the role of bride or groom to be filled by the dream ego because this is the phase of life in which developing a strong and healthy ego is of paramount importance.
On the other hand, a wedding dream during mid-life would suggest something quite different. In my above-mentioned dream it was a reminder that I had tarried overlong in the stage of outer world ego-development and a signal that I was ready for the next stage of taking my inner life more seriously and integrating my fuller potential. As one would expect, the bride was an ambitious working woman very much like me.
But the consummate wedding dream is when you are invited to the wedding of the King and Queen, for this is a symbol of wholeness that means your ego is prepared to step aside and witness the Sacred Marriage between the noblest aspects of your Self. May you one day witness this most sacred sacrament of all.