For obvious reasons, I’ve found myself with a need to think about weddings lately. I’m not particularly interested in going into all the little details of my own wedding planning, and I doubt you are either; instead, I’m talking about weddings in the abstract.
I was reading something on Pandagon a while ago, (a couple weeks ago? I don’t know. I’m behind on my blogging,) and the post had a line in it that said something along the lines of, “Women feel pressured to have weddings by patriarchal society; instead they should feel free to just have it done at city hall in 10 minutes and be done.” In defense of the post, the author was mostly talking about the ridiculous lengths many bridal industry businesses go to in order to make their client brides feel the need to be pretty, pretty, demanding princesses, and fulfill a bunch of stupid ideals of femininity, whether that’s part of their personality or not. I agree with that point.
But it made me question the idea that a courthouse wedding with no guests is somehow inherently more feminist, and, in this case, the superior choice. Am I supposed to feel bad for having an actual wedding ceremony? Am I being a bad feminist? Am I caving to The Man?
I admit, I have been tempted by the idea of a quick hitch in an office building downtown somewhere, because dealing with all the planning and just general required crap that goes with a wedding is not a barrel full of monkeys, in my opinion. In some ways, it does feel like all the planning that is (apparently) required ends up overtaking the importance of the actual event.
However, I am also firmly convinced that some ceremonies are very important in helping us actually mark events in significant ways, and that family and friends need to be involved. Getting married by ourselves at the courthouse or wherever seems like a selfish act in many ways, because it has the potential of sending the message to your family and friends that you did not want them involved in it. (There are obviously exceptions, and I do not hold this method of marriage against the friends I know who have done it. But yes, the families involved in this wedding would be insulted.)
There’s also the option of having a private ceremony and an open reception shindig. Again, I know people who have done this, and it worked well for them, but I also noticed that it had an interesting effect on me: because I was not at the ceremony, and essentially only saw a big party with people in fancy clothes, it took me about 5 months to really firmly remember that M. & H. were married now, not just living together in their house with their dog like they had been before. (Sorry, M. & H.! It was a lovely party!)
I really started thinking about the importance of ceremony to help people mark events in their minds after my aunt died. At her request, and that of her husband, there was no ceremony of any kind, for either family or friends. I understand their reasoning, and I respect it, but it really brought home to me that the funeral ceremony isn’t for the person who died, it’s for everyone else. It took me a long time to really remember that Janice was dead, not just far away in Chicago like always. Sometimes I’m still not sure it’s entirely sunk in. There was no sense of closure, of definite marking in my memory.
So I’ve come to the conclusion that I am not a bad feminist for having an actual wedding ceremony, which all of the invitees are welcome to attend. The planning, the visuals, the (hopefully minimized) hoopla is all for them, to help them remember. The relevant five minutes of the ceremony and the life after that are for me and Mark, but the people we care about are invited to witness and mark this life change in their memories.
Erik and I have also been seriously tempted by the courthouse ceremony idea, but I think we would regret not having all our family and friends there to witness our public declaration of our commitment together.
I think you make an excellent point about the importance of ceremony, not just for the people its meant to honor, but for the people who attend and witness. We need these distinct turning points in our lives.
You are absolutely right. Being born, becoming part of a religious tradition or community for those who choose that, getting married, dying are communal acts to be shared at least with one’s family. There used to be some discussion about having divorce ceremonies, and my stepson who was recently divorced from his Wiccan wife told me there is actually a ceremony in that tradition for that. Whether he participated in that, I don’t know, because things, as they sometimes will, got ugly. At any rate, I think it’s a good idea.
One could make the argument that since you are already choosing to participate in an inherently patriarchal institution, the bad feminist issue is moot. That’s what I pretty much decided when I got married, so I had the wedding. When my husband asked if I would take his surname or not (I did;I liked it better than mine), I remarked they were all slave names anyway…marking property of some man.
It is a big deal and you should make it so, but do it your way and don’t get sucked into any nonsense that is meaningless to you.
Yeah, I did think about the issue of marriage as inherently unfeminist as well, but for once, Pandagon wasn’t insisting that it was, so I followed the thoughts sparked by the original comment. I would honestly feel a lot more bad about getting married if our current culture didn’t make it so ridiculously hard to move as a two-person unit without having a legally recognized bond. Trying to move anywhere with any kind of shortened timeframe when one person cannot move without having health insurance? Forget it. Want to move to another country where only one of you has a job already lined up? Not if the second person wants a work permit. Etc., etc. Somebody may need to make a stand and buck the system, but I have better things to do with my time than needlessly frustrate myself on that issue. Sometimes, feminism loses to pragmatism.
But that said, I’m not changing my name. Even though I would get to move up the alphabet from a W to an F.
Don’t bow to social pressures for more or less pomp and circumstance than you want on this one. The whole point is that it’s YOUR wedding. Do whatever makes you both enjoy it the most and live it up.
And I completely sympathize on your desire to move closer to the front of the alphabet!
Feh. Just let me know when and where the party is, and I will be there and be as supportive as is possible under whatever conditions you set. Love and rockets, lass – love and rockets.