On why you should have a wedding
Posted by admin on May 18, 2009 in Alternative Wedding | 2 commentsA beligerant bride on an international forum was speaking up about skully weddings today. ‘These people don’t have the right to get married!’ she spat. ‘Weddings are for grown-up, sensible people making a committment, not for play-acting or sticking it to your parents how “different” you are.”
This sentiment goes two ways, ladies.
I believe very firmly in not replying to opinions like this – there really IS just no changing some people. The US (where the majority of the brides on this forum reside) does have a very prominent wedding industry catering for a specific demographic – white, conservative – of which we gothic brides and punk rock grooms do not fit.
And I do think it’s true that ‘play acting’ isn’t exclusive to [intlink id="114" type="category"]gothic weddings[/intlink] – we’re just more overt. But then, maybe we aren’t. What are those huge, $5000 white dresses for? What are the yards of flowers and 7-tier-cakes and going into debt for the expensive vineyard for, if not play acting a ‘wedding’ dream?
It’s all the same people. The fact of the matter is that some people hold a wedding for the wrong reasons, and some people hold a wedding for the right reasons, and many people fall somewhere in the middle.
So what are the right reasons to hold a wedding? I don’t mean the right reasons to get married – we’ll discuss those in another post. What are the right reasons for all this wedding madness?
I think human nature plays a huge part. We’re social creatures – we love celebrating together. When something cool happens to you at work, you win a prize on the radio or get an A on your paper, you want to tell everyone! You want to celebrate! That feeling amplifies a hundred fold when you fall in love.
So in part, a wedding caters to our love of celebration and sharing with our friends and family. From a pure anthropological point of view, weddings serve important social functions – they allow family to reconnect, serve as a marker for children leaving the home, a time to review wills and property ownership, and a time when the makeup of a family changes dramatically. Everyone’s role in the family shifts ever so slightly. It’s also the beginning of the possibility of grandchildren.
So all of these familial considerations play important roles in the decision to have a wedding. For the couple themselves, having a wedding means creating a memory for the two of you – one you own as part of your married life, one you can look back on and say ‘that’s how we started on this path together, and look where we ended up’.
These are only my thoughts on the right reasons to plan a wedding. What do you think? Have I missed any? Can you tell me all about the WRONG reasons to plan a wedding?
I wonder why she cares so much? Is she also a wedding planner? Regardless, I don’t see why people feel they have a right to have an opinion on something so personal that affects them in NO WAY at all.
How is a gothic wedding any different than a wedding at an Elvis Chapel in Las Vegas? Or a destination wedding at Disneyland? If someone wants to have a wedding nude in a pile of dung, as long as they hand me a nose clip and a wet nap- more power to them.
Seriously.
I am planning my second wedding with no white dress in sight. No white tier cake with icing flowers,white aisle runner, cardboard box shaped like a cake to collect cards in, or white flowers. . . I could go on and on. Our wedding will be about us and who we are. We initially picked a June date. I saw all white and then I thought, but that’s not me. We share a mutual love of Halloween and when I saw it fell on a Saturday I suggested it. At first he said well some people might have a problem with that. And then I told him how we could have a celebration of what we love besides each other and he agreed – By having a wedding outside the “norm”, I can wear I dress I won’t be afraid to get dirty, we can have cupcakes in our favorite flavors, decor we can use again, or better yet use things we already have. We can incoporate traditions unique to us and share them with others. I could go on and on. I think having a wedding that suits you – can even help save money – and most of all you can relax and enjoy it. There will be no expectations to be met. No one to say who is the designer and how much did she pay for that. No need to become a bridezilla because some other relative, sister, or friend had this or that. Be true to yourself and what will make you happy. Celebrating who you are and who the two of you plan to be – could never be wrong. When we explained this to his 75 year old mother, she suprisingly said – “That sounds like fun.” And that’s want I want everyone to remember – that they enjoyed seeing us join our lives together and had a really good time with us celebrating the occasion.