i’ve been thinking more and more about our wedding day being about “love,” in respect to all of our relationships, rather than simply “simon et julia” and our love. yes, of course, the reason for the day is about us, and our decision to spend the rest of our lives together, but! i don’t think we need to be the focal point. this comes back to some questions about what getting married means to us, and what it might represent to others.
for the record, simon asked me to marry him. more than once. over the course of many years. never on bended knee with a ring in a box, but still, it was a recurring conversation. i didn’t agree until we talked about what we liked about marriage, what we didn’t like, and why the choice was right for us. and of course, we talked a lot about what kind of wedding we’d like to have.
simon has talked a lot about how he sees some of the origins of marriage as pretty romantic. the idea that two communities would come together, that often entire towns would celebrate the joining of two families. to him, these traditional notions of marriage represent a coming together not just of two people, but of communities, families, regions. but! this is also thinking of a time when marriage meant different things, and also when marriages could often be more symbolic, more about power and politics (offering dowries in exchange for a woman, royalty, class wars, race, etc.) than it was about love.
so we’ve talked about finding that balance. finding a balance between all of the traditions that are wrapped up in this hotly intense, personal-yet-public institution. we’re thinking of the ways our wedding is still traditional in some ways: for example, on our wedding day, our fathers will be meeting for the first time! our siblings will get to hang out for the first time! some of our closest friends haven’t even met our partners, even though we’ve been together for four years. it is what simon has talked to me about, the coming together of families and communities. in a sense, our wedding day is more about all (well, at the very least MOST!) of our favourite people being able to meet each other and celebrate that, chances are, we wouldn’t have met if simon and i hadn’t fallen in love.
today, i was thinking about this because of this: something i see over and over on wedding blogs, even the ones that present themselves as alternatives, is the focus on The Couple. the only other people in the photographs tend to be three bridesmaids, three groomsmen, and sometimes their families. i would even go further than that, to say often the focus is far more on the bride than it is on the groom. grooms’ faces are often cut off, whereas that rarely happens with the brides. 10 pictures of her alone in her dress compared with two or three of him in his suit, and almost never alone. and often, since these blogs are still selling you shit, of course, more photos of the decor than of the guests or couple. yes, some of these questions are more about the wedding photographer’s style and all that jazz, but i really feel like it is a resounding theme i find slightly archaic: the wedding is the bride’s special day, she wants to feel beautiful, she must be the center of attention, oh yeah and there’s that guy she’s marrying too.
more generally, the language around weddings and emphasis on “it’s YOUR special day” is really just the industry’s way of encouraging people to spend exorbitant amounts of money, to be incredibly selective, because you (in theory) will only have one wedding day and you! deserve the very best!
i don’t want to judge others who do go that route, but one thing is clear: that’s not me, that’s not simon. even if we had $25,000 to spend on a wedding, i seriously doubt we would. i’d rather drop $700 on a plane ticket to bring friends in from far away than i would want to spend it on a dress, or a cake, or hand woven letterpressed invitations for a one day event. because i don’t think this wedding is particularly about me. it’s not particularly about simon. part of the thing i’ve disliked about the idea of marriage is that it’s seen as this exclusive club, but at the same time there is this contradictory belief/assumption that everyone will (and should) get married at some point in their lives. that getting married is “the next step” in a relationship, as if your relationship is somehow unfulfilled if you’re not married. that coupledom is for everyone. “you’ll find that perfect someone.” as if every single person in the world needs to find one other person that will completely fulfill them, romantically, sexually, emotionally. fuck that. i love the idea of sharing my life and being fulfilled by many people, and i’ve been so much happier and healthier since i got rid of the idea that i needed to find one single solitary person to make me happy in every way, shape, and form.
i’m a lover. i need to be around the people i love, i crave affection, i need to tell people how much they mean to me. there are so many friends i can’t imagine living without, who i love so much; morgan, iris, sarah, karina, my sisters, so many. but there is no way for me to publicly state my love for those friends in such a way as a wedding.
the way we will celebrate our wedding will combine the best of both worlds; my friends who make beautiful music, simon’s friends who write beautiful poetry, our friends who make us laugh, our family who we admire. the perfect wedding day, in my mind, is a day that will celebrate all of those loves i am so grateful to have, in addition to the life i have shared, and look forward to sharing with simon.
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