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Original poster

Debriefing: a wedding

293 replies

vezzie · 22/11/2010 14:01

I went to a wedding at the weekend and ended up thoroughly depressed, as I often do after weddings. Please indulge me, because I want to talk about it.
The bride is one of the most dynamic, active, imaginative and intelligent people I know. She was patronised and belittled throughout ? ?who gives this woman ???? and during the speeches she looked very uncomfortable. I have never seen her so quiet and when it was clear that she didn?t like what was being said it seemed very strange that there was no opportunity for her to own the floor in her own style. I have never heard so little of her voice, ever, and yet she was notionally the centre of attention.
I suppose what is troubling me ? and there is no natural justice in what I am about to say - is that she is so close to the top of so many pecking orders (beautiful, clever, talented, well loved, well educated, professionally respected) that it seems obvious that her husband should be so near to the top of all the male pecking orders (tall, handsome, very rich, in a very well paying job) and yet unfair that this sort of man seems almost inevitably to bring the expectations that his wife will take a very traditional and subservient role. Without wanting to imply that anyone deserves to be pushed about, because they don?t, I suppose I am upset that this woman, who is brilliant, is now going to play second fiddle to a tosser for the rest of her life.

I hate weddings. I always start off all excited and filled with love and joy and enjoy the sentimental moment where you can look at the couple and do a mental 6-Feet-Under-like montage where you imagine them surrounded by children, growing older, surrounded by grand children, retiring together etc. Then at some point I am forced to realise that the whole thing is filling me with profound unease and it is as well if I am not too drunk or I have to find a cupboard to hide in and cry.

DP said, when I was telling him how sad I was feeling on Sunday, ?Why do you take it so personally?? I just shrugged and changed the subject. Later I thought, ?Because it is like this. Suppose you were invited to a housewarming party and you bought a present and wrote a card expressing all the good wishes that you have for the people in their new house, and you dressed up and turned up ready to celebrate and saw everyone else looking beautiful and happy and joyful, and the hosts offered to show you round and then you realised during the tour that the whole thing runs on a basement floor inhabited by slaves, it would slightly put a dampener on the occasion, especially if you were the same kind of person as the slaves.? This is of course a gross exaggeration.

We are not married. I often think we should be, and then I go to a wedding and I?m back to square 1.
What do feminists do about getting married?

OP posts:
Original poster
vezzie · 24/11/2010 15:56

Yes, I know you can get married for a hundred quid and I also know that marriage has a different legal status from cohabitation; and it has also not escaped my notice that those taking part are free to choose the style in which they marry. THAT IS THE INTERESTING PART. See below.

Marantha, I don?t think it?s true that the style in which a couple marry has no bearing on how they will conduct their life together. People spend a lot of time and energy and money arranging their weddings (usually). It would be very surprising if it said nothing about them. Even what mobile phone people have usually says something about them, and that is far more a matter of chance / convenience / arbitrary decision.

Customs like only men making speeches: as with name changing, a lot of women say ?I agree in principle that it could have gone either way, but it so happened that we went the traditional way ? not for traditional reasons, oh no absolutely not, but for irrelevant arbitrary reasons like the women in my family all hate speaking, my mother had laryngitis, his best man graduated from RADA, etc?? (Equivalent to ?his surname is prettier, my surname goes terribly with his first name, I have 7 brothers to carry the name on and he had no siblings? ? etc). If that was really all there was to it, you would statistically hear about roughly the same number of cases that fall either way ? as many families where the men all had laryngitis and the women were all Ac-Tors. You don?t though. Still, great to hear on this thread about so many women giving speeches at weddings.

Anyway here is the bit that I wanted to unpick that I find kind of depressing: it?s about status. Women who have these big grand traditional weddings are often the women who are confident and are able to award themselves marks of high status in general, in other areas of their lives: people who look good, have nice houses, good jobs, slick social skills, eat good food, hold their birthday parties in expensive bars. Good luck to them. Then, when it comes to their weddings, they opt as usual (or, even more than usual, on such an important and special day) for all the signifiers of a High Status Wedding (=, in this twisted world, expensive and traditional). However, these signifiers are from a time when only a man actually had any status, so it was his status only that defined the status of the couple and therefore by extension that of the woman in it. However, perversely, all specifically masculine status is predicated at least partly on the extent to which they successfully dominate women (in general, and their own in particular) so the ceremonies which were carefully devised to show maximal male status (transferrable to the couple as the wife?s only access to any status at all) simultaneously emphasised her adorable door-matly qualities (or lack of status, relative to his). Now that these status signifiers are still being actively selected in the 21st century by women who earn good money and have lots of degrees, it?s blowing my mind.

OP posts:
Unprune · 24/11/2010 15:53

Can I ask (though maybe it's a separate thread) about Wifework? It's just that I read an article by the writer, who seemed all over the place, and very chippy about her own (what I see as) poor decision-making.

Then a friend recommended it to me. This friend is a very enabling wife of someone we very, very strongly suspect has a narcissistic personality disorder. Needless to say I was Hmm , given both of those things.

In a nutshell, what does it say about being a wife?

Unprune · 24/11/2010 15:49

DH and I both wanted the absolute simplest marriage ceremony possible, ie the sparest of vows, 2 witnesses, and that was that. I like marriage as an institution, for me personally, and I haven't ever been able to articulate why, but it is in NO way to do with submitting to a man, being seen to be a man's property, declaring myself off the market publicly, etc.

I've been to weddings where there was nothing of the groom, as well. The bride's family had taken everything over and he was just told to turn up on the day, basically. In one case, the groom walked out mid-sentence whilst making his speech.

And there are plenty of weddings where there's a best woman, where the bride makes a speech, etc.

I think you have to take weddings very much on a case-by-case basis. (Though mostly they're awful!)

smallwhitecat · 24/11/2010 15:14

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Minione · 24/11/2010 15:10

I had a fairly traditional wedding ( albeit non-religious) and wore a big ivory frock. However, I gave a speech as did DH and the best men. There was no way I wasn't going to speak at my own wedding and I always think its a bit strange when the bride just sits there not saying anything! I also wore a big dress cos I wanted to and I loved wearing it, not sure if that makes me a less of a feminist or not.

marantha · 23/11/2010 09:12

So, vezzie, as a major disliker of weddings myself- can't stand all the hype about a big wedding, I can't say you're being unreasonable about not liking this wedding.
I do think you are being unreasonable about assuming that she will play second fiddle to this guy. Don't you realise that weddings like this are about show and have little bearing on reality? Maybe he will play second fiddle to her?
I think you are being unreasonable if you don't realise that getting married can cost about £100 in a register office with just two witnesses.

snowflake69 · 23/11/2010 09:05

Exactly marantha its easy nowadays to have any type of wedding you want with no formalities. As long as you know the person you are marrying then its not going to end up you being treated like property or disrepscted.

You only get disrespected and treated rubbish if you allow it.

marantha · 23/11/2010 09:03

Very important from a legal viewpoint to be married if you wish your partner to have certain rights as regards your relationship, that is.

marantha · 23/11/2010 09:01

What I think of getting married is this:
It has NOTHING to do with love and commitment and devotion. Nothing. I know of too many very happy cohabitees and too many miserable married people to think this.

What getting married does do is this:
it is a formal declaration to the authorities i.e. the law, financial providers that two individuals wish now to be viewed as a couple.

It is very, very important from a legal viewpoint to be married. The law- RIGHTLY- cannot assume a couple wish to be viewed as each other's next-of-kin etc purely because they live in same house.
I hate notion of cohabitee rights- it is the state inflicting a quasi-marriage-like arrangement on those who may to live free of such ties.

It's a legal procedure and if you wish to get married, do not let weddings put you off tying the knot!

TeiTetua · 23/11/2010 05:20

I remember marriage being discussed on another feminist board a few years ago, and the consensus was that yes, marriage is definitely patriarchal and bad for women. Nevertheless, a man who's willing to do it is better than one who isn't.

ElephantsAndMiasmas · 23/11/2010 00:55

:o dittany

dittany · 23/11/2010 00:39

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tabouleh · 23/11/2010 00:27

dittany - that would be fun!

It would make the news...

What would the placards say?

The bride could be given a present - "Wifework" Grin.

TheFallenMadonna · 22/11/2010 23:10

Strangely enough, no obeying or giving this woman in the Roman Catholic marriage service either. DH was mightily surprised to find that out.

dittany · 22/11/2010 23:04

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MrsTittleMouse · 22/11/2010 22:38

An American friend of mine went to a fundamentalist Christian wedding. She was a friend of the bride. The whole sermen in the middle of the ceremony was about the bride now being the property of the groom and needing to submit to him and his will entirely (the whole surrendering thing). It put my friend in a terrible dilemma - every fibre of her being was telling her to walk out, but it would have embarrassed the bride in front of her new family, and the friend didn't want to make things awkward for her on her own wedding day.

Scary stuff.

Original poster
vezzie · 22/11/2010 22:37

Yes, it's true that the actual vows were completely symmetrical and this is one of the things that interested me (in a horrible way) - that an ancient traditional institution like the church can make a better fist of honouring a relationship than people's own made up traditions, and the behaviour of their friends and families. In the church, there were times when it all seemed rather lovely, solemn and true.

Lots of projecting of stuff I didn't say, by the way: I haven't judged anyone; nor have I suggested that the bride got stuck with a ceremony she couldn't change (it is precisely the fact that she must have chosen all this that interests me); nor for a second have I suggested that feminists cannot or should not marry - what I am asking feminists is how they arranged it themselves.

I know you don't have to do it that way and you can in fact have women making speeches at the reception without legally invalidating the marriage. Pointing this out is a bit silly though, it is like saying to someone who complains that the work canteen food is all stodge and chips "well you could bring a salad" - yes, you could, I might, some people probably do, but that's not the point - most people are going to go into the canteen and take what there is and if it's slowly killing them, that's not good, is it?

And, goddammit, I am NOT overthinking this. I do not go around looking for things to offend me; as I said in the OP I go to weddings with the wholehearted intention (and amnesiac expectation) of celebrating and supporting the couple's union and it is always with deep regret and after hours of (cowardly?) attempts to bloody well UNDERthink it that it dawns on me that there are aspects of the thing that are making me very honestly miserable.

OP posts:
JessinAvalon · 22/11/2010 19:09

Yes, yes, yes!!!

I've seen this with so many female friends. I went to a wedding a few months where a very driven, dynamic and ambitious friend did the whole 'who gives this woman?' thing. She was walked down the aisle by her dad, and then a few minutes later, he came back to take her hand and give it to her husband!

Even friends of mine who had very traditional weddings felt uncomfortable about this.

Then, the speeches were all done by the men.

I know that, if I got married (not looking very likely at the moment!) I'd either give myself away or ask both my parents to walk me down the aisle. I am a product of both my parents and not my dad's property. I would also do a speech.

I have been to so many weddings where the women keep quiet and the men speak. The one wedding I went to where the bridesmaid did speak, the bride was extremely embarrassed - and not in a good way, she told me afterwards. I was really saddened to hear this because I think it took a lot for the bridesmaid to speak.

And then all my female friends have taken their husband's name and called themselves "Mrs".

Honestly, I've despaired!!

edam · 22/11/2010 18:59

I think you are right that the standard/traditional wedding service and customs are patriarchal.

More and more women are rejecting the whole 'who gives this woman' thing and making speeches at their weddings, though. Including me. I walked downstairs to the function room with my Dad because he's my Dad and I wanted his support, but there was no mention of him 'giving me away'. (Actually his rock steady arm was very handy when I was having butterflies.)

I also wanted to speak but was nervous about making a 'speech'. So instead I thanked everyone for coming and said a special thank you to my Mother and Aunt who had worked incredibly hard on the wedding preps. My bridesmaids brought in bouquets for me to present to my Mother and Aunt. It really flagged up the strong female presence in my family and I was glad to do it anyway because they are both lovely and deserved a special mention.

snowflake69 · 22/11/2010 18:49

I am not a feminist but I ran away to the caribbean. No speeches, no dancing, nobody to worry about. No traditionalness and in the pool in your bikini with your fiance/soon to be hubby 2 hours before. It was perfect

Bue · 22/11/2010 18:01

I must agree with the others - the CofE wedding service is actually extremely equal. The "giving away" thing doesn't exist anymore, nor does "obey". That is, unless you are using some ancient BCP service - and if a couple is choosing to use that language it probably tells you a lot about the couple.

purits · 22/11/2010 17:53

"But I think that it is worth noting that for most people this really will be only the appearance of tradition. How their marriage actually plays out will no doubt be very different."

Spot on, Hope. I love your analogy with the transport.Grin

BlingLoving · 22/11/2010 16:43

On the one hand, i do understand how you feel about this - listening to the "obey" part of a wedding and hearing the minister talk about how the woman will support her husband etc is something I always find pretty difficult as it's a blatant statement you know simply isn't true for most of these women.

On the other hand, to have an issue with how a couple choose to do things like speeches seems a bit petty. I chose not to speak formally at my wedding but I did speak informally to thank everyone towards the end. This is because a) I hate speaking in public and b) DH is great at that kind of thing. My father spoke and did a wonderful job of talking about me. I also had one of my oldest (female) friends as MC and she took the gap to do some general ribbing, not dissimilar to what a best man would do for the groom (we didn't have a traditional best man so missed that part!).

AMumInScotland · 22/11/2010 16:32

I can see why you were uncomfortable at this particular wedding, but you have to realise that this woman deliberately chose to have the elements which make you unhappy. The "who gives this woman" is not in the normal marriage service these days, and there are different versions of the vows so no-one should have to say "obey" if they don't want to. Same with the speeches - it was up to the bride and groom to decide who made speeches, though you can still be caught off-guard by what individuals choose to say.

So your question shouldn't be "why are weddings like this" but "why did this woman choose to have this type of wedding". Maybe what depresses you is that you don't feel you know and understand her as well as you thought? That someone you respected turned out to have a very different set of priorities to yours?

HopeForTheBestExpectTheWorst · 22/11/2010 16:18

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