To not want to celebrate people's weddings/marriages

[Waferbiscuit]

There are a number of people in my office getting married and the grumpy old cynic in me is finding it hard to get excited. I'm not sure marriage means much these days, what with the almost 50% divorce rate. Given that it's a commitment that is fairly easy to escape from, what exactly are we celebrating - the hope that it will work out or a legal contract committing them to one another?

In fact I can't help but feel that for many couples marriage is primarily the joining together of two people's assets and/or protecting one another, and in that way perhaps couples need to be more discrete about marriage, a bit like one is when they win the lotto or come into an inheritance.... keep it quiet.

Of course if couples do want to make an emotional commitment to each other, that's between them and seems like something you'd agree to privately.

I'm happy to celebrate major achievements in life that involve a lot of effort, things like someone graduating with a Phd or getting a black belt in karate. But celebrating a commitment that can easily be unravelled or a legal contract that ensures the sharing of assets... well that doesn't seem much to celebrate, does it? AIBU?

Yabu really op- weddings should be happy occasions. Are you married yourself?

Does it matter if they may divorce if they're happy for a few years, or even just in the moment?

We got married with 8 people and spent our savings on our house instead, so I'm obviously not wild about weddings, but I love attending and enjoying people basking in the glow of their relationship and full of hope for the future. Maybe 40% won't make it, but 60% will...and anyway, it's good craic!

Your not wrong, the whole idea of no fault in marriage (and it’s been so in theory if not name in the uk for years) has made it a throw away bullshit thing.
It’s like, Hey guys, bang your wife’s sister and still end up with equal custody of the kids. Hey girls, dump your husband because the way he eats toast gives you the ick and still end up with the house.

Theyve done some wonderful things for us but I blame womens rights movements for the total degradation of marriage.

@HoneyIShrunkThePizza

Of course it matters. You don’t go to a day long celebration every time someone gets a new boyfriend they may or may not break up with soon. Knowing that marriage is just “for the moment” puts it at about that level. The whole reason it’s a big important celebration in the first place was because it used to be (still is for those who take it so) for life and people meant their vows and the law reflected that. If its not then what the point of all the hoopla?

Totally agree.

There's also the weirdly sexist stuff.. I remember people shrieking with joy and congratulating me when I got married, I mean people I hadn't spoken to in years acting like I had won the lottery. It was a happy occasion yes, but come on...

And when I graduated and and qualified after years of hard work I got like three texts. Okay.

A woman at work recently got her law degree and everyone was quiet about it. A huge contrast to the elaborate festivities for the women getting married. I made a point of buying her a huge bouquet of flowers and bringing in a celebratory lunch.

Perhaps what we should be doing is increasing the level of celebration of a marriage year by year.

So in year 1 Beryl and Brian get married, have a quick pub lunch to celebrate then back to work. In year 2 maybe it's dinner rather than lunch. In year 3 they invite a couple of guests. Year by year the celebration gets a bit bigger. It doesn't have to be every year, maybe every 5 years.

I'm only suggesting this because this year is my 31 year anniversary so if you could all steam press your best frock and get your credit cards out.....

Getting married is a wonderful time, full of promise and hope. l always get very emotional at weddings, in a good way.
I believe that not all relationships are meant to be lifelong, they all have their own timeframes, but doesn't mean the relationship was a mistake, just that its ran its course. Let people come into your life with love and let them go with love also, thats the meaning of true love, not co dependant conditional love.

I think the whole celebration has got way OTT. I love going to family and very close friends' weddings, as it's so nice to catch up with a bunch of people I may not see too often in a happy occasion. However in my (very limited!) experience: the bigger/more fuss the wedding is, the shorter the marriage lasts.

Incorrect. It’s 33.3%.

www.nimblefins.co.uk/divorce-statistics-uk

So it’s not the majority at all.

@Coffeetree

To be fair law degrees are a dime a dozen these days. There’s a lawyer for everything and many who can’t get a job. It’s not the prestigious job or degree it once was, nobody really cares anymore.

I love wedding and 90% of weddings I have attended (I'm in my 50s) have lasted. They seem to last more than couples who have children and don't get married (that includes me). In my anecdotal experience it shows more commitment.

@Waferbiscuit

Agree with this. Marriage isn’t as special or as big a deal as it was in 1900 or 1940, because it isn’t an expectation that it’s for life. Denying this matters is just stupid, people really used to believe marriage was for better or worse, now that they don’t how could it ever be thought of as as big a deal?

I know the divorce rate has been high for sometime but I feel like peoples expectations of marriage in say the 80’s and 90’s were more like they were before in those time when marriage was for life. Now that we’ve seen those 80’s and 90’s wedding couples break up for many a dumb reason that wouldn’t have happened in times before that, we’ve adjusted our expectations accordingly.

You can tell the traditional couples who really want it to work and it probably will and those who just treat it as a serious boyfriend party.

I work with people doing the same job as those with a degree, they don’t need a degree. So why celebrate those achievements unless they go ahead an get a career? It’s so easy now to get a degree and do a job that a degree is not required

Well don't go to their weddings and absent yourself from any wedding chat. You're entitled to your views. No one's forcing you to engage. Leave the happy people to enjoy their happiness.

Gotta say, I do like a wedding. But maybe that's a lot because I didn't grow up having to go to loads of them (not much extended family) so they were kind of a novelty to me as an adult. Im kind of sad that friend weddings have come to an end for us now. Obviously, some are more fun than others.

People do have the option of not making a big deal if they want to and I think over time more people are doing it.

To DH and I, I think it was important for us to make the commitment in front of a lot of people, and that's why some people do it. It's not 'showing off', it's genuinly wanting to share the happiness and genuinely wanting to reinforce the commitment by sharing it.

Yanbu. Of course I'm happy for people who are doing things that make them happy, but I find it very hard to get remotely excited about friends and colleagues getting married, and also having babies. (Just to note, I'm in a happy and long-term relationship so no bitterness or anything!)

Marriage is fusty and outdated and causes all sorts of problems. People are living much longer now, life now changes a lot more over that time than it ever has done, and it's not really feasible to have one life partner throughout.

I've been to three weddings in recent weeks, all very different, but all noticably very flat and clichéd. Two of the weddings just seemed to be opportunities for highly outgoing, extroverted grooms to get blind drunk with their sport mates and be the centre of attention as a showman for a day. Also I'm in my mid 30s and there's recently been a wave of divorces amongst many of the couples I know who got married in their 20s, some of whom were extremely loved-up and smug that they'd found 'the one' so young.

it seems simply that different sorts of people choose to get married and have children, rather than to have children as a cohabiting couple, and that those relationships with the best prospects of lasting are the ones that are most likely to lead to marriage.

From a report on whether marriage or cohabitation couples are more likely to last

Another who’d never admit this in real life but agree with you. I dislike the modern wedding industry and how tedious and narcissistic it makes everyone - not to mention the sexism and consumerism involved, even when the couple insist they’re doing it differently - they never are! It’s the opposite of romantic to me. Best wedding I ever went to was that of a deeply religious couple. I’m not religious myself.

Me too.

And the same goes for big birthday celebrations.

@JosephineGH

But it’s the starting position, the one that you end up in if you put in no effort, or if you’re the sort of person that no-one wants. It’s not any sort of achievement at all.

Do you actually believe that people who are not in relationships are "the sort of person no-one wants"?

Have you never been on Mumsnet before?

There are literally dozens of threads a day where people talk about wanting to leave abusive or stifling marriages because they are miserable. Mainly because they have been socialised into thinking that they need to be in a relationship or be married at any cost.

This idea that being in a relationship is an "achievement" in itself is largely what keeps women going through this hideous cycle. Educate yourself FFS.

I think marriage is outdated and the waste of money on weddings is ludicrous.
I'm not really into any of it.

@Trying20

Marriage was very similar in 1900 to hundreds of years earlier - both were for life and traditional. You can’t compare the slight changes over those times and say people must have thought about them being as big as more modern changes are to us in those days, because they really didn’t. For them the concept of marriage in practice had changed little over the centuries.

You can celebrate someone’s love but obviously when marriage is expected to be for life it’s a bigger deal than when it is easily broken and has a little less chance than half of failing, so the celebration and feeling surrounding it will obviously be more intense and genuine. It’s not about not celebrating it today because it’s not what it was 80 years ago, it’s just about celebrating it appropriate to what it is today - and that happens to be a far more insignificant and fickle thing than back then. Sorry that’s just the truth, there’s no denying it.

Society doesn’t evolve for the better and better - it just changes. Somethings get better some worse. I would say marriage is a mix of both. There were wonderful things about lifelong marriage and a true joining of family which are absent today and terrible things like not being able to get out of abusive situations. There are good things about easily discarded marriage today like being able ro get away from abuse and also bad things like it not being a true joining of families and not having the same meaning (how could it?) Although in my opinion no fault is a mistake.

I agree with some of this and from experience you're better alone than in a bad relationship but it is human to want love and connection, romantic love. It isn't all about societal pressure.

Marriage can legally protect you but it can also bind you.

Are you single?

You sound very bitter