How did your wedding day reflect your feminist beliefs?

[SkaterGrrrrl]

After reading lots of the awesome threads in here I've realised that many of us feminists are married. Marriage and weddings are often seen as not particularly feminist institutions, so just wondering how posters here incorporated feminist touches into their wedding day! Did you cross out the vow ?to obey? from your wedding ceremony? (There was an uproar when Princess Di did this). Did you ask a woman to make a speech at the reception?

I'll go first. We skipped the bit about ?Who gives this woman to this man?? in our civil ceremony as I didn't want to be ?given? to DH. Actually I offered to leave in the question if my Dad answered ?She gives herself and I support her? but he declined, saying it sounded pretentious (s'pose it was a bit).

On being 'given away', I really like the Jewish tradition whereby the bride walks down the aisle with her mum and dad, and the groom walks down the aisle with his mum and dad. If my parents weren't (bitterly) divorced, I'd have done that and so would DH if he still had 2 parents.

Virtually no one includes "to obey" in a church ceremony these days anyway, do they? I thought you needed to specifically ask for that version of the marriage ceremony if you wanted it.

Um... I didn't like the "Father toasts bride and groom - groom replies on behalf of self and bride, then toasts bridesmaids - best man replies on behalf of bridesmaids" thing because of the implication that women aren't perfectly capable of answering for themselves, so we went for more but shorter speeches where person toasted could reply even if in possession of a second X chromosome.

Again, is there a "who gives this woman to this man" in a civil ceremony by default? I don't remember there being one in there that we needed to take out. We did go for the shortest and simplest version of the legally required bits of the ceremony so that more of it was stuff we'd written for ourselves, but that wasn't specifically a feminist thing just a wanting to make it as personal as possible thing.

I disagree that marriage is not a feminist institution.
For the women who want children in a long-term relationship it is perfectly designed for them.
Many is the woman who finds herself up s* creek because she never married her partner.

I, as the bride, made a speech.

I walked myself down the aisle.

No obeying in the vows.

Had a gay rights reading about how marriage isnt about the gender of the people getting married, but about love and commitment and lovely stuff.

I made a speech (my dad didnt).
Didnt bother with toasting of bridesmaids etc.

Mine was fairly traditional in a number of ways - dress, dad walked me down the aisle - but I made a speech myself. No way I was going to sit silently and let men do all the talking, when I had things to say for
myself! There was no stuff specifically 'speaking' for me or the bridesmaids either.

I also made it clear to the reception venue that I was not changing my name - to avoid all the 'introducing Mr and Mrs X!' stuff you get otherwise. We were referred to just by first names throughout.

No obey in our vows either - I actually think this has been taken out of the standard wedding service now anyway.

When I was matron of honour for my best friend, I made a speech at her reception, at her request. I think this is a nice option that more people - even if they don't think of themselves as feminists - could take up, so you have the best man (who is usually a friend/relative of the groom) speaking but also a female friend of the bride speaking to balance that out.

dh and I walked down aisle together, made speech together, had chief bridesmaid's speech as well as best man's. There wasn't any obeying or giving away but it was a civil ceremony and I don't think those things come as standard.
My dress wasn't a big white princessy one either but then I was 7 months pregnant!

I have been to three or four weddings where they promised to obey, though, believe it or not....

Didn't get 'given away'. Had a 'best woman' and no bridesmaids. DH and I both made speeches. Didn't wear a white frock or veil. We were among the first of our friends to get married. Have been astonished that not a single wedding I have been to since (many in last 8 years!) has deviated from the 'traditional' set up even to this limited extent - no one has done what we did.

But then, should be used to the fact by now that most people talk the talk but don't walk the walk... :(

Chose registry office wedding (this was in the bad old days when the choice was only church or registry office, no more interesting locations like you can have now) so no issues over 'obey' or being 'given away'.

Didn't wear white, didn't have bridesmaids, no hen/stag nights (had a joint session in a tapas bar the night before the wedding with all the guests who had flown in from overseas). I made a speech as well as DH, my father etc. Didn't change my name. If we'd done it ten years or so later, we might have written our own vows and had a more individual ceremony, but that wasn't possible back then.

I didn't say I would obey DH , ours was a traditional church wedding in 1985 ( hypocritical ) but there was no way in hell I was going to say obey.
I didn't wear a veil either but I wore an Edwardian style dress as DH was in Uniform so anything else would have looked wrong.

I don't think I've been to a church wedding in 20 years, all recent ones have been civil ceremonies, tbh I wish I'd have had the guts to insist on one, DH's mum would have been horrified, like she was when we refused to have DD christened.

I didn't change my name and am astonished how many people I know did. I didn't have professional make-up or hairdresser either - for me, resisting the commercialised grooming aspect was really important.
A friend of mine got married wearing her glasses which sounds like a pretty trivial thing but the vicar who did it commented on how unusual it is and said some v nice things about it in his speech (sermon?).

Oh and just thought of something else. We had a bouquet toss at our wedding reception, but because we find the assumption that every single woman is gagging to get married untrue (and quite offensive), we didn't call up all the unmarried women. Lots of my female friends loathe being ?singled? - ahem ? out like this at weddings. Instead we called up all the married women and I gave my bouquet to the woman present who had been married the longest ? DH's 85 year old grandmother, who was delighted.

oh yeah and I had a best woman who made a speech too.

Oh, and we had female ushers too -- effectively, the younger females were bridesmaids and the older ones were ushers as it was much more "them". I don't know whether I saw that as a feminist statement specifically at the time; it just seemed the sensible thing to do.

I did have a big (ish, but quite plain) white dress as it turned out those suit me (had initially been planning on something slinky in silver but turned out neither really worked on me. I did also find a red dress that I would have gone for if everything else hadn't already been planned in white/blue/silver.)

A friend of mine got married in a mostly traditional wedding but with a big red dress instead of a big white dress. Again, not sure that this was a feminist statement rather than that she just looked fab in the dress.

I'm glad there are so many of you who have shunned the offensive bits of weddings.

I sit there seething at most weddings I go to, because of all the stupid women blindly following tradition without thinking what it actually means.

Probably the reason I've never tied the knot myself (much to parents annoyance!!)

I promised to "obey".

I have never had an issue with that on the basis that I was supremely confident in my choice of DH as a partner and knew he would never put me in a position where he was asking me to do something I was not entirely happy with.

I did make it a speech and it was easily the best one.

"How did your wedding day reflect your feminist beliefs?" - I didn't have feminist beliefs then - so it reflected that! .

It was 9 years ago and we were both 25. Church wedding (for cultural tradition/nice venue reasons was agnostic then - now athiest!), big reception paid for by my parents. Dad walked me down the aisle and "gave me away" and only the men gave speeches. I didn't do the "obey" thing.

So it reflected who I was then. I don't regret it - it was who I was then. If I was doing it now it would be civil ceremony - no giving away and I'd do a speech.

I changed my name - my DH was very clear that "if I wanted to do the whole get married/white wedding then the least I could do was to change my name!".

I had a plan to add my surname as a middle name by deedpoll - so to be tabouleh middlename mysurname hissurname - but I was swayed by everyone thinking that this was strange - so I am now tabouleh middlename hissurname .

I could still change it though! My surname was very unusual and I was very attached to it. A few months ago I had to go to out of hours as I'd cut my hand and I filled in my "old name" on the form and then had to cross it out and start again. .

Oh and I didn't change my name - but that was more for professional reasons tbh.

I have since taken DH's name, I wanted my children to have their fathers name and I wanted to have the same name as my children.

No church wedding. Had a humanist wedding where I wrote our vows (would like to say in partnership with DH but he's not a creative type although did review and make a couple of suggestions ).

No being given away, best man, bridesmaids, bouquet, veil etc. No stag or hen do - don't think it was feminist just thought it was all a bit of commercial rubbish. Actually thinking about it DH had a hen do. Some his female friends from work took him out about 2 weeks before the wedding

My dad and SH said a few words at the reception to thank everyone but not really speeches. I wasn't bothered about speeches and it meant a lot to my dad to stand up and say a few words.

Did have a gorgeous dress... with nice pants underneath. Not stockings or any of that business. Bra was fugly moulded foam thing that wouldn't show under dress. Is that feminist? Was defintitely dressed for myself not my husband!

Have 2 names. Quite like my dual identity.

Forgot to add that even my grandmother in the 1950s refused to obey so there was no way I was doing that even if it had been an option. It wasn't.

I love that bouquet idea SkaterGrrrl, that's such a nice thing to do and much more about marriage, rather than weddings IYSWIM.

If I get married I would want all available parents bringing in me and DP. I would never dream of excluding my mum because she made me the person I am just as much as my dad did. And it's not giving away either, it's coming together really. "Who brings this man/woman?" is much nicer.

I really can't stand weddings where it's all men speaking, was literally open-mouthed when I first saw this happen, and wondered if there was something wrong with the bride that she couldn't speak for herself.

I was not given away.
I was not given to anyone.
I do not wear a ring (and neither does my husband)
I did not wear white.
Or a veil.
I did not change my name.

When people ask why I kept my name or even (gasp!) if my husbands minds that I don't use his surname I look a bit confused and smile and say "no, we both kept our own names, neither of us wanted to change our names".