Debriefing: a wedding

[vezzie]

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?

Tondelayo - I agree, I think there is room for all sorts of different ceremonies, announcements, legal arrangements of various different functions.
It seems strange that 3 people can't be married, for instance. Or that you can't civil-partner your brother for proprety reasons - the strangle hold that sex has on people being recognised as important to each other seems very odd and a bit barbaric when you think about it.
You might ask someone to be godparent to your children, but ask someone else to be their legal guardian in the event of your death - analogously it seems strange that everything of any importance whatseover is all expected to be tied up with one person.

"It seems strange that 3 people can't be married, for instance. Or that you can't civil-partner your brother for proprety reasons"

What on earth are you on about?

Which bit, purits? Do you mean my typo for "property" has confused you (sorry)? Or deeper confusion?

What is marriage about?
Love
Bringing up children
Sharing property (and tax benefits with inheritance of such, etc)

I am sure there are other things too. But there is nothing that logically confines any of these things to being between two people only, or all of these 3 things to the same partner.
If you are religious and marriage is a sacrament, then that's different, but I have been repeatedly and earnestly informed on this thread (just as well, or I wouldn't have known) that marriage can be a legal arrangement without religion.

"But there is nothing that logically confines any of these things to being between two people only, or all of these 3 things to the same partner."

You started off saying you don't like weddings because of some feminist viewpoint but you have now veered off into your own peculiar free-for-all, pick'n'mix concoction.

I have been to a three weddings where intelligent, otherwise sensible women have promised to obey. Ok the BCP language is lovely (and thereto I give thee my troth) but that is NO EXCUSE.

If they are taking it seriously then they are surrendering all adult responsibility for anything, not to mention any right to do anything of which the husband disapproves; and if they are not taking it seriously then one can assume that the whole marriage is also a joke.

I'm married. No ring, no giving away, no Church, I keep my name; but I'll confess to champagne coloured Vivienne Westwood party dress because it was the only excuse I'll ever have and I let DH and my father do the speeches because they wanted to say nice things about me and it seemed churlish to get chippy.

I'm with the OP generally. Weddings are depressing for feminists

I'm not boggling, OP, I see what you are getting at. Anecdotes about what other posters did is not really going to the issue of why so many women still default to the traditional rituals, with all their unfortunate symbolism.

Status is important. to some men, I think that ostensible modern, liberal attitudes can be msileading: high status man enhances his status far more by having a traditional wedding/relationship with an educated high status woman than by marrying a more overtly traditional helpmeet/consort type. Does that make sense? So there is even more pressure on a woman like the bride at the wedding you went to to conform. As to why she does it, hard to say.

As for children and property being tied up exclusively in marriage, I would have to say that in our society marriage is is the fundamental on which the patriarchal system rests. Man owns woman, and she is dependent. There is little room in that scenario for more communitarian approaches to children or property. Because a woman traditionally 'lost' her birth family when she married, they had little say, influence or power over what happened to her or her children. She handed over her property to her husband and it took very expensive and unusual arrangements like marriage settlements to create any exceptions to that.

The irony is that marriage is still the best protection a woman has for her rights and interests over property and children available.

The OP did ask what others have done in view of the fact that the traditional ceremony has a dodgy past. There have been a variety of answers to that, plus anecdotes about other weddings attended.

Dead right Eldritch

But sadly it's not just men who see this sort of marriage as enhancing their status. There are plenty of women who see it as putting the seal on the "achievement" of having "caught" a high status male, with the cheque book that goes with it.

The greed and competitiveness with which engagement rings are compared has always struck me as particularly vile

Unprune I wasn't disparaging the anecdotes, but they don't elucidate why so many women don't take the chance to have a more active part in their own wedding ceremonies (as opposed to doing all the planning, which generally they do).

Pointissima, I know. The reactions to my cheap (if pretty) ring were very telling.

Quite a few people's experiences show that they did, in fact, play an active part in the proceedings, or opted to go down a non-traditional route and circumvent the imagery, full stop.

Others chose to go with the bits that some (incl me) find depressing and objectionable and have given reasons for it.

Quite a mixed bag, really!

Wow, vezzie, thanks for that slap-down.

I reserve the right to post whatever takes my fancy no matter what direction you would prefer the thread to take. Just because you started it does't give you the right to dictate what people say.

Incidentally, I also too my DH's name because I despise my father and love and respect my DH and his family.

BTW, DH and I both had as much to say as each other in our ceremony - we wrote our own vows. And best man and maid of honour (or best woman if you prefer) both made a speech. As did all 4 of our parents. And I sang, just to make it cheesy.

Plus DH was walked down the aisle by all 4 of his parents, and I was walked by all 3 of mine.

Vezzie, I noticed that you called the groom at this wedding a tosser, but didn't give any evidence to back it up. Do you actually think he's a tosser (and yet you implied that you went to the wedding full of joy for the couple) or do you think that all men whose wives didn't give a speech at their weddings are tossers?

And for the survey...
We had a traditional church wedding, my mum walked me down the aisle as my father died when I was younger. She gave a speech, I gave a speech, as did DH and the best man. I wore an (elegant, non-meringue) cream dress.

I did change my name, which I had mixed feelings about but I feel I made the right decision as I like us all having the same name - I wouldn't like to have a different name from my children, which is the case for all my friends who kept their name.

Oh, and do people compare their engagement rings? They all look the same to me, which is partly why I didn't have one as they seemed a bit princessy-bling (and I was a bit scared of having something that expensive).

I cannot understand how an intelligent, independant grown up woman can allow her self to be dressed up and given away. Never have , never will its weird .

What is marriage about?
"Love
Bringing up children
Sharing property (and tax benefits with inheritance of such, etc)"

Er, is sex not in there as well? "Forsaking all others...With my body I worship you"

honour you, that should have been

And for what it's worth, maybe you should stop imposing what you believe women should want for their weddings on them. While forced marriages sadly still exist, the weddings you're talking about are not forced on these women. If modern women are happy to have a traditional weding, what business is it of yours?

I think it's frankly insulting to pity a woman who in all likelihood enjoying the best day of her life. And not because she is becoming her husband's property, but because she and the man she loves are getting married and having a fantastic party.

Chocolatemoose, I hadn't met the man before the wedding so I did rather make a snap judgement on the basis of his behaviour at the wedding, mainly his speech, which struggled to say anything nice about the bride. I did go on about this a bit in the OP but then cut it out as it was too long and rambly. Of course I hope I am wrong and he is not a tosser at all.

haha purits, "free-for-all" - as opposed to "free for a privileged few" presumably. Why do you say that like it's a bad thing?

I don't really know what it would be like if the rules of relationships were so radically relaxed and am certainly not planning anything very unconventional for myself or my family in the near future. But it's interesting to think about why we've got what we have, whom it benefits, whether the historical conditions that set these rules still apply. A lot of people who are not religious marry, a lot of people who have slept with more than one partner marry, a lot of people live together instead of or before marrying, many people have non-hetero relationships. It seems strange that society seems to accept all that but doesn't think bigger.
Things have changed. In the recent past, the idea that one should be best friends with one's spouse simply didn't arise. All this "he doesn't want to hear about my day" stuff was irrelevant - you got that from other women, along with day to day support with sick family or urgent childcare etc. Women "partnered" women to a large extent (although these were not one to one relationships) in many of the ways that we have come to expect our spouses or equivalent to partner us. So why do we now expect one person to fulfill the full package - emotional, practical, financial?

ok Annie, over-snippy I admit

AGH x-post with Annie - in which I admitted to being over-snippy - and now regret it because she is lecturing me again about things I did not say. All sarcasm fully justified

vezzie - then I will apologise for my overly snippy response to your over-snippiness. Friends?

Oh, x-post! Sorry vezzie but you really wound me up.

I think people do compare engagement rings. I've never got any of that, ever. I don't have an engagement ring and though I have a wedding ring (dh doesn't) I don't wear it. (Oh and I wore a blue dress.)

I find all the baggage surrounding marriage and weddings really quite odd. I don't know if I'm just a product of culture, in that we now have a notion of romantic love - I like marriage as a private expression of love. Funnily enough, dh says the same, and he's a particularly unromantic man, and also quite a good feminist, especially lately. We both loathe the modern wedding and have got ourselves into trouble with dh's brother and SIL, who see it as a chance for a party and a coming-together of friends for a good reason - and certainly nothing to do with chattel-passing or ownership or conspicuous wealth.

So anyway, that's how I/we personally have got round the creepiness of the imagery of many weddings: by getting married for our own reasons (which btw haven't had many people in real life nodding vigorously and saying 'oh yes I quite agree') and doing it in the sparest, least public ways possible.

we married last month in a registry office, no 'giving away' no 'obeying', arrived together with our witnesses in a taxi, no white dress, bouquet or bridesmaids.

BIG party for reception with lunch and ceilidh, speeches by DH (said nice stuff about me), me (said thanks to all our guests and a little bit nice about him) and DH's best mate (said nice things about both of us, wasn't all about DH).

i can't see any way at all in which our wedding was male-dominated. everybody said it was very 'us' which is good as none of the usual traditions would be very 'us'.

Best day of her life.......another thing I will never understand, really ? The very best day, surely , there will be other things in your life equally able to give you pleasure. It is terribly sad to see your wedding day as the peak of your happiness, what happens next ? A great big fat let down thats what