Ambivalent about getting married

[Thistledew]

DP and I have been together 4 years, and have talked about getting married.

Whilst I know that we are in a permanent relationship, and that we both want to raise a family together, I actually feel rather underwhelmed about the idea of getting married. I was chatting with a friend about my feelings recently, and she seemed to suggest that if I didn't feel hugely excited about the idea of getting married and having a wedding, I should reassess whether DP really is the person I want to spend my life with.

I think that she is wrong, and that the ambivalence I feel is due to a dissonance between how society expects women to react to the prospect of getting married, and how I actually feel, but would like to canvass opinions from a feminist point of view.

How I see it is this: I love DP. We get on very well and he makes me very happy on a day to day basis. I think he will be a great dad and would like to raise a family with him.

On the positives, I don't doubt our commitment to each other, and whilst I don't think it is necessary to get married to live together and raise a family, having some form of formal legal and financial agreement before having children feels right for me. Getting married is one of the simplest ways of sorting out this sort of agreement. Plus, DP is something of a traditionalist, and likes the idea of being married. I am not so keen on the historical context of marriage, but prepared to accept that our marriage will be a personal reflection of our relationship.

On the negative side, whilst I love attending other people's parties, I hate arranging my own. I hate being the centre of attention when I haven't done something to earn it. I don't mind spending money on hospitality, but hate wasting it on things that have no utility. Whilst I know that we could just go down to the registry office with a couple of witnesses, we both have a lot of family members who would be very disappointed if we didn't have a full celebration. None of them would in fact react negatively if we didn't have a party, but I care more that they would be disappointed than I do about my own dislike of organising parties ifyswim.

So, sorry for the long post, but what do you think?

Does my failure to get excited about "my" "big day" show that DP and I shouldn't get married?

If you have never been a woman to dream of white dresses and bridesmaids but got married anyway, why and how did you do it?

Where do you think this whole trope of women planning their weddings from an early age and getting hugely excited about a wedding comes from?

I never dreamed of a white wedding and was quite anti-marriage when I was younger though my husband wanted us to wed. We got married in the end because we needed to in order to move abroad together. In the years since I've come to find marriage a pretty good institution. If I did things over I would have got married earlier and to be married, not for the ability to move abroad.

We did not have a big white wedding, though we did have a ceremony and a party. We organized something we both felt comfortable with together. It was relatively inexpensive and a lot of fun (but I do like parties!).

Personally I think it is a big mistake to conflate the marriage and the wedding. The marriage is the issue. If you want to be married then go ahead. Ask your partner to organize the wedding or don't have one - it's not so important. But if you don't really want to be married, don't use the wedding as an excuse, hold firm to your conviction that you can love and grow old together without state approval (or whatever your convictions are).

Meh. I got married to my husband because I liked the idea of celebrating our commitment to each other by having a big kneesup with all the people we love. I wasn't particularly worried about bridezilladom, and indeed was short of calling the whole thing off and eloping to Gretna Green instead all the time several times in the run-up to the wedding.

We've spent comparatively little on the wedding (at least on faff like bridesmaid's dresses and matching suits. Didn't do that. My own dress was off the peg from Debenhams), but what made it special was how everyone piled in to make it a good day - my mum and a friend making the decorations for the room, my auntie baking the cake (which was hideous, but full of love), etc etc

As it is, I like being married to my husband. I've taken his name, not because I felt I had to, but just because I liked the idea of having the same name as my husband and children (plus it let me get rid of an umlaut). I use Ms rather than Mrs. The wedding didn't change our relationship. It was just one of these things, moving in together and having children was the bigger commitment. Both of us forgot our first anniversary, because it's just not that big a deal to us.

However I have no regrets and would marry him again any time. I certainly was no Monica about it, though.

Personally I see marriage and weddings as rather different things which unfortunately often get mixed up!

If you don't feel excited about marriage then to me it means one of two things. Either marriage as an institution isn't for you, or you are not with the right person. Only you can know which. And the feminist view on marriage as an institution is obviously a whole other debate!

If you aren't excited about a wedding then you are perfectly sane! I do not understand perfectly normal seeming women who become fixated on the colour of table linen and the style of shoes worn by the bridesmaids.

Even if you have a big wedding though, it doesn't have to take up your whole life. You asked how we did it. We did a big wedding, but my dress was a two hour trip to one shop, and my bridesmaid's dress was one afternoon in town. We spent time on the things we liked (choosing food and wine [bgrin]), delegated the things we didn't care about to people who would feel excited by them (cars to my car addict dad) and missed the things we thought were pointless (favours, caring about table settings, other such crap). On the day, the service was (to me) very profound and the party was a great party.

For me personally, I love being married. It is something we are and to me, that feels so deep and important compared to when we lived together. The historical context is problematic and I do my best to ignore it!

Thistledew, I really don't agree with your friend encouraging you to re-evaluate your relationship with your DP because you don't want to get married. I do think it's worth having a good think about why exactly you don't want to though - if you hate the wedding idea, there are ways round that (although 'family expectations' can't be underestimated!), if you hate the 'marriage' idea, then that's fine too but is probably a separate issue.

I have been with DP for nearly 7 years and have no plans to marry him. In fact, I told him within 6 months of being together that I would never marry him. I really object to marriage, its baggage and history - none of which is as far in the past as some people like to think. Of course a marriage can be what you make it, and only you two can decide exactly how you conduct your relationship, but for me, the mere thought of changing my name to his, using Mrs or becoming his 'wife' brings me out in hives! On the other hand, becoming civil partners, rather than 'husband' and 'wife' sits fine with me - it's not a legal possibility right now but hopefully will be within the next few years.

It's an extremely personal choice though and as far as I'm concerned, how you feel says nothing about your commitment to DP, it's a totally separate issue.

JosieRosie - but marriage doesn't mean you'd have to change names or use Mrs? I know several couples in which either he has taken her name or both kept their own names.

Isn't it just semantics whether you call a civil partnership "marriage" or "civil partnership"?

Having been through this (twice) and never got particularly excited about white dresses etc I can understand where you are coming from. Society does place a significant expectation that "getting married" is something women should/do want and particularly if you want to start a family that it is the "proper" thing to do.

The whole "fixated on dresses" trope is interesting as I have never yet met a woman who didn't dread the whole thing, even if she ended up enjoying it. Personally it felt like such a contrast to my usual personality and interest - I didn't have a clue what flowers I wanted.

Although you think your relationship won't change, I strongly recommend reading Wifework (there are several threads on here already) and assessing your and your DP's different motivations for getting married. IME men are much keener on getting married than a) plenty of women and b) the commitment phobic stereotype and this book explained why at least in part.

WidowWadman - you're right, all those things are optional although still bafflingly hugely popular! For me, though, being 'partners' seems more inherently equal than being 'husband' and 'wife' - it seems much more free of historical and current connotations of what those roles are expected to involve.

I second the recommendation for reading 'Wifework' - I found it really interesting and eye-opening.

I never dreamed of being a bride and having a big wedding, I wasn't really bothered, it was the marriage bit I wanted for legal and family reasons. PLus I hated my maiden surname, his name is simpler, although I have to add here that he did genuinely offer to take my name if I wanted him to.

DH and my mum wanted a party so they organised it. I wanted to:

a)get married
b)get married barefoot and in blue
c)have lots of alcohol

We had all of those things so it was a win win for me. DH took me shopping for my dress. I tried on the two blue dresses he brought to the changing room and bought one. He and my mum did the rest and I just turned up. MIL did the cake, my father did the invitations, I didn't have a fussy hair do or loads of makeup, photos didn't go on for hours and once the free champagne started flowing the attention was off me very quickly!

It was a lovely day but thats all it was, a lovely day. It was 7.5 years ago and I only remember snippets (see c) ). It made family members happy, sorted out the legal stuff and changed my surname as well as having a really big party.

The marriage bit has been much harder, but in general worth doing from my perspective. Much more alcohol required though and the food is nowhere near as good.

A wedding is what you make it. The 'my big day' bullshit is exactly that and you don't have to buy into any of it if you don't want to. Your reasons for marrying seem to bode well for a happy marriage.

I felt a lot like you I really wanted to get married, but slightly dreaded sorting out the wedding bit. We just did what wanted, which in our case was 30 people, meal, no evening do, all arranged very quickly. We had a really really lovely day, but we both say that one of our feelings afterwards was happiness that the wedding was over, so we could be married for the rest of our lives without having to do it again. It doesn't mean we were coerced into having more than we wanted it was perfect for us. We just =didn't and still don't understand the 'best day of your life' thing. We had already made the decision when we talked about it privately and agreed it, so the agreement between the two of us was already made. The wedding was a formality which opened a new chapter. It was the new chapter we wanted, not the wedding.

Oh, and don't listen to that friend!

Nah, all that "you have a vagina, therefore you have planned your wedding since you were 5" is a pile of media generated crap, IMO. If I ever got married again I'd just have my closest friends and fish and chips down the pub.

I could have written your opening post, I wanted to get married but not to have a wedding, the thought of a big white dress and being called Mrs made my blood run cold. So, we had a small, quiet wedding, minimal fuss, no changes of name or title by either party and are still together 10+ years later, I don't think my reluctance to take have a big fussy wedding itself had anything to do with my level of commitment to DH, but it was important to me that we were married.

Oh, I rather fancy a wedding. It's the being married I can't stomach. So I'm not

I know exactly what you mean. I've always said I'd like to be married, it's the actual wedding part I don't like the idea of!

Dp and I have been together 14 years now. I was never that bothered about getting married until I had ds1, then it suddenly seemed to become really important. He's 7 now, and we still haven't got married! We did get engaged 18 months ago, so that's a step in the right direction, I suppose. I quite like being engaged. I think I'll only get married if we can do it with the minimum of fuss. If someone could send me some sort of form I just had to sign and return, that'd be ideal! Dp seems to think a party is necessary though, and he doesn't like the idea of that either.

Thanks. Lots to ponder here and I'm glad that I'm not the only one to be a bit meh about the idea of a wedding. I think I will leave most of the planning to DP, as he is pretty good at that stuff.

To be fair to my friend, she was of the view that I should be excited about DP and I 'celebrating our love' rather than a wedding for the sake of it, but she couldn't get why I am not in the least excited by the idea.

OP, I hear you. I've been with my lovely partner for almost 20 years - and am very happy with him - and have always been vocal about my objections to marriage (which feels gruesomely ideologically-freighted to me) and weddings (on precisely the grounds of the kind of 'you're a girl, therefore have been planning your Big Day since babyhood' stuff someone mentioned above). However, we are expecting a baby in a couple of months, and are probably going to marry before he arrives, purely because it's easier than getting a solicitor to draw up some document that gives us equivalent rights etc. If civil partnership were an option, we would definitely do that.

We'll be booking an appointment at some registry office, showing up in jeans, and grabbing two strangers for witnesses, before heading somewhere wonderful for dinner - and also, we're not telling anyone we did it. We're going to have a 'meet the baby, and oh, PS, we got married a while back' party at some point, so won't skimp on the fun, either.

So no, your lack of excitement about your 'Big Day' suggests nothing at all about your happy relationship, and don't even consider feeling guilt-tripped into that kind of self-examination.

I don't care about big days and white weddings and all that guff but I did get married because I wanted to be married (rather than the getting married, eg the marriage part was more interesting to me than the wedding part, which didn't really interest me at all).

I'm a feminist and I didn't take my husband's name.

But I did want us to legally be jointly responsbile for our children and I wanted him to be my legal next of kin. And so he is. I think if you think you want children together and you're certain of that well, that's a much bigger committment than marriage tbh.

I got married last year and I was very unenthusiastic about the whole wedding. It is a big deal in my family, who are quite traditional about these things, and DH was keen to 'do the right thing' - but I was glad when the reception was over as I hate being the centre of attention!

The financial and legal securities of marriage were the most important things to me, especially as I don't work and have DC from a former relationship. We moved into DH's house after we got married and it would have been foolish to move in without being married as there would be no security for me or the DC if the relationship broke down. DH also wanted me to have the full protection of marriage - his pension plan, inheritance tax etc.

It sounds very unromantic but my best friend is a family lawyer so I often hear about situations when women have missed out on these things and it can be devastating when things go wrong.

I love being married. Dunno if it would feel the same as living together, we didn't do that before we got married (not religious but logistical reasons) but I like being married. I like the team aspect of it. Me and DH, we're a great team. BUT ... I didn't love my wedding. It was fun, but ... not loveable. And looking back, a lot of things we did were utterly pointless wastes of money that we did to make other people happy. If I could do it all now, 4 years on, I'd do it differently. For us, we were young, my parents wanted to throw the party, so them footing the bill did affect the choices we got to make.
I certainly dreaded some of it, and rightly so - I'm not a child, I've never had a princess fantasy, and I can't abide silliness.

As one of my friends famously said to her husband - "honey, remember that time when we got married? Let's NEVER do that again!"

Why don't you elope/marry on the quiet and then tell people you'll plan a big party for afterwards/your first anniversary/after the honeymoon/some random time? Everyone gets to come and feel involved but you can detatch it, mentally, from the 'getting married' part. You get to do all the faff (or not do it!) and NOT associate that with your marriage.

your marriage is NOT your wedding. Your wedding is NOT your marriage. And the whole idea of weddings being all about the bride is so much patriarchal bullshit it stinks to high heaven. yeah, sure I'm thrilled that my life is finally validated by a penis-having-human who chose ME to be his chattel! WHOOOOOOP!

Good food, good band, lovely wine and a nice ceremony - that stuff was good. Being expected to be very invested in it all = tiring.

Read Wifework, OP :-)

I never wanted to marry before, because of the traditional roles of husbands/wives; the way wives tend to be viewed by society generally; titles etc. I only changed my mind after explaining all this to DP, and he understood. He'd previously been feeling quite rejected by my not wanting to marry him, and as soon as he understood my points, I found the problems would not come up with him anyway!

He argues as hard as I do about Mrs/Ms; he was perfectly happy to go double barrelled (so future kids would have the same surnames as both of us, easier for admin) though he was also fine with the idea of not changing and the kids having my name; he loves the idea of my career really taking off and him being a SAHF; and he thinks it is hysterically funny when his mother insists on telling me how to iron his shirts (we have an iron?)... We've discussed other stuff as it comes up. Things like his friends referring to me as "the wife". But that kind of thing came up anyway, before we were married.

Once we decided we did BOTH want to formalise the partnership we really wanted to do it quietly and not tell anyone, but he is an only child, and family pressure was a bit much. So we looked for a venue that provided entertainment that we enjoyed, could do the food, and basically meant we just gave them numbers and turned up on the day. Perfect. No bridezilla action required.

Chester Zoo, by the way. Guests have something to do and to talk about, no disco - so easy!

I moved in with my OH fully expecting that we will spend the rest of our lives together, and I still feel that way. I consider my promise to him to do that to be as solemn and as meaningful as any wedding vow. I have no interest in donning The Frock etc, though if I thought there were any legal benefits for my daughter (I'm suspicious that there might be) then I'd consider it.