How to Have a Feminist Wedding

[Thurlow]

Did anyone see the Guardian article by the author of Everyday Sexism?

The article itself was really interesting, but the comments were more so. I can't entirely make up my mind how I feel. Personally I'm against marriage for me (as anyone who has come across me before on here probably well knows ) and agree with some comments such as marriage, with its trappings of romance and its history, have become the only way to guarantee legal rights to inheritance and protection etc. But then again, surely feminism means doing whatever the hell you want, and if you want a big white dress and a church wedding, why not? Surely not being able to do what you want would be anti-feminist?

I also found a lot of the author's comments about the wedding industry - the attitude of bridal shops and the like - very telling, the assumption that it will be a woman's planning, a woman's decision, a woman wanting to look her best and all that.

Marriage is a partnership, pure and simple - but how easy is it really to escape from all the quite inherently sexist history and assumptions involved in a wedding?

It's funny, the 'feminist wedding' thing has been done to death so this article wasn't really anything new. However, it really wasn't 'how to have a feminist wedding' - it was 'how to justify having a traditional wedding if you're a feminist'. She's not really doing anything to make it a feminist wedding as such. She's having a totally conventional and traditional one (church, white dress, being given away, seems to have lost weight/dropped two sizes) but is writing about how they came to their decision to do so.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of hers and I don't think she should or should not be doing anything different. She's having the wedding she wants and that's great. I just think the headline is misleading.

I also think Jessica Valenti wrote a much more interesting piece about it (also in The Guardian).

You're right, but part of me thinks that true equality in everything shouldn't mean having to justify a decision to do anything. Have the wedding you want. Get married if you want. Change your name if you want. It shouldn't really matter, should it?

No it shouldn't and it doesn't. I suppose if you're a feminist in the public eye you'd probably feel like your choices are going to be judged more than your average woman - that certainly seems to have been the case in Valenti's article. Maybe she just feels the need to deflect some criticism. Mostly it just feels like a bit of a PR puff piece to be honest.

selfishly marking place. i am at the point where i am considering marriage, and in all likelihood will do so as it ties up the legal side neatly and protects us both. most people assume that i'm just desperate for him to "pop the question". in reality we would like to have a large wedding (because there are lots of people we would genuinely love to be there), but are overwhelmed by the idea of organising it due to the "wedding culture"

i am also VERY conscious of the troubled history of marriage for women

that article has both confirmed my worst suspicions (bridal shops, the assumption that all hte organising would fall to me) as well as allayed some fears

there are traditions as you say that i'm uncomfortable with, but that have meaning and sentiment for people around me who i love. they would never stop us doing things the way we wanted to (note "we" - if we agree to get married i wouldn't be taking on the organisation alone otherwise i wouldn't agree to it in the first place), but the celebration wouldn't just be for us, and i would want others to be included in ways that they were comfortable with and that were meaningful to them

i'm thinking of:

• father walking me down the aisle (i struggle with this enormously as a concept, but it would mean something to both of us as i love him dearly and we have a close relationship). i'm not sure whether "She gives herself freely, with our blessing" overcomes that
• church wedding (i would describe myself as a "person of faith" and my natural setting would be a village church from a religious POV as that is part of my upbringing, but i strongly disagree wtih the CofE's actions in many respects)
• white dress (no real opinion from my own POV but it would be commented on by others if i chose not to)
• speeches (my father loves giving them, i don't and neither does my mother, but actually i might bite the bullet on this one)
• first dance (no way - i am not a performer)
• throwing the bouquet (no way, i don't participate at other people's weddings)
• names (my instinct is to keep my own professionally, but use dp's if and when it suits me in my personal life, as his name is quite common and would make more anonymous - how unfeminist of me!)

"it really wasn't 'how to have a feminist wedding' - it was 'how to justify having a traditional wedding if you're a feminist'"

that is my great worry

i'm not sure though about "having the wedding you want" - what if the wedding you want appears to uphold and support things that are damaging to women generally? i don't know if i could accept that

I think you need to distinguish between the decisi

Decision to get married, and the way in which you achieve that (ie the type of wedding you want)

Fwiw I feel that changing your name is inherently anti-feminist and I am surprised she is doing that, but everything else is more around consumerism than feminism per se (yes the 2 are linked but ykwim). You can have a white dress without setting foot in a bridal store, you can choose who you want to walk you down the aisle, you don't have to throw a bouquet - none of these things are necessary or will even be noticed (maybe other than in passing). They're just...stuff....

For what it's worth PetulaGordino I got married three years ago and feel like we did it our way.

• no church as we're not religious at all, so that was a no-brainer
• no white dress as I just didn't feel comfortable in a traditional wedding dress and didn't want to spend a lot of money on it. That said, I actually wish I'd done better with my dress. The problem I had is that you DO want to look special and stand out a bit on the day and I worried that most of the nice frocks I'd seen could be worn by a guest! Mostly I just bought something that looked nice and saved me having to worry about it more. Didn't set foot in a bridal shop at any point.
• My sister (bridesmaid/official witness) walked down the aisle (such as it was), followed by both of my parents and then I walked down alone. The aisle wasn't big enough for both parents to walk with me which is what I'd originally planned
• no bouquet throwing as I think it's stupid
• first dance we did do, for the laugh
• I kept my name and he kept his. Our 1 year old son has my name
• my father gave a speech as he wanted to (did at my brother and sister's weddings), so did DH, his best man and so did I! I wanted to. My mum would've hated it if I'd asked her.
• DH planned it just as much as I did, if not more. He felt it was his money and his day too so he wanted it to reflect him too. It would've been smaller if it had been left up to me.

I like to think I didn't do anything that perpetuates things that are harmful to women - other than get married itself if you believe that, which I don't.

that sounds lovely lorelei

re dress - i have been to several weddings where the bride simply doesn't look comfortable as the dress is too restrictive. i am sure that there are many people who think that that is normal

I think the decision by the author and her future husband to both change their name is probably a very good compromise, if you feel that you would like to reflect the fact that you have made this commitment to each other.

I think she's probably saving up a whole other world of entertainment though when it comes to giving kids a surname

The thing I always found difficult was years ago, back when I considered marriage a possibility, I'd chat to female friends about the kind of wedding I imagined having and it was very non-traditional. Their reaction was never great. It seemed to me that a huge number of people - or perhaps just other women - felt that anyone doing things in a slightly different way from the traditional wedding was doing it to be a bit attention seeking and "oh, look at me, aren't I cool and unusual". I found that a bit unsettling actually. I'm not entirely sure why though.

people don't like others doing things that throws into question their own actions (whether or not that is the intention)

I think when it came to ours Thurlow we didn't worry about what people were going to think very much (except for things like making sure DH's elderly grandparents and bf-ing sister were comfortable etc.).

Ours actually felt and looked fairly traditional in lots of ways and other than my dress, most people probably didn't notice the little things. Some raised eyebrows in DH's family about me not changing name. My feminist friends definitely noticed I wasn't 'given away'. But as a whole the day still felt like a normal wedding - in that every wedding I've ever been to has felt personalised in some ways for the couple.

That's probably it, Petula. I have to admit I was quite relieved when we came to the decision that we weren't going to get married and so we didn't have a plan a wedding!

I've been thinking about this rather than working, clearly and whenever I read articles like this relating to weddings, marriages, history, feminism etc it always boils down to one issue in my mind.

If there is currently no way under English law of tying up inheritance, property rights, next of kin in exactly the same way as you achieve these things through marriage, many couples who are in theory against being married end up getting married to achieve these legal protections.

But the downside of that is that it doesn't put any pressure on the legal community to try and come up with another way (like the French Civil Pact) to provide these protections.

Bit of a catch-22, to me. And also the fact that anecdotally it seems that many people, once they decide to get married for legal/financial reasons, do decide to throw some sort of wedding as well and it all snowballs a bit.

Well. whether or not to get married and how to do it/whether to have a wedding are two very different things.

I read that article and came to the exact same conclusion as Lorelei. It felt like it was about justifying a traditional wedding. I didn't really get what was so feminist about the author's choices. It all seemed pretty traditional to me. But then I don't really "get" marriage.

isn't the point of being feminist that you do what you want, what makes you comfortable.
I LOVE BIG DRESSES, i can't wait for summer to start so i can get all my summer maxi dresses out, so of course i was going to get a big white wedding dress.
I didn't take his name as 1 i don't like it, 2 I am still Ms Sarcy, 3 read too many victorian novels
had wedding in a church which we walked to.

But it turns out i am a puritan, the point of a wedding is to say formally to the world I LOVE THIS PERSON, I WANT TO LIVE WITH THEM FOREVER, and give me his stuff if he dies first.
Anything else is just window dressing that you do with what you want.

I'm glad you linked to this and yes, totally agree with the point that the author is trying to justify a traditional wedding.

I think really, we need to be clear there is a distinction between a marriage and a wedding. A marriage actually has equal expectations and responsibilities so is, in theory, compatible with feminism (if we ignore the outdated nonsense about fathers on the certificates in England and Wales - do sign the petition!). Particularly now women can marry women and the civil ceremony has none of the silly notions of being given away or obeying (neither does the usual CofE service and I thought it odd the author brought the obey issue up - my grandmother didn't say that in the early 50s!).

However, the wedding industry is deeply couched in patriarchy and this needs to be challenged.

Incidentally today is my wedding anniversary but not the anniversary of my legal marriage. Humanist ceremonies are not currently legal in England and Wales (although are in Scotland) and I think making this sort of ceremony legal would help get rid of some of the patriarchy bollocks because you can have a religious style service or religious overtones that are not permitted in the ceremony and you can write your own vows. You can also have a totally feminist wedding if you want.

I did wear a white dress but I didn't/don't wear an engagement ring, had no bouquet (but lots of beautiful flowers for decoration at the venue and a single rose in my hair to match dh's button hole) and I was not given away but my dad did walk me down the aisle. My husband walked my mother down it . I also kept my own name but also use my husband' name. None of that was planned as a "feminist" wedding. It was just what happened when two feminists who had yet to fully form their idea of feminism decided to get married and have a wedding.

separating the idea of marriage (which for many feminists will be no-go anyway) from a wedding...

given that so many aspects of what we think of as a traditional wedding are rooted in sexism, i think that once you've decided to have a wedding (of whatever magnitude), it's always going to be difficult from a feminist POV if you decide to keep specific aspects of that traditional wedding intact and try to retrospectively justify them in accordance with your feminist views

after all, the bare bones are:

• ceremony (essential)
• party (non-essential)

the ceremony can be more or less misogynist, but everything else is optional

Oh we each wear a wedding ring. I think we did talk about not bothering but decided we'd like to. They thought us very odd at the registry office when we didnt have rings. We saved that bit for the wedding where we made our promises. The registry office was just the paperwork.

(to clarify - the ceremony may be not misogynist at all, if you're happy with the idea of marriage in itself)

A ceremony might not even be necessary. Two witnessed and the declarations and contract signing is not very ceremonial. Unless you make it so.

The only legal bits are the declarations and paperwork.

sorry, i was including that within "ceremony"

I understood and I don't disagree. I was just trying to demonstrate how it could be different. It's hard because of all the assumptions of tradition but one day we'll look back and boggle at the things we used to do. I expect...