This woman is trying to have an oppression free wedding, but recognizes some limitations regarding practical implementation.
If you were in charge of planning your wedding all over again what would you do to make your wedding less beholden to or influenced by oppressive patriarchal traditions?
Well, I refused to do the garter thing…and although my friends love the song, I would not have Paradise by the Dashboard Lights played at my wedding. The DJ had to be told that the bride would NOT WRITE A CHECK TO HIM if that song got played and was free to blame the bride and tell my friends to take it up with me. (Although I was spirited out by my husband’s friends for a drink, and I suspect it may have gotten slipped in while I was out - if so, my friends are going to carry the secret to the grave).
As ong as you remember that there is NOTHING you “have to do” you will have an oppression free wedding. You DO NOT have to…wear white… wear a dress… toss your bouquet… hold a bouquet… be given away by your father… be given away by anyone… wear heels… wear makeup … dance… invite deeply hated family members… invite anyone… register… vow “to obey”… play the chicken dance… smush cake… lord I could go on about the things they tell you you “have to do.”
I promise you’ll be just as married at the end of the day if you skip any, or indeed all, of the above.
Seriously?
Eschew the “Mr. and Mrs. Jones invite you to the marriage united their daughter blah blah” spiel on the invitation. It reeks of patriarchism where the father “gives away” their daughter. Ditto on walking the daughter down the aisle.
The bride and groom should pay for the wedding and/or the parents of each should foot the bill equally. The days of doweries are long gone, and it’s quite silly for just the parents of the woman to foot the entire bill for a party that both sides of the family will attend.
Dispense with the sophomoric misogynistic antics at the bachelor party. (The ball and chain, the stripper.)
No cake smashing in the bride’s face.
The best man and the maid of honor should both make wedding toasts.
No throwing of the garter where single women can vie for the honor of being the “next in line”!!
I believe the cake smashing is generally in the groom’s face, and the garter is thown to the bachelors in attendance. Both are, I would agree, crass practices best left to a period where women were viewed as favored house servants to be at the door with martini in hand.
As Hello Again says, you are entitled to follow or disregard any traditions you like in planning the wedding. The wedding industry has taken a cultural practice that at one time was a modest celebration of the union and turned it into this grotesque, consumer-oriented, pre-packaged, order-your-options-on-the-side, you-must-do-this-or-be-a-pariah experience, sort of like going to Disneyworld but an order of magnitude more expensive.
If I ever get married again I’ve said that it will be five people on a beach. However, I can compromise…say, twelve people on a mountain. Heck, I could even go twenty people in a graveyard or bowling alley. And the bachelor party is a HALO dive followed by by a barbeque and a Robert Mitchum or Paul Newman movie festival. No strippers, clubs, or general debauchery (though a bottle of Midleton Very Rare or Glenmorangie Quarter Century will die a soldier’s death at some point).
Stranger
The garter is the men. Women catch the bouquet.
Or the murdered bundle of oppressed, genetically modified botanical sex parts, whichever.
One of the most important things would be to NEVER EVER pick up one of the eight billion different bridal magazines, which are mostly just propaganda on how to throw the most expensive, cookie-cutter and anti-feminist wedding possible. Same goes for any of those wedding shows on cable tv.
Curiously, if one takes a very literalist interpretation of the whole bouquet-tossing thing, she’s throwing to her friends the symbol of her husband offering his genital organs to the bride. Very strange.
The less said about releasing doves, the better.
Stranger
Meh. My boyfriend and I have discussed marriage and I don’t really see the need to do a self-consciously “feminist” wedding. The meaningless rituals of the wedding don’t have anything to do with how the marriage itself pans out.
If my father were alive, I’d want him to walk me down the aisle. That wouldn’t change the reality that after I’m married I intend to keep my maiden name and will likely be the main breadwinner while my husband takes care of the house and kids.
Gendered clothing is right out. I recommend unisex togas. Even nudity is loaded with phallic symbolism.
I didn’t do the garter thing or the bouquet tossing thing or the cake in the face tossing thing.
Stupid and retarded and EVERYONE HAS DONE IT. IT IS NOT CUTE IN THE SLIGHTEST SENSE. (And boy did it put the Old Lady Brigade into a Righteous Fucking Tizzy when the BRIDE Me got uppity about it all. )
We didn’t do the Dollar Dance, which when I first heard of that ( at a Polish Wedding when I was possibly 20.) I got in trouble for making a Whore Reference and why doesn’t the Groom Prostitute himself out as well*? Shhhhhheeeeesh.
EXCUSE ME FOR GOING ALL MST3K ON THE SAME FARKING RERUN THAT I CAN’T ESCAPE FROM !!! I wasn’t a drinker then. Now, with the first family wedding coming up on the hubby’s side in 12 years very soon, I’m going to make up for lost time spent at the soulless hell that is a FAMILY WEDDING. I’m thinking of having my friends crash the party.
I had no idea I was a feminist. I just thought it was all RETARDED with capital letters and stuff.
*Fifteen years later, one of THOSE PEOPLE who gave me a dirty look at my caustic stink eye at some centuries old tradition later agreed with me. It’s Prostitution. Tax and Wet Spot Free.
Fight some ignorance here- why is the cake smashing sexist? I’ve always seen it end up with cake in both the bride’s face and the groom’s. It seemed like a harmless little playful thing. Why are we opposed?
Eh, a drunken bachelorette party with male stippers pretty much cancels thatever the men do.
My mother wasn’t given away at her 2nd wedding. My father and her both walked down the aisle together.
Yes, smashing food into the face of one’s spouse is the epitome of respect, isn’t it. Well, perhaps for orangutans, anyway.
Stranger
We didn’t do it and didn’t want to do it, but it comes across to me as playful rather than disrespectful, sort of a jester’s moment at the fancy event, a way to take the guests of honor down a peg in a silly, loving way.
That’s all well and good if that’s how both people participating feel about it. I’ve seen some cute playful smushing. I’ve also seen smushing that was frankly hateful and intentionally humiliating. Rightly or wrongly, some women place a great deal of value on their wedding day being one in which they get to feel the most pretty & perfect they ever have. They spend a great deal of money so their hair, makeup etc, looks just right. If the husband puts more weight on “giving the crowd a laugh” and “taking his wife down a peg” than he does to her feelings about said activity… well… there are problems.
That’s an argument for it being obnoxious or stupid; not for it being sexist.
I agree, it’s just obnoxious, not sexist. However, if one wants to have a “non-oppressive wedding” one of the hallmarks of that is that everyone would treat each other with loving respect. Thus, there would be no unwilling smashees of either gender.
Mostly it just ends up making a mess-you’re all dressed up, and the last thing you want is cake all over your dress/suit (especially if the latter is a rental!)
You’re better off saving it for a party. (My aunt and uncle had a JP marriage, so we had a picnic for them at my grandparents-strictly shorts/tees/sneakers affair. My uncle probably had to use a comb and shampoo to get all the icing out of his mustache)
Walking down the aisle-BOTH of my grandparents walked my aunts down the aisle when they were married. And every wedding I’ve been to both the MOH and BM made toasts.
As for garters and bouquets-probably the best wedding I went to was the one where my nine year old cousin caught the garter. (I was thirteen at the time. God, we were caused a LOT of trouble that time)
That’s not feminism. That’s just good musical taste.