They could always toast weinies over a bra burning pyre.
And slightly off topic…what the hell is it about Paradise by the Dashboard Lights that makes it reception fodder anyway? Is it the irony that it’s one of the most unromantic songs ever made?
FWIW, my father’s take on the cake smashing thing. BTW, he was a minister until he retired, and did thousands of weddings and conducted a lot of marriage counceling. One trend he noticed at many a troubled marriage is the bride traced her first " trouble" spot in the marriage when the groom smashed the cake in her face.
This is the advice I give my newly-engaged friends. As a bride, avoid the bridal mags. As a mother, avoid the parenting mags. They just exist to sell you crap.
Our wedding was fairly traditional, but I didn’t find it “oppressive” or “patriarchal.” :rolleyes: My dad walked me down the aisle, but he didn’t give me away. We sent out the invites, not my folks. There was no garter or cake-smashing, but that was for reasons of taste, not feminism.
Seriously, I’ll man the barricades when it comes to equal pay for equal work and the like, but wearing a white dress at one’s wedding hardly makes one Phyllis Schlafly.
Yeah, I’m inclined to vote that the best way to plan a non-opressive feminist wedding is to ignore the bulk of bride magazines, but not go out of one’s way to eliminate anything which gives you pleasure but might somewhere, sometime have been a symbol of repression for women.
And AND you cannot dance to it at all. Gimme the Chicken Dance!*
After Titanic, EVERY wedding couple for months/years/centuries seemed to have " My Heart Will Go On." song as THEIR VERY SPECIAL WEDDING SONG!
**Every night in my dreams
I see you. I feel you.
That is how I know you go on.
**
Ummmmm, singing about someone who IS ALREADY DEAD…to a beat that zombies couldn’t even dance too. HOW ROMANTIC!!!1111!!!
And Now For Something About The Wedding Cake Feeding
It isn’t very clear why the Feeding of the Cake is de Rigeur
I think your father was on to something. Smashing cake into the face of your new wife/husband is a passive/aggressive " Take that, bitch", in my eyes.
Ministers retire? I didn’t think that was possible.
I highly doubt a true feminist would attend a bachelorette party with strippers.
Have a lesbian wedding. 
Not long after our neice was born, I was at my SIL’s for some reason* and noted the neat stack of Martha Stewart Wedding Magazines on a shelf. ( Everything is precise and neat in my SIL’s anal retentive house.) She had been married , what…four years by this time, so recent issues of these mags were a bit confusing. So, I asked.
“I’m saving them for Emi’s wedding.”
Emi was still pooping mustardy poop. My head, as you can imagine, nearly imploded at the clear cut issues this six worded sentance meant. I could write a manifesto on it, and at one time I nearly did,but she is not worth it.
“You realize that by the time she is of marriageable age, that these magazines will be hopeless outdated and look to her what our mother’s taste in clothing in the 70’s looked to us.”
“Ooooh, noooo, not at all…” How could I, who shops at the Salvation Army and hasn’t committed to a color scheme in my house that I’d lived in for 5 or 6 years by this point, ever compare the Avocado greens and mustard gold’s of the 70’s, to the Supreme Martha Stewart and all her Anal Retentivenessness? For SHAME!
Realizing I am dealing with the thickest person on the planet, I just went for the A-bomb, because peppering a hormonally challeged, exhausted new mother with verbal buckshot is just what I would do ( before Prozac took away all the stupid people and replaced with The Amusing Parade of Retards.) “What if your daughter turns out to be a lesbian? There go all your chances of a Nice, Perfect Wedding!!!1!!!” Yeah, I went there.
“That won’t happen.” (They are evangelical. Pray to Jesus to save you from the Homo Menace.)
My world. Welcome to it.
And here you have a clear cut example of Some Kind of Something AIN’T RIGHT.
And I have to celebrate every birthday party, every holiday, Alot of football games, Her Perfect Daughter’s Churchy spectacles, and they come to My fucking funerals. Can’t I even get one event without Them. Even my brothers’ funerals’? I think I got the apostrophe’s right on that.
And I have to buy presents for four children of a woman that I lost respect for years ago. I’m about to stroke out here, people.
If I could go back in time, I would go back to the day my Future Husband introduced me to his sister.
And I would Punch her in the nose.
It would just save me 20+ years of this NONSENSE.
*I stopped voluntarily going over to their house, three houses from ours, years ago. Their daughter, the most perfect DAUGHTER EVER, will be 10 next month.
/Rant
So, like, I’m all pro-equality and everything, but after having been married for 20 years, I can say that the marriage ceremony has had absolutely nothing to do with the philosophy of my life now. The fact that we were married in Trinity Episcopal church and walked to the reception in the Georgian Room where we engaged in all sorts of Patriarchal Customs has no bearing on how I have raised my children, pursued a career or built a philosophy of life. There have been many things I’ve said and done since that say more about my values than my wedding.
So go ahead and make a bold statement at your wedding if you wish. If you want it to be real, then it has to be reflected 20 years later as strongly as it was presented on that day. Otherwise it is a theme, sometimes incongruous, that is tied to one of many milestones in your life, and one that fades over time.
The most un-patriarchal weddings I’ve seen are those where the ceremony and reception reflect the relationship and the personalities of two people who contribute to it. They have chosen a balance between the familiar that most people can relate to with what they value as a unique couple. They have successfully balanced formal tradition with celebration without making anyone think they have to do or say something specific.
Vlad/Igor
The “no true feminist” theory? I know a lot of women who are self described feminists, and have read a lot of feminist writing - some of it by women themselves in the sex industry.
I dunno? Castarate the groom? Make all the men wear frilly dresses. Put up a picture of Andrea Dworkin by the alter?
A feminist wedding is about as possible as a humble Frenchman!
If they want true Non-Oppressive Wedding, they need to actually Go Green and Do Fair Trade and Conflict Free items.
Yep. My wedding was as non-oppressive to all genders as it could be, but it wasn’t because I was trying for a feminist wedding. It was because I was a feminist planning my own wedding, and I refused to get bogged down in details of what I “had to” do.
My father was there, but he didn’t give me away. He, along with all the other men and older boys (self-identified; most of them had penises, but not all), hung out with my groom before the service. All the women and the small children were with me, in a field. They were each asked to pick one example of herbivorous sexual organs and give them to me with a piece of advice or well-wishing. Those wildflowers became my bouquet. When that was done, all the women walked with me, including my (step)mother and my flower girl, who was a 25 year old man in a white gown and flower crown. I was preceded by the flower “girl” tossing petals and a couple of musicians with drums and pipes, but I walked up to the altar alone, as the women and children filed in after me.
There were 10 officiants, 5 men and 5 women, all married couples. Yes, it was a little heterocentrist, but I didn’t have any good gay friends who were married at the time, and I wanted married couples to perform the wedding.
So there was no absence of gender division in my wedding, but it didn’t feel even slightly oppressive.
“Yes, indeed, the silkworms were fairly compensated for their labors and the chicken is all free range. Oh, the diamonds? I think they were smuggled out of Uganda in someone’s ass.”
Stranger
I will never understand the sort of person who wrote the article linked to in the OP.
A father wants to pay for part of the party for his daughter’s wedding, and she somehow feels guilty for not turning him down because it’s patriarchal and oppressive? Give me a break.
“Sorry daddy, anything that you might want to do for me out of love or duty is tainted by the fact that you are a man and I’m a woman, and so as a true feminist I must reject anything you want to do for me as being based in the inequity of our gender roles in a male-dominated society. Suck it.”
I can’t think of any good reason why you would begin a relationship with someone by humiliating them in public. Should the groom bring the naked sex tape of the bride? Should the best man pants the groom?
There simply must be ways to be cute, playful and loving without the involuntary public humilation.
Check out offbeatbride.com - it’s a blog with awesome examples of weddings with whatever features you might like in the way of nontraditional attire, feminist values, ethical sourcing, etc.
Also kvetch.indiebride.com.
Message boards for the bride fighting the “WIC” AKA Wedding-Industrial Complex.
Thanks- I was laughing so hard I couldn’t even repeat that to my husband- I had to take the laptop upstairs and show it to him. 
And WhyNot, I think your ceremony rocked.