| Wedding Ceremony | Wedding
Traditions |

The
minute you announce you are engaged everyone,
friends, loved ones, wedding professionals, and even
slight acquaintances will start bombarding you with
"information" about what I call the
dirty dozen
wedding "rules". Some of these so-called rules
make no sense at all in 2020, some are so laced with
outdated superstition that you'll wonder if you've
wandered into some sort of cult, and some are so
bizarre that you can't believe your ears. Gender
inequality/dominance and gender role stereotypes are
well and truly embedded in all of them. And one way
or another they all have something to do with sex
(disguised as fertility) or with sympathetic magic,
or with both of those things.
Let's break it down. A wedding ceremony is,
simultaneously, a public commitment of love, an
formal intention that changes your legal status, and
a celebration shared with friends and loved ones. As
such, it is a personal occasion, but a personal
occasion that lays a critical foundation for your
future. There are no "rules" (other than minimal
legal requirements). What there is, is tradition. In
other words, someone did something some time ago
which others thought was a good idea so they
repeated it and others also repeated it until it
became so woven into the fabric of weddings that is
has become tyranny. These traditions have been
handed down from mediaeval social and relationship
conventions, solidified by the church, from
generations of society weddings that imitate Queen
Victoria's wedding,and from more recently invented
rituals.
Same sex couples have already ditched many of these
tyrannical traditions. And the sky did not fall in.
In fact, weddings improved out of sight, becoming
more fun, and more authentic to the couple. Dare to
be yourselves. Dare to say
"We don't" so
that you have a wedding that you feel comfortable
with, a wedding that everyone present will remember
in a good way.
Here are my top picks for "rules" to kick to the
curb.
Not seeing one another
before the wedding
I get the appeal of the big reveal. It is the stuff
of reality shows, and is part of Christmas and
Birthdays, and surprises in general. But it also
springs from the practical concern that, should the
groom see the bride before they met at the altar
(turning up being sufficient in mediaeval times to
be classified as consent), he might head for the
hills. Over the years, so that it keeps making some
sort of sense, that has morphed into a belief that
if the groom sees wedding dress before the wedding,
or the bride herself on the day, the marriage won't
last. Kick that one to the curb and have a relaxed
breakfast together before getting ready. Sure,
practicalities could mean you need to spend time
apart getting ready, but why not meet up for a few
minutes before the ceremony starts, aka First Look.
Makes for great photos as well as the best
nerve-settling mechanism possible.
Something old, new,
borrowed, blue
A relatively new invention by the Victorians
(English historical era, not the Aussie state, the
rhyme might appeal, but it reflects a very sexist
view of responsibility for the success of the
marriage. It is the bride who gets to carry all of
those things. If two guys marrying can dispense with
it (and they do), with no discernible negative
effects, so can you. Four less things to have to
decide about, stress over, and tick off your very
long list. Winning!
White dress
All that nonsense about white and purity and virgin
brides is a late invention (Victorians were obsessed
with sex and virginity). Queen Victoria wore white
because she could afford it. At the time, most
brides wore their best dresses which were not white
because skirts dragging on the ground couldn't be
kept clean, so only the very rich could afford an
elaborate white dress that they woul only wear once.
And, as being engaged was regarded to be a licence
for hanky-panky, a very large proportion of brides
were not virgins, though they would have been at
pains to keep everyone thinking they were. If
wearing an ostentatiously impractical white dress
that you'll likely never wear again is your thing,
go for it, and enjoy every moment. If red rocks your
boat, go for it. And leave the muttering about
virginity to the prudes.
The huge skirt princess dress has the same
provenance. When Queen Victoria married every woman
wore dresses with huge skirts, numerous petticoats,
a tightly laced corset, and the biggest, longest
knickers you can imagine (with a split in the crotch
to allow the wearer to go to the loo without
undressing).
Veil
While "dress and veil" have come to be almost the
must-have twins of wedding attire, the veil has been
part of weddings for thousands of year. Though in
ancient Rome it was bright orange and was meant to
hide the bride from the gaze of demons with bad
intentions towards her. A veil can be an interesting
photographic prop. It can also be an incredible
nuisance. I have had to stand by and watch while the
wind stole the veil and sent it flying, it just fell
off, or got caught in something and pulled off.
Ouch. Go for a fabulous hair ornament instead.
Matchy matchy bridal
parties
demons
There were both superstitious and practical reasons
for choosing to be flanked at the altar by a group
of people the same gender and age as you. It
confused evil spirits or kidnappers wanted to make
away with the bride when she was surrounded by women
of similar age and looks, and gave the groom a group
of guys willing to battle the same. Children were
added to the mix to ensure fertility. Get rid of the
sexism. Get rid of the ageism. Do your thing.
Surround yourselves with people you love. Have your
Nana and Pop do the flower girl thing.
The big handover
Your're getting married as equals. You decided for
yourselves. So your marriage is highly unlikely to
have organised by your parents for their strategic
advantage with little or no input from you. If
you're female, it is highly unlikely that your whole
life has been focused on "marrying well".
Translation, marrying someone of higher class,
someone with money, someone who is going to be a
good provider. And it has been quite a while since
the only role for women was cooking, cleaning,
breeding, and looking after the house, children, and
husband. It has been quite a while since women had
no independence, either personally or
financially, so it sort of made sense to have
a formal handover of responsibility. Except it
wasn't just responsibility, it was control. Ditch
who
gives this woman in favour of asking both sets
of parents for their support for your marriage.
Separate and surprise vows
It is the stuff of countless sit-coms, and a source
of angst, that whole thing about each of you writing
individual vows and surprising the other on the day.
As if that's not stressful enough, somehow a newish
"tradition", much encouraged by certain elements is
that your vows have to be funny, quirky, and better
than those of any of your friends. Talk about
pressure! But hang on. These are the promises you
are going to make about how you are going to behave
to one another during your marriage. Get rid of the
stress. Negotiate your promises. Work on them
together. That's what the relationship experts
advise. Adults discuss and negotiate relationships.
Rings
Double ring ceremonies are a relatively new
invention. Men wearing wedding rings were not a
thing in the English-speaking world until some
bright propagandist in World War II came up with
idea of putting a wedding ring on all the guys
depicted in recruiting posters to send a strong
subliminal message. Though a ring has been long
recognised as a token of love, at least as far back
as Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, this was as well
as, rather than instead of its symbolism as a stamp
of ownership of the bride by the groom. Putting a
wedding ring on a woman's finger, and still is, a
powerful "sold" message. A message reinforced by the
early Christian church that first approved rings as
a sign of commitment to marriage, when, in the 12th
century, Pope Innocent III decreed that that the
groom was required to give the bride a ring as part
of the marriage service during which a bride was
required to promise to obey the groom and to
thereafter, as a wife, submit to her husband.
Hence all the stories of eloping couples getting
married using a brass curtain ring, people still
believing, to this day, that
With this ring, I
thee wed is a legal requirement so they must
have rings, and celebrants carrying cheap substitute
rings in case anyone forgets the rings. Exchange
rings if you want to. Exchange something else if
you'd rather - I've had couples exchange other types
of jewellery and even blinged up flash drives. Or
just skip that part. And if you decide that you will
exchange rings but forget to bring them, you can be
totally relaxed about it. Hint: Read my blog post
OMG We forgot the rings
Permission to kiss
And for the climax of the ceremony ... the
bride has been handed over, the vows have been said,
and you have been pronounced married. And then
someone who knows not very much about you, who has
no authority over you, and therefore no right to
either give or withhold permission
, says You may
kiss your bride (or worse,
the bride).
In the olden days, that was confirmation that as
husband, the groom now has the legal right to "take"
his wife (sex again). Way back when the couple would
then retire for a few minutes privacy and
consummation of the marriage. I always invite my
couples to seal their vows and celebrate their
marriage with their first kiss as a married couple.
In Australia,
consummation
is not a legal requirement.
Throwing things
is
It is rather curious that there are so many
wedding traditions that involve throwing things.
We've long ago dropped the the custom of throwing
shoes at the couple (derived from the older
association of shoes with transfer of property),
but have hung on to the custom of throwing
symbolic somethings at the couple to ensure
fertility and prosperity. Wheat, thrown in Ancient
Greece, has evolved into rice, confetti, and
petals. And there are those other two bizarre
throwing episodes. The bride throwing her bouquet
to all the unmarried women in order to transfer
her luck at getting married to the next potential
bride, the woman catching it being deemed to be
the next to get married, and the groom burrowing
under the bride's dress to grab her garter and
toss it to the guys, in the hope that the lucky
bloke who catches it will be the next to get laid.
Yes, that's the real tradition, not the cleaned up
version we have nowadays.
All that nonsense with the
cake
Way back when, barley wheat cakes were broken over
the bride's head to ensure her fertility (and to
make sure she understood male dominance). Crumbs
would fall and the guests would rush in to scoop up
crumbs to ensure their own good fortune and
fertility. Eventually that morphed into a fancy
decorated cake that the couple cut, bride's hand on
the knife, groom's hand on top of hers. And it was a
fruit cake with Royal Icing. Icing sugar mixed with
egg white that piped nicely but set like a rock. It
took considerably force to break that sucker open.
And it doesn't take a dirty mind to work out the
symbolism of all that. Or why unmarried female
guests would putting a slice of that cake under
their pillow so that the identity of their future
husband would be revealed in a dream.
Cakes have become lighter, and icing much easier to
slice through, and we've imported the American
custom of feeding one another a bit of cake,
purported to symbolise the couple's commitment to
provide for one another. But that symbolism has been
lost in the newish "tradition" of smearing or
smashing cake into one another's face. Not a good
look. No one is quite sure where that started but we
do have a reference in Curious Customs, a book by
Tad Tuleja, published in 1987 that describes the
cake smash as
"four-step comedic ritual that
sustains masculine prerogatives in the very act of
supposedly subverting them." Tujela is
an anthropologist, so his detailed description is
well-researched, worth quoting, and quite
confronting:
Until early in this century [the
20th] the bride cut the bride herself
because of the belief ... that "if
anyone else cuts into the cake first, the
bride's happiness and prosperity are cut into".
Now, in the first step of the comedy, the
groom helps direct the bride's hand - a symbolic
demonstration of male control that was
unnecessary in the days of more tractable women.
She accepts this gesture and, as a further proof
of submissiveness, performs the second step of
the ritual, offering him the first bite of cake,
the gustatory equivalent of her body, which he
will have the right to partake of later. In the
third step, the master-servant relationship is
temporarily upset as the bride mischievously
pushes the cake into her new husband's face ...
Significantly, this act of revolt is perfromed
in a childish fashion, and the groom is able to
endure it without losing face because it
ironically demonstrates his superiority. His
bride is an imp needing supervision. That the
bride herself accepts this view of things is
demonstrated in the ritual's final step, in
which she wipes the goo apologetically from his
face. This brings the play back to the
beginning, as she is once again obedient to his
wiser judgment.
First Dance
Blame Queen Victoria, and the aristocracy in
general. When people threw lavish balls, the ball
was always opened by the guest of honour (generally
the highest status person present) taking to the
dance floor with someone they've chosen to honour,
while everyone else stands around watching in
reverent awe. When the ball was part of a wedding
celebration the honour of opening the ball would be
ceded to the marrying couple. And then everyone else
joined in. Learning the steps of complicated dances
well before they were launched into society was part
of every upper crust boy and girl's education.
Working and middle class teenagers and young adults
would go to public dance halls to meet and to dance,
learning on the job, as it were. To keep this
"tradition" going now takes special lessons,
choreography, and being on show. If that's not you,
don't. In 2020 you can get away with blaming
COVID-19 precautions if you feel you need an excuse.
Thanks for reading!