Weddings: For the Couple or the Community?
Date Posted: April 9th, 2010
This post is a little bit off topic from what I’ve been writing about recently, but that’s because Aaron and I have been in wedding planning mode for the past few weeks and I’ve had weddings on the mind. (The big day is June 6th!) So bear with me and my rambling about weddings. 
On The Simple Dollar the other day Trent talked about how using the average price for a weddings in the US or in your city as a gauge for your own wedding is a bad idea. It makes you think you have to spend that much because if you don’t you’re being cheap. You don’t care about your guests or something. Better to focus on the elements that are important to you and not get swayed by the people saying you must have six servers catering your buffet or it’s too difficult to sew your own dress. He also said the following.
If you spend all of your time comparing the major things in your life to others based on their cost or their perceived value, you’re saying that what others want is more important to you than what you want. Never let any important choice in your life be governed by what others want.
This is your life. Live it the way you want. Ignore what everyone else says you must have and says you must spend on it. This is about you, not them.
Our wedding certainly echoes this idea, what with the Tudor theme, vegan dinner, and non-religious ceremony, but I wonder… Are weddings really supposed to be about inflicting the beliefs of the couple on the guests? I don’t know.
At one point weddings were more about the community accepting a new family unit than about the family unit itself. The couple usually had the same background too, so in a sense it was about them too… but push come to shove it was still more about the community.
These days it’s common for couples to come from different backgrounds. If they’d like a truly traditional wedding then one person has to put aside their own heritage in favor of the other. (Not usually preferable.) The other option is to mix and match traditions. When couples mix and match traditions the wedding is transformed from this set in tone ritual to a reflection of who they are. Most of us prefer this route.
I feel like something gets lost with the non-traditional wedding, though. You aren’t tapping into a long history of tradition. You aren’t following the rights and rituals of a community. You’re just making stuff up.
But then there are plenty of people who merely “go through the motions” too. Ritual doesn’t necessarily imply meaning. It’s totally dependent on the individual. I like old traditions. I like that history, so such things have a lot of meaning for me. I know that isn’t the case for everyone.
And, just because it’s new and “made up” doesn’t mean ye modern wedding can’t be meaningful. In fact it’s hard for it not to be meaningful since you have to go through the effort of coming up with everything! It’s just a different kind of meaning. It’s more in the moment. It’s about you and your spouse-to-be showing your community who you are and that you’re committed to each other. But it’s more about you.
So far all of the weddings I’ve been to have been for people I didn’t really know very well. Of those the more personal ones have been my favorites because I got to learn a little bit about the couple. I got to see why they’re together. I got to learn a little bit about their personality and what’s important to them. (Or not important.) With the generic wedding, there’s not a whole lot to remember….
