That’s the name of a blog I just started reading. (HT: Get Rich Slowly) No, I’m not getting married again. But the “wedding industrial complex” has bothered me for years, and I’ve seen the ideal of the perfect wedding get in the way of what it seemed the couple (or at least one half the couple) really wanted. How can it be that weddings — which are so frequently pitched as expressing the couple’s personality — look so much alike, distinguished by the thinnest design decisions? The most memorable weddings I officiated — some very simple, others complex and expensive, a few quite quirky — all had evidence that the couple had realistic expectations of what the celebrations entailed, and — I imagine — a well-considered budget or plan.
A good way to begin married life, I think.
When I was serving a very rural UU church, I officiated a wedding for a Seventh Day Adventist couple. Together we designed a simple service. There was no music. There were some Bible readings and some secular poetry. We had a blessing of rings, and their exchange of vows. The flowers came from family members’ gardens. There were some memmorial candles lit in memmory of grandparents who had died, and who were being missed on this special occassion. Our chapel could only seat about 80. There were about 50 guests.
Afterwards there was cake and a vegetarian meal in our church’s basement dining hall. Everybody had a great time, including the couple. With the smaller group, the couple were able to do more sociallizing with all the guests. The bride found this all less stressful than her older brother’s big wedding a few years before. And the couple told me that the money they saved by having a simple wedding, gave them additional financial freedom for their honeymoon and for furnishing their first shared apartment.
I can’t agree more; I have always found the idea of spending a ton of money to solidify and celebrate a couple’s commitment to be strange and unnecessary. The focus should be on celebrating love and family/friends, not living out a royalty fantasy.