I think the wedding industry is sick, but I also think it's changing.

More and more couples are choosing "destination weddings" or elopements and forgoing many of these so-called traditional things.

More and more women are keeping their last names.

More and more couples are changing marriage to suit their needs rather than changing themselves to suit marriage.

Don't get me wrong, I think choosing not to get married is a great choice and I wish more people would choose it. I think too many people get married who shouldn't.

I'm a white/Russian woman in the process of planning "my big fat Indian wedding" to my Indian-born, American-raised fiance. We're having a civil ceremony and 2 parties over the course of 2 days as a compromise between me wanting a small wedding and him wanting a large traditional Indian party. His parents are currently in the process of whittling down their guest list from 650 people to the 350 we can actually afford (we are paying for the wedding ourselves). Do I want to spend an entire day greeting 350 people I've never met and my fiance barely knows? Of course not. But these events are rooted in centuries of "it takes a village" culture that only adapts so far even if the family has lived in the U.S. longer than in India. Just as I expect my fiance to at least try and understand why I want my 100-person, back-of-a-restaurant Russian wedding, he has the right to expect me to understand his desire to invite everyone he's met since he was in diapers. It's showmanship, it's opulence, it's a financial struggle, but it's culture, and who are we to say that there's something wrong with it?

Indian weddings are the most interspersed with soap opera- life ever actually gets. As someone who is having her rather lean Indian wedding in 20 days, I just have done away with everything except the main ceremony. Only friends and family. No extra frills and I even talked them out of the "kanyadaan"( bride giving) part of the ceremony...- it was rather difficult, but I stuck to my guns. It has now become a lets all get together and have fun affair. I even told my mother and in-laws that we would elope if more than a particular amount of money was spent.... And it has worked so far, but wonder why plain common sense takes a flight when such "community" events take place!!!

Actually I found that grossly opulent weddings, with their tasteless display of wealth become good examples of "what not to do"!!

By the way I found that taste and even good grammar rarely enters in desi weddings( I invite you for the marriage of our son.... ) Just added on!!!

NOT that a large number of people don't lose their minds when planning a wedding,

NOT that the "wedding industrial complex" is not a real and scary thing,

NOT that weddings haven't trended towards being displays of cash instead of love,

NOT that there aren't significant feminist issues with "traditional" weddings,

And DEFINITELY NOT that asking for cash instead of gifts isn't wildly tacky (sorry, but it is, y'all),

But if my friends eschewed going to my wedding because they had issues with the institution of marriage, or even worse the state of the wedding industry, I would be totally heartbroken. To me this kind of heads back to the post about trusting women - yeah, there are rampant issues in the wedding industry and with traditional marriage, but why can't you trust me, your theoretical friend, to not subscribe to them and instead to get the point and make it the focus of the wedding? I'd rather have people show up sans gifts in a pair of jeans than not be able to have them around me as I commemorate my choice to spend my life with my husband. To completely write off marriage as a concept - which you may not actually be doing, but it sure sounds like it - is to ignore the "feminism is about choice" concept, which makes no sense.

Something about this just hit me the wrong way. There are plenty of valid complaints about the wedding industry, but that's a separate issue from weddings IN GENERAL being problematic. If I could throw a non-stop party each day, every day to tell the planet about how great I think my boyfriend is, I would, but I think eventually people would get bored of it. So I'm taking my chance to round up my family and friends and have a party to celebrate how neat my boyfriend and I think each other are, and that even if the cats succeed in destroying the house, we'll stick together, and it might cost $500, it might cost $500k, why does it matter if that's what we CHOOSE to do?

“Some weddings even get straight to the point and ask that you don't bring boxed gifts, just a check.�
I actually wished that I could do that. I don’t really need pots and pans and things and people are gonna spend the money anyways so they might as well help us offset the cost of the reception rather than buying things that take up space and we don’t need.

I don't know, I can't really speak for South Asian weddings, but I think in general, the backlash against big weddings is getting kind of knee jerk, which misses the point. Having a large wedding doesn't automatically mean the bridal couple are showy, self-involved divas any more than a small backyard wedding means you're poor or ashamed about the whole thing.

We only had about 90 people at our wedding, but we also had about 4 days worth of wedding related events. I abhor the marriage industrial complex, and we avoided tradition unless it happened to coincide with what we wanted, and kept the price down by doing a lot of stuff ourselves. The reason we had a sort marriage festival was that since we were from different parts of the country, this was likely the only time everyone was going to get together. His family flew in from one state, and our mutual friends from another, so we wanted to actually see and interact with people that had come quite far, rather than just interact with them in passing in one afternoon.

I strongly disagree with corporate and cultural standards designed to tell you that if you're not in debt at the end, it's not real love. However, I'm almost equally vitriolic towards the response of slamming people whose nuptials aren't sufficiently modest and restrained. Can't we all just encourage people that wanted to get married to do so in their own way apart from the expectations of others?

I am in the midst of planning my own wedding so I was glad to read something about weddings here. I am not a woman of color, we're having a "regular" wedding, but so many of the things you described here are true no matter your culture or what kind of wedding you're having. My fiance and I are both really struggling with the whole wedding industrial complex and trying to navigate planning this without going completely insane. It's really hard to balance family wishes and wants with your own. The best advice I've heard so far is that planning a wedding is basically trying to make the least amount of people mad at you! (Sad but true.) I'm reading a great book to keep my sanity called "The Meaning of Wife". I also have an old book from one of my Women's Studies classes in college called "White Weddings" which really puts things into perspective. Would you Feministing gals be willing to dig up anything else about weddings? I'm sure a lot of us would be very interested!

On another note, I agree with what Long Ears said. I too would be heartbroken if my friend decided not to come to my wedding. We are inviting people to share our happiness and celebrate US, not the wedding itself. Of course, if cost/traveling is prohibitive or you aren't that close to the person, different story. But I would be very disappointed if someone I cared about missed my wedding simply because they themselves don't want to get married. I want my friends there to share the day and be a part of it.

I can only comment on my experiences at weddings of family and friends as a lesbian who is not interested in getting married. I love my girlfriend enough to be with her forever, but both of us have issue with the institution of marriage enough to not want to "get married" the best that any lesbian couple could.

That being said - my little sister got married last year. She was the one everyone had pegged for the fairy-tale wedding. But she and her husband got together at the courthouse with immediate family and got hitched. A month later there was a reception planned - which was more like a family reunion, BBQ, outside at the family pond. It was so nice and between everyone less than $800 was spent. But no one cared about that - everyone just cared that these two people loved each other and wanted to be together forever.

I have also attended a "blue jean" wedding which seemed casual on the surface. However so many people attended and the food was lavish and there was a band and cake and favor and the facility rental and dress and bridal tent and it just all added up and I'm sure it was expensive.

The whole wedding business is facisinating to me...the money and stress people go through for love. I don't get it...

The fact that there are as many different responses to this post as there are people commenting is indicative of how torn most women are on the subject.

I agree that you have to separate what works for some couples from what works for you; but sometimes that's hard to do. My partner's sister is planning a typical Christian wedding . . she's got the blood diamond to prove commitment, and the pristine white dress made in a Chinese sweatshop to prove virginity. Is it my business to tell her a little about the diamond industry, or the wedding dress industry, or the wedding industry in general?

And coming from her atheist, feminist "sister-in-law-who-will-never-really-marry-her-brother-for-political-reasons," would it mean anything?

No, it wouldn't. She'd pass it off as communist psychobabble.

The question for me is: how do we get people like her to consider not just the frothy dress and the place settings, but the real-world consequences and implications of her "perfect day"? I don't know.

I was once invited to a wedding (just the reception actually, not the service) where the bride and groom requested that people pay direct into their mortgage, and gave their bank details on the invite.

Is that worse than cheques?

This topic got me thinking about my personal beliefs about marriage and weddings and honestly I am not sure how I feel about it. My parents stayed together over the years despite many troubles, and the fact that my mother is completely co-dependent on my father, simply because they had children together but I actually wish they would've divorced - I think they would've been better off - it would've given them a chance, especially my mother, to identify who she really is - not as someone's wife, but as herself. My biggest fear is becoming like her and losing my own identity to an identity of "we."

But I do believe to each their own so do whatever makes you happy!

When I got married to my husband(I'm Irish-Catholic & my husband Jewish, but neither of us practice), we decided it was our wedding. He did not wear a suit. We were married in someone's garden. I wore a sari (because they make me feel like a queen & on my wedding day, that's what I wanted). We invited only family, one witness, & two friends as photographers. We asked for no gifts, only donations to charity if ppl really wanted to spend money (and a lot of people did). So I guess I think that your wedding should be what you want it to be. If you want to wear a kimono, go ahead! But if you're not Japanese, Shinto, or marrying Japanese/Shinto, it'd be weird to have the whole ceremony. But *shrug* if it reflects you & your relationship, I don't see a huge problem with it. What I see a problem with is the commercialization of any kind of ritual or tradition.

Partially, I think big white weddings are one of those rare (if recent) American cultural rituals and some people don't want to give that up. Unless one is very religious it seems to me American culture doesn't offer much in the way of ritual and tradition. There isn't really an industry devoted to coming-of-age rituals. There aren't many Yay Menarche! parties or anything, and I think people can get starved for some sort of acknowledgment for moving through some life stages.

That said, my personal view of the WIC is that it's made up of a bunch of bloodsuckers exploiting the couple who are trying to appease family members, who themselves don't really know WHY they want all that stuff anyway.

My personal experience is pretty mundane. I needed health insurance, so we got married at the courthouse, and now I can go the gynecologist for my chronic issues. And it's entirely f*cked up that 1)I had to get married to afford treatment, and 2)everyone can't do that.

Thw whole wedding topic keeps coming up for me, what with it being "wedding season" and all. First, should I choose to wed my boyfriend of 7 years, it will be after I finish college, so I've got plenty of time to decide/plan. But, I have pretty much already decided what I don't want. My man comes from a nice Greek family, and apparently the "big, fat, Greek wedding" is no stereotype. We attended one in the fall, and I couldn't stop myself from picturing it as a preview for my own possible wedding.
John loves his family and would have no problem going along with the traditions to please his folks, not to mention that we would make bank off of those wealthy relatives, he says.
I can't do it! I can't take part in a wedding that isn't "mine." And I have a lot of decent ideas for a non-sexist wedding, if that is possible.
The other day a girlfriend asked me when I was "getting a ring." I wanted to enlighten the gal, but instead I just threw my hands up and expressed my dissapointment with engagement/weddings/marriage altogether.
Can anyone recommend any good books on alternative weddings? You know, on the off chance that I may choose to get married one day.

Wow, all of these people that would be upset if someone chose not to come to their wedding. If she is a true friend, you would understand her point of view and not be "heartbroken." You are choosing to have wedding and she (I realize this friend is hypothetical) is choosing not to come. As said, feminism all about choices and respecting those choices. You really wouldn't expect her to compromise her ethics and principles just to celebrate your wedding with you, would you? How is that different from someone telling you shouldn't have a wedding?

Chesty, give "people like her" some credit. Most of us are fully aware of the social implications of our weddings and those of us particularly aware try to do everything we can do to minimize them. But most of us are also bound by social pressures and cultural constraints that make it incredibly difficult to be 100% socially responsible, and I am yet to see an example of even the most raging activist meeting all the requirements 100%.

Bear in mind too that the wedding itself is separate from marriage.

I'll probably wear a white dress because my mother and my grandmothers wore white dresses, and I admire their marriages and their lives, and I'll wear my engagement ring because it's a beautiful gift that my boyfriend and I picked out, TOGETHER, and I like having it as a reminder of him. Your stuff has what meaning you afford it - to me the claddaugh ring I wear now and my engagement ring when we get around to it say that we belong to EACH OTHER, not that I'm his property. Our relationship is based in equality, and we both recognize that...it's the same kind of thinking from which came the decision that he wanted my birthstone in his wedding band.

It's also unfair to automatically assume that someone has a blood diamond and a dress made in a sweatshop and all that other stuff. Yeah, these are legit problems, but you have no idea if people have made an effort to make sure they DON'T have conflict diamonds in their rings and that their dress was made, to the very last rhinestone or ruffle, by well-paid, well-treated workers(and your sister is an exception of course because you could find this out, I'm just talking broad scope here). People are aware of these problems and some do actively seek to avoid them.

ShelbyWoo - I wouldn't excoriate her for it, I just would hope that she'd understand I'm not asking her to come witness me selling myself off as some guy's property, I'm asking her to come celebrate a big life event for me. And yeah, I would be sad. Shit happens and all, and lord knows I have friends and family all over the country so shit extraSUPER happens because it may be too expensive for some folks to get here, but what would bug me would be a knee jerk reaction to the very mention of weddings, which is what I read off the tone of the post. It's still her choice but I would be bummed.

Great post Samhita, I have a weird obsession with the WIC and love to read new perspectives. While I agree that weddings and marriage are 2 different topics, I think the point is that, to some people, BOTH are problematic. Therefore it's not as simple for someone to overlook their beliefs on either and just attend the wedding already. I have participated in 2 of my friend's weddings (one of which is coming up next weekend) and I really think I'm done after this. I think it would be fine if there were really respect for all choices wrt life and relationships, but there just isn't. And I can say that I do love to drink champagne and dance around with old friends, which gives weddings a fun aspect. However, if I have to see the blank look of confusion or the knowing smiles of "well you just haven't met the right guy yet" when I tell someone that I won't be getting married I will shoot myself in the face. I'm all for Jaclyn Gellar's suggestion in Here Comes the Bride that we should just throw a party for ourselves when we turn 25 or graduate college or some other such milestone. I'll register myself at Macy's for all the sweet household items I've been eyeing and we can just get together and celebrate ME. Now that would be some equal respect for life choices ;)

"The question for me is: how do we get people like her to consider not just the frothy dress and the place settings, but the real-world consequences and implications of her "perfect day"?"

Wait for the inevitable divorce, then tell her.

There’s been a few discussions of marriage and weddings on the blogs I read lately and I’ve been trying to figure out exactly why I have a problem with the whole “I hate weddings because they are symbols of capitalistic patriarchy� argument.

First off I do agree that the business of weddings has ballooned into a farcical display of opulence. I also believe that many traditional wedding rituals are rife with sexism. However, as an anthropologist, I would like to make an argument for ritual and ceremony in general. There is a very real reason people mark major life transitions with ceremonies – its a way to share with family and friends and community the moments in life that shift individual’s lives.

Funerals matter because they provide a framework for people to acknowledge not only the dead but also the change in their own lives without that person in it. It allows us to assign shared meaning to an event – as constructed by individuals and the community as a whole. People can gather to reaffirm their beliefs about death and the afterlife, giving them a way to process death in the context of a ritual gathering.

Marriages are similar to me in that a couple and the couple’s family and friends all come together to co-create an idea about what it means for those two people to be married. The meaning of marriage can be very different things to different groups and I have always been honored to be part of a ceremony that a good friend feels is important to their own lives. Some of the weddings I’ve been to have been wonderful opportunities to see friends and loved ones I haven’t seen in years. They have, for the most part, been joy filled celebrations of two people’s choice to share life and commit to each other as partners as witnessed by their community. On the flip side, I have of course been to those huge traditional affairs full of bouquet scrambling women and bad DJs but those have always been the exception.

I’ll also defend the whole “give us money� idea. I’ve always felt that the mandatory gift idea is bad, but if there is a tradition of gift giving for a celebration, why not ask for money rather than for things someone doesn’t need? It also makes sense for me that people setting up house together might need money and resources that they can’t afford on their own and that older/more well off members of their community might want to help. If the objection is that non-married people don’t get this help, I’m with you, and I like the idea of an Independence Day party for ourselves where we register.

As an aside, I would have been pretty darn hurt if someone I love and consider a friend didn’t come to my wedding because she doesn’t want to get married herself. Not being able to afford it is one thing, but not coming to my wedding because she doesn’t want to have one herself is, well, selfish I think. Sure, if I was going to have a simpering ritual that was sexist I can see her objection – but I’m her friend, surely she knows I’m going to have an egalitarian ceremony asking friends to celebrate my choice to share my life with someone I obviously care about? It makes sense to me to boycott weddings where there will be objectionable crap, but ALL weddings simply on principle? Does this include commitment ceremonies?

I've been thinking a lot about weddings lately as my bf and I come up on our 3-year anniversary. We plan on getting married, but as I'm not looking forward to planning the wedding I'm reluctant to enter the "engaged" stage (my bf, on the other hand, is extremely excited at the prospect of a wedding. go figure). I totally agree that the WIC is absolutely absurd and I plan to do everything in my power to reject all the so-called traditions associated with it (much to my mother's horror). No white dress, no engagement ring, no bridal party in color-coordinated outfits, no absurdly elaborate showers, no changing my name, limited religiosity, etc. In fact, we're both really excited at the prospect of registering with a charity organization (so those who choose to give money could do so for a good cause) and having an "eco-friendly" wedding (although I acknowledge it probably won't be 100% socially conscious). When we get married, it'll be because we choose to make this commitment to each other, and we want our friends and family to celebrate this event with us.

I totally respect everyone's decision to get married, not to get married, to have a commitment ceremony, whatever. I regret that so many women buy into the WIC and all the associated expectations and expenses that go along with it, since those all seem to strip the event of any emotional significance and instead turn it into a rote ceremony you feel compelled to go through with. But, if a couple chooses to go the "traditional" route because it will make them happy without placing unnecessary stress on their guests, then who am I to say anything?

BTW, if anyone's interested in going with a non-traditional wedding, there's a great site called indiebride.com with some articles and a huge forum for brides and brides-2-be to post about a wide range of topics.

I've had experiences with friends and family refusing to attend rituals and celebrations of my major life transitions for a variety of reasons: because they were estranged from the family, because they were angry with me, because they were "too busy" to travel. I can't say I was heartbroken--I suppose that if I had been younger I might have been. What I mostly was was somewhat irritated and a bit hurt, because I had asked them to come celebrate something that was very important and meaningful to me, and they chose not to. Of course, they have every right to do so, but each time, I do remember it and it does change how I feel about our friendship/familial relationship, that they couldn't set aside family arguments or one evening for something that meant a lot to me. If a close friend told me she wouldn't come to my hypothetical wedding because she had political objections to the institution of marriage or to the wedding industry, I would remember that this was someone who placed their politics ahead of our friendship. I have enough of that in my family, so our friendship would then become more distant. On the other hand, when a close friend can't come to something because of not having the money for travel, that's not a big deal to me; I mean, obviously I'm sad not to have them there, but we just make sure to celebrate next time I'm in their town.

When my daughter got married she read the bridal mags as a joke. One of them had an article about "your prettiest day ever". We milked it through the whole process, laughing our asses off repeatedly.

A wedding that focuses on the couple and their love and their reasons for marrying can be very uplifting. A wedding that is burdened by one oneupmanship and bowing at the alter of the WIC is abominable.

For many, a wedding is not just the joining of two people, it is the joining of two families. Throw out the patriachal connotations (business merger, breeding stock, etc.) and you have what is at its core a very beautiful thing. Commercialism or as my mother and mother in law both call it, "bad taste" are only occassionally incidental to the week long expression of joy at the joining of two families. Please don't bash traditionalists for wanting to share their joy.Oh, and by the way there is absolutely nothing wrong with throwing a party for your girlfriend celebrating her life whether she chooses marriage or not. In fact I highly reccommend it.

And DEFINITELY NOT that asking for cash instead of gifts isn't wildly tacky

Declaring what petty things are and are not appropriate for other people to do for their own celebrations is just another form of control.

Etiquette rules are a bunch of bull and they only exist to keep people in line, to maintain the status-quo, and to keep people from thinking and revolting.

For many, a wedding is not just the joining of two people, it is the joining of two families. Throw out the patriachal connotations (business merger, breeding stock, etc.) and you have what is at its core a very beautiful thing. Commercialism or as my mother and mother in law both call it, "bad taste" are only occassionally incidental to the week long expression of joy at the joining of two families. Please don't bash traditionalists for wanting to share their joy.Oh, and by the way there is absolutely nothing wrong with throwing a party for your girlfriend celebrating her life whether she chooses marriage or not. In fact I highly reccommend it.

as an anthropologist, I would like to make an argument for ritual and ceremony in general.

I had a TON of anxiety over my wedding. I wanted to join my life with my partner, but I wanted to maintain my individuality and feminist ideology and avoid as much tradition as possible. I also always thought weddings were about the couple, not the guests, so I wanted to elope privately. I wanted to create our own path.

My partner, on the other hand, wanted a more "normal" ceremony. He was fine with forgoing almost all of the traditions, but he wanted a big party where we declared our marriage in front of everyone. The public part of it was very important to him.

So we compromised and split up the two events, even made them totally separate days, two weeks apart. The private wedding for me (with only our mothers, my sister, and my little nephew in attendance. No fathers allowed.) And we had the public party for him.

The party was very non-traditional. I wore a pretty dress, not a white wedding gown. We didn't have dancing or bouquet tossing or any of that. It was just a semi-formal lunch with our friends and family. We gave a speech and other people gave speeches, but no gifts were exchanged, no crazy wedding crap.

And afterwards, I was really glad we had the party. There IS something to ritual and ceremony. For one, most people don't fly across the country for just any old party, but they will for a wedding or a funeral. But more importantly, the party gave our friends and family a chance to express their feelings about our marriage and I'm just so glad to have heard the speeches. (I'm tearing up as I think about it.) If we hadn't had a party, we wouldn't have gotten a chance to experience that. Those speeches were wonderful. It was so great hearing my mom and Ed's mom and our friends tell us formally how they really thought we were a fantastic couple and that we'd made excellent choices in each other. I'm very glad we decided to celebrate formally.

That said, I hate weddings and I usually decline invitations to attend. I find most weddings insanely boring, long, expensive, and ugly. So, anyone whose friends aren't attending their weddings, please don't be insulted. It's not you, it's the wedding. Your friend just doesn't share your values. Go out to dinner with them separately later, and celebrate then.

I'd say there is a major problem with the "please give money instead of gifts" idea if your friends and family aren't well-off. A person can keep a sharp eye out and snatch up some great gifts on sale or discount, and thereby give something that's worth more than they spent. But there's no way to hide that you couldn't give much money.

I was basically thinking more along the lines of ShifterCat's comment...leaving money as the only option just does not sit right with me. Obviously there are plenty of people who are okay with it, and that's fine for them, but it just seems really impersonal and tacky to me.

After particiapting in the wedding planning process for my brother, my sister, and several friends, I've started to formulate in my mind what I would want if I for whatever reason I ever find myself getting married. I think it would be great to replace the traditional wedding vows with the the vows from wedding scene of Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon. The looks on everyone's face would be priceless when I promise to not blast my beloved into space.

VTIdealist – two women I know are getting married soon, and I know they were both planning to dress as Princess Leia. Gonna be a great wedding!

I should clarify - I think not going to an event or celebration due to something like anger toward a family member is ridiculous. My post was under the assumption that...oh, who cares, she's hypothetical, kind-of-selfish friend anyway.

Most of us (as stated in the above posts) would put aside any issues to celebrate occasions with our close friends and family, even if we objected; and I'm guessing our friends would too.

My story: I recently married (July 3,2007) my partner of 9 years for financial reasons: his lack of benifits suck. We eloped in the mountains and it was the perfect choice for us. I did not change my name and get a a lot of flack for it. His mother wanted a wedding she could attend and doesn't like that I didn't change my name. My mother asked me if I was sure I wanted to get married and didn't blink on the name change thing.

I agree that the problem with most weddings is that they are to please other people. I say do what makes you and your partner happy. Everyone else will get over it!

Just wanted to comment that I agree with most everything you said. I am married. We spend a total of about $200 on our wedding, got married in our backyard and had about 12 people in attendance. Despite my MIL thinking the wedding wasn't real because it wasn't Christian, it wasn't in a church or a hall and a witch married us, we still got married. The poster before me said it perfectly. We each need to do what makes us happy in our marriages/partnerships/whathaveyou
and everyone else can get bent.

I am wondering what all these "people who don't come to my wedding for political reasons are selfish" people think about gay people, who may skip your wedding because it depresses them they can't get married? This guide (http://www.io.com/~ww