My Twisted Views on Weddings

Because I wasn't surrounded with too many successful marriages when I was growing up, I've always been a little cynical about weddings. Although that doesn't stop my eyes from welling up at weddings when it gets to the part the ministor reads "... till death do us apart".

Nevertheless I do know that majority of marriages in this country don't exactly end at 'when death do us apart'.

Being in the wedding business gives me opportunities to interact with a lot of brides-to-be. I've had many first-hand experience with how (over?) seriously people (mostly women) lay out their wedding plannings - it's not just how much they're willing to spend on the event, but also how nervous and testy they often times easily become. (I believe the word is 'Bridzilla'.)

I have to admit the whole concept of wedding kind of rubs me the wrong way from its very first step of formation - the proposal.

I don't understand why even to this day, women still need to be 'proposed to' as if they were merchandise on the market waiting for buyers. Girls get ecstatic when proposed to - 'yah, he finally proposed!' The passiveness in this matter doesn't sit well with me. Getting married should be a mutual agreement between two people that are on the same page - why should the guy always have more control in this matter? Why do women want to make themselves look so helpless on this? If you want to get married, speak up, instead of crying over he is still not proposing.

And why the rings? It's probably one of the best, if not THE best, successful marketing phenomenon in the history of marketing. "diamonds are women's best friends." It's so successfully marketed that people no longer even think about it because it's sunk in so deeply to be part of marriage. Women compare their rings' stone sizes and scream in awe at each other's rings.

Setting aside the tradition and brain wash, what do I do with a diamond ring? Sure, it reflects some nice light and decorates my finger. But if I'm not a jewelry person to start with, why do I want a ring? 'Diamond is forever.' What does it mean? Because marriage most of the time certainly isn't. And the truth is that those diamonds probably came from a remote mine in Africa with a forbidding working environment for the poor miners if not child labor. Therefore I don't know how I feel about hearing 'Let these rings be the symbol of your marriage.' I certainly don't want that to be the symbol of MY marriage. The symbol of marriage in my eyes should be two hands held together in sickness; the symbol of marriage in my eyes should be two pairs of wrinkly eyes - when youth and physical beauty are no longer with us, the eyes that still gaze at each other in companionship and understanding.

I jokingly said to a friend the other day that I thought wedding should be held at the end of the marriage instead of the beginning. When a couple is very old, having been together for fifty years, that's when they should have a wedding - because it's a true celebration. Because the couple has really stuck with each other for better or worse and for poor or rich. A vow is too easily broken these days to be a vow, so why not celebrate a conclusion, rather than a promise that was to be broken more often than not?

On a different note, what is even harder for me to understand about wedding is the banquet in Chinese tradition. Chinese seem to have adopted feast for every occasion in case you haven't noticed. Birth in the family - you get hundreds of people together to feast; death in the family - you feast; marriage - it goes without saying, you feast! (When I was growing up, the only time I actually got to see all my cousins and relatives that we never talked to were at family funerals or weddings.)

My good friend's boyfriend proposed to her recently. This evening, his parents invited us close friends of the couple to a very nice Chinese restaurant for an extremely pricey seafood banquet. We went, we ate, and we thanked the friends' parents, and we left. On the way home, I couldn't help feeling kind of guilty because I don't know what we did as friends to deserve to be fed like that. I would've been just as happy for the couple and congratulatory. While the nice gesture of the parents were well received, I can't stop thinking about the obsession of banquets in the Chinese tradition.

It's not that I dread having to feed shark fin soup to guests at my wedding if I were to get married. It's just that I don't think it makes any sense for everyone to eat so much seafood just because I decide to be with someone for the rest of my life. At the banquet, all people ever seem to talk about anyways were what the next dish might be and if there were going to be sea cucumber.

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From Craig's list - http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/nyc/65200855.html
This one cracked me up

Wedding Cake

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Reply to: anon-65200855@craigslist.org
Date: Wed Mar 23 20:12:10 2005


So, first of all, congratulations to my good friends who got married last weekend. Congratulations, “mazel tov,” good luck. It was great and I hope you guys are happy forever. That said, I couldn’t help but look around at your wedding and think, “Wow. I don’t want any of this.” But don’t think that your wedding specifically turned me off to weddings. No, we are all now in our late twenties and wedding invitations appear in the mail with almost the same frequency that delivery guys slip take-out menus under my door. And now, having attended and been in a few weddings, I can’t help but think “I don’t want any of it.”

I don’t want a country club or a church. I don’t want a hotel ballroom or a big white tent. I don’t want a priest or a rabbi. I don’t want 200 people there who I don’t even know. I don’t want numbered tables. I don’t want to put all of my random “single” friends at one table in the corner of the room, making them feel even more alienated than they already are at a stereotypically “coupled” event. I don’t want bridesmaid drama. I don’t want all of my bridesmaids wearing the same ugly color and the same ugly dress and hating their shoes so much that they curse me behind my back. I don’t think I even want bridesmaids. I don’t want anyone to sign a guestbook where they have to come up with some spontaneous wisdom about love and happiness. I don’t want cute little party favors with the bride’s and groom’s names scripted in gold, proclaiming “our special day.” I don’t want people to figure out their seating arrangements by picking up their party favors, which are also wrapped in pink chiffon. I don’t want a big white dress. I don’t want to have to ask friends and cousins whom I see maybe once a year if their 5-year-old son/daughter whom I don’t even really like can be my ring bearer/flower girl. I don’t want guys in blue shirts and khaki pants measuring each others’ dicks with the phrase, “So, what do you do?” I don’t want bored out of their mind cater waiters and bartenders, who hate weddings in a way that even I will never understand. I don’t want “cocktail hour” and passed hors d’oeuvres and most people only caring about getting buzzed before the open bar ends. I don’t want to be registered at Crate&Barrel. I don’t want my friends finding that all the cheaper items on my registry are gone and that, like, five of them have to go in on a set of overpriced knives. I don’t think I want a registry at all. I don’t want to have to kiss all of my mother’s friends on the cheek, or, even worse, all of my future mother-in-law’s friends. I don’t want a color “scheme.” I don’t want a creepy DJ or a weird band that does a cover of YMCA. And I don’t want the place turning the lights up at 10:30 telling us it’s time to leave.

But I do want cake.