The. Most. Important. Day: "It's My Day!" Part Two

 In August, I wrote a post about my problems with the cultural traditions surrounding the modern wedding, and the traditions of it being "the bride's day" and all that. I discussed the problem with all the focus on one person (the bride) instead of on the partnership of two people.

Last night, I had a bit of a revelation about this. Now, I don't remember exactly how my train of thought got there; I was out at the bar with some friends, one of whom is engaged and was talking about the planning of his wedding. I was thinking, as I so often do, about my plan to skip the whole wedding tradition and just go to city hall with whomever I choose to marry, and throw a big party later for all of our friends. And a thought crossed through my mind (I admit, I had been drinking wine, so the exact thought escapes me) that went something like this: Do I really want the most important day of my life to happen in city hall with just a few witnesses?


That's when I got it. The attitude of "It's My Day," the thinking of a woman needing one day to feel like a princess, to feel like the most important woman in the room, all stems back to the idea that for women, your wedding is supposed to be The. Most. Important. Day. Of. Your. Life. This idea is ingrained into us girls and women by our culture and the people around us.

Well, pardon me, but fuck that! I have had, and will have, a lot of important days in my life. Graduating college? Yeah. Getting promoted from intern to managing editor? Awesome! Night I met my current boyfriend? Pretty good, too.

Of course, a lot of this stems back to a time when a wedding was the most important day of a woman's life, because it meant financial security and status. And while we all love to say we've moved on, these assumptions and beliefs still follow us around. How many movies have we seen where the woman who is "always a bridesmaid but never a bride" is sad and lonely? She may have a great job, she may have great friends and a social life, she may be (probably is) super hot (Hollywood-standards hot, of course) but she is not married, so she must be incomplete and inferior. (This is one thing I liked in the movie Bridesmaids; sure, Annie's lack of a relationship is part of her sadness, but most of it stems from her failings in her career; she's not trying to get married, she's just trying to get her life together.)

And, again, the focus on it being the most important day for a woman, and for a relationship, takes the focus away from the partnership. Recently, my boyfriend pointed out that he thinks the way wedding anniversaries are counted is weird. "Why do they start over at the wedding? Does the relationship before the wedding, the months and years together before that one day, not count anymore?" It's an interesting thought. I do get the wedding anniversary thing; it's the date that you officially started a life together, and made that commitment to stay together and move forward as a pair. But it's interesting to think about, especially when so many relationships blur those lines these days. Some people talk about getting married way before they are officially engaged. Some live together for years before walking down the aisle. Some have children before getting married. The traditional way of counting the "years together" may not fit many relationships anymore. And the wedding may or may not be, or feel like, the most important milestone anymore. I can certainly imagine that after living with someone for months or years, the wedding/marriage may feel more like tying up loose ends and bringing everything together than embarking on a huge new step.

So with all this cultural change and blurring of the lines toward commitment, why is there still such a focus on the bride's day as the biggest day of her life? Is it because we haven't caught up to the changes in women's lives? Is it because the larger culture refuses to accept that some women have more important plans and milestones in their lives than marriage?

What do you think?

"It's My Day!": Weddings and Sexism

I have several problems with the cultural traditions and ideas surrounding weddings. I have a problem, as I've said in a post before, with engagement rings and the expectations of spending a specific, certain amount of money on them. I have a problem with the idea that a wedding has to be perfect (marriage sure as hell isn't going to be perfect; why should the wedding?). And I especially have a problem with the idea that the wedding is the bride's day, no matter what.

This bothers me on several levels. For one, women use the "my day" excuse to lose control, boss people around and stress everyone (themselves included) out. The first year of marriage is stressful. A wedding is stressful. By going into all of this with the belief that "It's my day and it must be perfect," is just adding more stress, plus the inevitability of something failing. Now, I'm not saying that all women turn into bridezillas; of course they don't. But I am saying that with our culture telling us it's OK to expect everyone to fall over backwards for us in order to achieve perfection, we are telling women that bridezilla-like behavior is acceptable when they are getting married.

But the idea that a wedding is the bride's day bothers me even more because it focuses on one person.
Forget for a moment the assumption that a wedding is a fairy tale princess day for every woman. Forget that it's about flowers, decorations, food, a band, and everything else. It is a wedding. At its most basic, it is a ceremony to celebrate a marriage. And a marriage simply can not happen with just a bride. You need a groom (or another bride, or two grooms, etc.). It is about the joining of two people. It's about the start of a journey, the start of a life. The wedding is not the culmination of months of planning, spending, crying, etc.; the wedding is the beginning.

So where is the groom in all of this? Why is it all about the bride? Because she's wearing a pretty dress that she'll never wear again? Because women are supposed to be emotionally excited about marriage and men aren't? In the same way that these cultural assumptions allow women to take on the ridiculous behavior of a bridezilla, they allow men to play the role of uninterested, aloof bachelors counting down the last days of their freedom. Until recently, I thought that the story of a groom showing up still drunk from the bachelor night at the strip club was just a movie plot device; not so! A woman I know recently told me about her wedding and that is exactly what happened! I couldn't believe this was real (and I couldn't believe she still married him, but I didn't say that out loud...). Why is it okay for men to care so little about this ceremony that women are supposed to care so much about (and why must women care so much when men get to care so little)? We, as a society, tell men that weddings and marriage are not something they need to be concerned with; if anything, it's something they have to put up with.

A lot of this ties back into gender assumptions that we have about men and women. We expect women to be faithful to one person; we tend to expect less from men, and therefore simply roll our eyes when men go off to strip clubs or to sleep with someone else before getting married. "Boys will be boys" our culture tells us. Meanwhile, the women are supposed to be dealing with flowers and dresses and cakes; you know, because that's what women love to do, and are good at. I, for one, can not imagine entering into a lifelong commitment to a person with these divisions from the very beginning. Marriage is supposed to be a partnership. Marriages are about people vowing to support each other. Marriage is not about boys being boys, or women being bitchy micro-managers. But this, as far as I can tell, is what our culture has made weddings into. With TV shows like Say Yes to the Dress and other wedding reality television, we are telling people that this is what they should aspire to when they find someone they love.

I don't know about you, but when I'm ready to commit to a marriage with one person for the rest of my life, I expect a little more.