Is the Wedding Outshining the Marriage?

I am about to get married and in the lead up to the “big day” I have been reflecting on weddings, ceremony, celebration, rites of passage, and excess. I have been in deep thought around these topics as I wade through the waters of impending union. To tell you truth, I have never been a woman, as far as I can remember, that ever dreamed of my wedding day. I had no inclination towards a big, white dress, never thought about walking down an aisle, it wasn’t my thing. 

As I grew older I began to question how we can expect to say yes to forever, when we don’t know what the rest of our lives will look like. My rational logical side would say: “I don’t know where I’ll be in twenty years but I do know I won’t be the same person. Who is to say the vows I make will endure, that I will still be in love?”

I would share my thoughts with friends and family and the quick response was well you just get a divorce. Having watched people go through divorce, it’s not as simple as that. 

Yet, here I am today, about to make a commitment to enter union, but you won’t catch either one of us agreeing to forever or as long as you both shall live. It doesn’t feel authentic, so we aren’t doing it. Furthermore, we are not registering our marriage with the government, so we don’t have to do divorce. We went into ceremony to be united, we go back into ceremony if we want to part. The words “legality of our marriage” gives us the ick.

As we draw closer to our marriage date, I began to think about other things feel strange about weddings. Did you know that in 2022, BC alone generated 1.5 Billion in wedding revenue? That was while the industry was in recovery mode from the pandemic (hellosafe.ca). This gigantic revenue number had me thinking about the many layers of excess that surround a wedding day.

Are they necessary?

If you were to weigh out the time you spent preparing your partnership for that ceremony, how does it stack up to the amount of time you spent booking professionals, planning, dieting, exercising, makeup, hair, dresses, photo shoots, guest lists, food preferences, decor, music, family dynamics and stressing over accumulating debt?

Did you spend equal amount of time engaging in conversation and reflection around how it may change your expectations of the relationship, checking in with each other that the wedding feels aligned, checking in with yourself that it feels right, ensuring you have haven’t lost sight of the importance, and offering each other an out, a stop, if it starts to feel like a freight train running off the track? 

I am not writing this to knock the big, big weddings or any wedding. I have decor, a dress, and am feeding people. But, I am wondering if we have lost sight of something along the way?

You can be married without a wedding

It can be “illegal”

It can be without body shame

It can be within your means

It can be a potluck

It can be alcohol free

It can be about you and your beloved every step of the way

You have choice, you can look back at the pictures, reflect on the day and say “yes” that was an absolute reflection of who we are as a partnership and as individuals. That can look any way you like- big to small and everything in between. You only get to be married to each other for the first time once. 

Planning our ceremony has been stressful, keeping it aligned doesn’t mean stress free. I’m human, I have shit that comes up, Johnathan has shit that comes up. But we made a promise that the whole way along it would represent our values and it would feel really, really good. 

To all the people who have said yes, who are about to do the marriage thing, perhaps you’re thinking about renewal,  find the joy, find the love, find the rite of passage, find the celebration in whatever form it came. See through the wedding, peel the layers back, and find the bright, glowing centre of union.