Ultimate Wedding: Fooling with Tradition

Fooling with Tradition
Can weddings be run without the factor of sex playing a significant part?
Oh, dear. That does not at all sound like what Miss Ultimate Wedding intended. What she means to discuss is whether the division of tasks and honors by gender, which has always characterized weddings, should be overhauled in the light of gender enlightenment. Some of the questions that keep arising are:
Why are the bride's parents' names, but not the bridegroom's parents', on the invitation?
Why do they get to have the wedding in their hometown (question from bridegroom's parents)?
Why do we get to pay for everything (question
from bride's parents)? Why is it the bride's previous marital history, not
the bridegroom's, that determines whether it is
classified as a first wedding? Why are there domestic showers for brides, and
hilarious drinking parties for bridegrooms? Why does she get given away while he just
donates himself? Why do the attendants of each have to be the
same gender as they are? Why does everyone look at her and no one at
him?
Rather than await Miss Ultimate Wedding' pronouncements on these questions, many bridal couples have taken matters into their own hands, or sometimes fists. It is not uncommon now to see lots of parental names on invitations, to hear that the bride's friends took her out to a strip joint while the bridegroom's friends had a quiet dinner at a respectable restaurant, and for everyone concerned to claim that everyone else concerned (and some people who just happened to be briefly passing through the family) should contribute to paying the bill.

It is high time that Miss Ultimate Wedding made some order out of all this. She is not against change. Etiquette is continually evolving, and always has been, as life changes. Full dignity for ladies is one of the best changes to come along in centuries.

But tradition also has a claim; why else are all these hysterical people involved in putting on this spectacle?

Customs that have outlived their original reasons may nevertheless still carry emotional weight. Orderly change consists of adapting tradition to the actual situation it is to adorn. First, one must determine what is essential about the tradition, and what not—in this case, whether it is gender or some other factor that is important.

The bride's parents traditionally gave the wedding because she went from their house and support to her husband's. Their names alone were on the invitation because they were the hosts. It is the first wedding that makes the pomp attractive to guests who have not been through the emotions of watching this particular bride being married before. After that, although they may fervently hope for the best, they are not quite so starry-eyed about the "forever" ritual.

Certainly both sets of parents, or the bridegroom's alone, can give the wedding, or the bridal couple themselves or their friends. Parents' names may be retained as sentimental figureheads, even if the couple does all the planning.

What no one concerned can do is to assign bills to other people, and sell or withhold wedding honors. This being a family matter, not a business concern, financial contributions are volunteered, not mandated. One set of parents cannot be hosts, yet assume they can farm out bills to the other set. (However, among families and prospective families, any offers of help, especially if there is a need, are gracious, and qualify as strictly family business with which etiquette would not dream of interfering.)

Considering that brides seldom grow up next door to their bridegrooms, the identity of the latter becomes necessary in a way it never used to be. Miss Ultimate Wedding does not object to an invitation saying whose son he is, although she prefers that the bridegroom's parents merely slip a formal card with their names into invitations for their side of the list.

For the bride to be given away is another anachronism, more charming than necessary. If her mother brought her up alone, it should be she who gives the bride away, not a more distant male relative. The Jewish custom of having both sets of parents accompany their children is the most charming of all, provided we're not talking about melees between those parents and their marital successors.

Attendants are supposed to be the principals' closest friends and the gender division merely reflected segregated social lives. Friendship should outweigh gender as a factor in choosing attendants and Miss Ultimate Wedding is tired of being asked whether this requires cross-dressing. Ladies still dress as ladies, and they should still attract more attention from the wedding guests. Miss Ultimate Wedding is not saying that will never change, but it hasn't yet.

Playing the Fool
Nasty news from the bridal front reminds Miss Ultimate Wedding of the danger of letting people think for themselves. In the desire to get bridal couples to calm down and do some of their own planning to fit their own circumstances, she has recklessly implied that they should use their own judgment. Ever the optimistic believer in the human intelligence, she forgot to specify that judgment must include a sense of dignity.

It seems that joking at the altar has become commonplace enough for a justice of the peace to anticipate exactly what form it is going to take: The bridegroom will "play to the crowd, saying, 'Hmmm, I'll think about it' instead of 'I will,' or pretending to screw the bride's ring on if it proves difficult."
The ceremonial kiss is used as a public sample of the couple's love-making. "I try to remind both the bride and the groom that the kiss at the end of the ritual should be brief, as it is a token," reports the justice of the peace. 'Yet I wish I could tell you of the grooms who 'swallow' their brides while the assembled guests clap to indicate their appreciation. The brides clutch their headpieces, bouquets, and anything else that is falling off during this display of 'love.' "
In an understandable desire to include their children ("his-hers-theirs," explains Miss Ultimate Wedding' informant while pleading "Not if they are under five!"), couples allow the ceremony to be undermined. "I am not referring to having them be bridal attendants, but to participating. I cannot 'marry' three people. If they want to hold their baby while I'm talking, so be it, but I don't think it makes the baby feel more wanted, as it is too young to appreciate the significance. It just points up to all assembled that the child was born out of wedlock. Putting little children in outlandish costumes they can't manage seems cruel."

It is a kindly meant innovation to have the bride and bridegroom's children present at the ceremony, on the grounds that they are becoming part of a new family. But Miss Ultimate Wedding worries that the tendency is to pressure the children into what amounts to a command performance, regardless of whatever emotional reservations they may have about committing to the stepparent or feeling that it is a betrayal of the absent parent. Children should have the choice of not attending and, at most, merely accompany the parent to the altar.

Then comes the reception: "Here is a mild toast from one of the many best men who has no idea of how to make a toast—'Here's to John and Mary and the little one!' Most guests did not know the bride was pregnant; her stricken face attested to that," he writes. "My favorite standard toast is 'Here's to you and here's to me, friends may we always be, but if we part, here's to me and to hell with you!' Isn't that a great toast for a wedding? How about this one (formal wedding, mind you)—'Here's to John and Mary, and all I can say is, it took a f---ing long time.'
"It is more and more prevalent for the couple to grind the wedding cake in each other's faces. Even fathers will urge the groom to 'give it to her, smoosh it in her face.' I've seen brides with cake in their cleavage, grooms with frosting on their moustaches and beards. Bear in mind that not all wedding cakes nowadays are white or yellow.

"DJs or bandleaders who think they are there to entertain have no sense of propriety. The man who caught the garter is importuned to put it 'higher, higher' on a girl who is squirming because she is modest, or has fat or skinny legs, or is wearing only knee-high hose with a long gown, and who is embarrassed at all that attention. I have seen a thirteen-year-old boy urged to put the garter on a thirty-year-old.
"People tinkle glasses incessantly, and with a vengeance, for the couple to kiss. Some get so vigorous that the stemware goes flying. At one formal wedding, the bride had provided little wooden mallets for the guests."

Miss Ultimate Wedding is also sadly aware that such travesties of the wedding ceremony and celebration are not isolated instances. The ancient history of wedding jokes does not prevent Miss Ultimate Wedding from noticing how revolting they are. The perpetrators fail to understand the difference between making an occasion enjoyable and making a significant event into a mockery. Some time ago, half suspecting it was a joke, she answered a query about a wedding in which the bridal party had decided to be nude; the mail has since brought several accounts of similar ventures.

However, if she withdraws delegating some judgment to bridal couples, she never will get back to the porch swing. Rather than saying you shouldn't use your own judgment in planning your wedding, she would like to suggest that you shouldn't be planning a wedding unless you have developed some judgment.

Oh, Stop
Q. At a wedding reception I attended, the bridegroom took off the bride's garter with his teeth. Is this considered inappropriate wedding etiquette? Is it considered appropriate or not for the bride to sit on the best man's lap while the groom takes off the bride's garter?

A. You know the answers, and the people doing these things don't care. So why spoil Miss Ultimate Wedding' day? It's times like this that make her wonder why she went into the etiquette trade instead of something easy, like teaching canaries to fetch sticks.