On traditional weddings

Yesterday, Jonniker wrote a post about weddings and how she doesn't tend to like traditional ones. Then she asked her readers about their own taste in weddings and got tons of comments talking about everyone's own weddings and what made them great or not great.

The whole thing got me thinking about weddings. Here's the thing, and this is nothing against Jonna or her commenters: I read all those comments with great interest, given my own circumstances at the moment, and the main tone that I got from those comments? Was one of defensiveness. And this isn't the first place I've noticed this.

It seems to me, from my limited experience, that wedding planners and wedding guests have two very different concepts of how weddings should be organized. And we have moved so far along the spectrum from the Cookie Cutter Wedding to the Personalized Wedding that people whose personalized weddings still include a lot of cookie cutter elements because that's what they like still feel compelled to defend themselves. Like the assumption is that weddings are boring and tedious and unflattering, and that every bride who walks down the aisle in a poofy white dress will eventually, in years to come, look back on her wedding and roll her eyes at what a silly decision that was, and think about how differently she would do it the next time around, if a next time were to exist.

And maybe that's true? Given that this is the only wedding I've planned, and I am very young? Perhaps 10 or 20 years from now I'll look at the pictures and think the exact same thing. And I do agree that the way the wedding industry works is very problematic, and that it's incredible how expensive weddings can be, and how difficult it can be to find reasonably priced options as soon as you mention the word "wedding" to a vendor.

But it's kind of like how when I was in college, it was cool to be struggling financially. It gave you a certain cachet, and those people who were not receiving financial aid were embarrassed to admit it. In my world, and I realize that this is not representative of the mainstream, instead of everyone wanting to throw a lavish, over-the-top, expensive wedding, it's become cooler to have a non-traditional, budget affair. It's like it shows that you haven't bought into the marketing efforts of the wedding industry, and you have your priorities in line, and also your wedding is more fun than those boring cookie cutter weddings.

I'm kind of torn about this. On the one hand, I think it's great that people are so accepting of all different kinds of weddings, and that the prevailing mindset isn't that a wedding sucks if it doesn't cost at least $40,000. But on the other hand, like stereotypes, I think that part of why cookie cutter weddings have become so mundane is because a lot of people like them, and want that same thing for themselves.

Plus, and maybe this is just people being nice? But tons of people keep telling me how excited they are for our wedding and how fabulous they think it's going to be. And to be honest? Our wedding is going to be fairly traditional. Yes, we're personalizing it--there will be purple and bratwurst and a self-written ceremony--but in the grand scheme of things, and specifically from the outside, it will look very much like a lot of other weddings. And I love weddings, so I'm totally okay with that. And our guests seem to be as well, despite this trend toward complaining about traditional weddings and wishing that every wedding took the form of a clambake/barbecue/other casual, messy, untraditional party.

So yeah, I am wearing an (off-)white, (somewhat) poofy dress on my wedding day. And damn it, I'm excited about it. I can already tell that I'm going to have a wonderful time at my wedding. And I hope that my guests do too.