It's wedding season.We flew down to Austin this weekend to attend the boy's best friend's wedding, and I couldn't help but think -- the whole 3 days -- about how impersonal this ceremony celebrating love could be. There are personal moments, like when a bride is fussing with her best friends over a dress or hairdo, or when the grooms give their very dude tributes to the couple. But overwhelmingly, the entire affair is as regulated as a Mass.
It's not surprising, I guess -- weddings started out as Masses, and we do like our symbols of love and eternity and whatnot. The bridal magazines, however, are terrifying. I got to look through quite a few while the boy was getting fitted for his tux. They're the kind of publications that elevate the choice of fruit filling in your vanilla wedding cake to be on par with who you're going to marry. (Brief aside: no one likes the vanilla cake. Ever. Everyone likes the chocolate.) Furthermore, did you know that there are custom printers that specialize in designing maps for directions to the event? Or that the average budget for a wedding is $20000, resulting in a $40 to 70 billion dollar-a-year industry?
I can understand why brides and grooms repeat the same words at the altar -- that's ritual. I can understand the bouquet-throwing and cake-cutting too. It's just everything else. I just don't understand why every processional uses Canon in D. I don't understand why tributes so often sound the same, and seem to stubbornly ignore that the bride and groom have lived together for several years already and are no longer in the early flush of love, but have moved on to a steadier and (I would argue) more admirable place. I don't understand what bridesmaids and grooms actually DO (and this is me having been in a wedding party before). And I really don't understand why strapless bridal gowns are so in vogue. (But maybe I'm just jealous -- no strapless gowns for me, with my linebacker shoulders.)
Maybe all I really want is to go to a wedding like this one:
