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Facing the Bride Divide
A feminist plans her wedding.
I am not the bridal type. I do not wear white, and generally have a horror of ruffles. I did not spend my girlhood dreaming of my prince and the elaborate pageantry of our future wedding day. Prior to my engagement, I had never opened a bridal magazine. As a little girl, images of my adult self consisted mostly of me alone, traipsing through exotic locales.
In other words, being a bride never interested me much, until I had to be one. Then I discovered what my child self must have suspected: to be a bride is take up a very precarious perch. To be a feminist bride is to actually inhabit conflict. At times, it feels like nothing so much as living out a constant game of tug of war, one that is both personal and inherently political. As I approach my June 30th wedding, it feels like I’m winning. But it has not been an easy battle.
Strapless?
Those who married ten, even five years ago, might be unfamiliar with the extent of modern wedding mania. But the modest church wedding has gone the way of the dodo, replaced by blow-outs featuring sushi stations arrayed on glistening ice sculptures. According to a 2004 New York Times article, though the number of marriages performed in the United States has remained steady for 20 years, the number of wedding planners rose 25 percent in 18 months to 7,000. The bridal industry now accounts for about 50 billion US annually, and there have been nearly a dozen new bridal magazine titles since 2000.
From the moment we got engaged, people kept cooing about how “excited” I must be to plan the wedding. I found this odd. Planning didn’t feel particularly exciting; it felt like a lot of work. However, I quickly realized that the excitement people were referring to was not the excitement of deciding to celebrate my commitment to my partner, but the excitement of spending wildly on a custom-made gown, of selecting just the right pearl necklace, of weekends spent poring over orchids for my bouquet. One friend’s first response to our news was, “Do you think you’ll wear a strapless dress?” Of course, I hadn’t the slightest clue.
Throughout the past few months, I’ve been reticent to discuss wedding details. Friends and female relatives are surprised at my lack of enthusiasm, as if these should be tasks I’ve waited my whole life to take on. One friend in particular was slightly horrified. “But,” she cried “this is your chance to be a princess for a day!”
Bridal ‘porn’
The problem is that being a princess comes with a pretty hefty price tag: the average Canadian wedding costs $20,000. We’re spending less than half of that figure. Yet the most common response to our acts of thrift has been one of unease. No one was particularly happy when I told them I found a vintage wedding dress for $40. In fact, they made it seem like spending so little on a dress was somehow cheating myself, as if spending cash consummated an essential female ritual. I, however, was elated with my score. I had never particularly dreamed of zeros flying out my bank account as if they were bubbles.
Not that spending a wad seems to be enough. These days, bridal magazines and television shows tell brides that their wedding should be the perfect expression of their personalities. It is not enough to don the white dress and pearls, the something old and something new, something borrowed, something blue—the bride must demonstrate her originality and her distinctive sense of style via her choice of taffeta.
This pressure is immense. Just open any the pages of any “bridal porn” magazines or log on to one of a million bridal websites, where the “tips” tend to center around how to be “different” (without, of course, offending Great Aunt Mabel). You might for instance, purchase monogrammed favours, or dye the toilet water in your guestrooms to coordinate with your wedding colours. I am not making this up.
Personally, I’m always nervous about the thought of aesthetic display as an act of fulfillment. The flowers and the food are there to enhance the occasion, but they are not the reason for it. You’d be surprised how easy it is for this confusion to take place. It’s telling that in Sheryl Paul’s The Conscious Bride’s Wedding Planner, a helpful look at marrying without submitting to the consumerist frills, one section title screeches, “It’s not about the dress!”
Tell that to one friend who recently got married. I stood near her while a male friend said “Well, you’ve fulfilled the number one duty of a bride on her wedding day: to look beautiful.”
The ‘wife script’
In her ambitious social history The Meaning of Wife, Canadian journalist Anne Kingston examines what she calls “the wife gap”, contemporary culture’s fundamental ambivalence about the role of the married woman. In Kingston’s analysis, since we’ve abandoned repressive legal definitions of marriage and the June Cleaver image of wifely servitude, the meaning of wife has assumed an intense ambiguity. As Kingston puts it, “the wife script” just has not been rewritten to accommodate the current complexities of that role.
And while Kingston spends the majority of her book exploring that ambiguity, one of her most compelling insights is just how the image of the bride is now used to quell fears about the complexity of being a wife.
“If the modern wife is an enigma,” Kingston writes, “the modern bride is a no-brainer…Within the marketplace, her ephemeral status only ramps up her appeal: with a shelf life of less than a day, she’s ever fresh.” While the word “wife” now seems saddled with dowdy connotations of suffering and servitude, the word “bride” seems to have taken on a shining radiance never before seen in polyester. These days, being a bride is presented by marketers as the ultimate female fantasy. After all, what sells better than possibility?
Saying ‘yes’
The truth of getting married is not shining ecru, however, but a more complicated shade of charcoal (or perhaps chrome?). In the end, my own decision to marry meant deciding to grapple with these contradictions.
When I asked a close friend, who is now divorced, why he got married in the first place, his answer was, “Because I believe in life.”
At the time, I considered his reply typically inscrutable. But as I near the time of my own wedding, the meaning of his words has become clearer. To say yes to a partner can be to say yes to participating in society and the social order, rather than positioning ourselves outside of it. It can mean agreeing to dialogue with the ickier parts of our culture, in order to refashion roles and traditions that work better for us.
When I get married, my flowers will probably not match my groom’s tie. But if the day is meaningful for me, I will have won the bridal tug of war. Then, I hope, I’ll be even better prepared to deal with the tug of war of life.
Bess Lovejoy is the former editor of Terminal City. This is her first piece for the Tyee. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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22
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mcfur
6 years ago
Comments on "Facing the Bride Divide"
my partner and i hiked through Lighthouse Park on a beautiful sunny day. When we reached the ocean's edge, we said our vows to each other. That was 27 years ago. Cost? $0.00. Still very much in love.
Foley
6 years ago
As a graphic desinger, the first task I undertook was designing the invites for my wedding. I decided to check online to see what the traditional format was for the invite text. It was specific and inscrutible. The invitation was to be from the father of the bride, and mention his wife, then mention the parents of the groom. Well, the father of the bride hasn't been seen in some years, and the mother of the bride is re-married. It was at this point that we discovered that the cool thing about getting married in this day and age is that *nothing* is sacred. Our invited started: "Foley and Sam would like to invite you to our wedding".
You can pick and choose what traditions you want to stick with, and which you don't, and you're going to cause some people to raise their eyebrows at times. Figure out what's important to you, and what could potentially alienate those around you.
When planning the wedding our intent was always to throw a big party for our friends and family, but it turned out to be more than that. After the ceremony we got some photos taken outside, and then wandered in to a packed, warm room full of friends having drinks and generally enjoying themselves. My father announced in a large booming voice: "ladies and gentelmen, the bride and groom". Everyone applauded as we walked into the room. Right there was the best moment of my life.
What it boils down to is that your wedding day is about you and your partner. It's the one day where you, as a couple, will be celebrated, and that's really cool.
Fii
6 years ago
Haha... nice article. Enjoyed it very much.
jayward
6 years ago
Good on you, a wonderful story!
JWL
Coyote
6 years ago
I "married off" four daughters-, meaning paid the bills. Small town is easier of course, and we prepared all the food ourselves, errr "the women" did, had cheap civil ceremonies all, and outside of the toast, everyone brought their own booze. (I believe, in one or two of them, we rented or at least had some kind of a band, otherwise it was tapes or whatever. (The wife would get it more accurately, down to the finest detail, I'm sure.)
They cost us hardly dick. At least I certainly don't remember any pain in the wallet, and I've always managed the books, and certainly didn't go into debt-, no bloody way. (And if they wanted a fancy wedding gown, they bought their own, was our family tradition.:-)
Being small town there were all kinds of "crashers" at all my daughter's weddings, but they brought their own booze, and at least good weed was available in copious quantities, with more than the odd line of "blow" , and certainly some "magic" mushrooms. Without exception, these weddings were all a blast, with the cops only showing up at one of them, as I recall. (Small town cops usually disappear during such events, if they've got any brains.)
The homemade food was invariably fantastic. Raising cattle, pigs and chickens, meat was cheap and plentiful.
I enjoyed the weddings of all my daughters, to the no good scoundrels they tended to choose, and again, I always insisted on only what I could actually afford out of my wallet or bank account -, without debt. (Ehhhh, I was always a poor boy, and had/have a practical attitude towards life and love.)
Anyway, their weddings weren't all a whole lot different than the one me and the old lady had, and we've been married pushing 47 years.
My advice is, don't get sucked in on your wedding day, either the bride or the father of the bride. And have a blast. I always did.
Where there were second marriages, the rule was and is, you're on your own hook.
Ahhh, nothing but good memories of raising my daughters, and marrying them off to local scalawags-, even when they didn't work out as well as me and The Woman's. They made their choices and had to take their lumps, same as we did.
Coyote
6 years ago
Of course, my woman lucked out and married a Saint. All ladies ain't so lucky.
woody
6 years ago
I got short changed at my wedding,my best man ran off with part of my dowry,one of the sheep.
mhoule
6 years ago
Ditto on the advise about not going into debt. I know many people who are still paying off wedding debts 8 years later. We held a big potluck party at a friend's place for our reception. I don't think we spent more than $2000 on the whole event and my dress was a white summer dress I already owned and just "fancied" up a bit. Bridesmaid and groomsman - they were allowed to wear whatever they wanted. In fact, we told our guests that jeans are preferred because we're jeans kind of people. It was a lovely day and the only stressed person was the person who hosted the reception, but she would have been regardless! We only gave people 7.5 weeks notice because we didn't want it to be derailed with all the fluff. We did what we wanted to with or without tradition, and we've had numerous people say that they enjoyed our wedding more than any other they've been to because it was so laid-back and relaxed... just like us. A person doesn't have to be co-opted for their wedding... it's supposed to be a celebration of their lives not of the wedding industry.
Just my 2c worth!
Coyote
6 years ago
Who gets it bang on. :-) My view.
neer
6 years ago
Your friends who want you to go all out are the same ones who will only buy Nike, want you to drive a new car, send the kids to Montessori - oh ya and buy a tonne of life insurance. We bought our booze, hired our own band and got away with $1,600, 33 years ago, and had 176 guests - then we left the country for what we thought was good, put the wifey through school instead of buying life insurance, won't buy a labelled shirt. Came back a couple of years later and people still talk about the wedding. And I now have 7 used cars in the garages and driveway.
Good Luck. Keep Your name and live up to it.
sharonaleh
6 years ago
Great article!
My wedding was a blast.
Almost exactly nine years ago, my then-fiancé/boyfriend/best friend/now husband-but-still-boyfriend-and-best-friend stood under the wedding Canopy.
Given that I had put my back out the week before and was on Demerol; and that hubby had had an anxiety attack (don't ask) an hour earlier and was on Valium, one COULD make a case that we weren't in our right mind when we agreed to marry under the ancient laws of Moses and Israel.
Pharmaceuticals aside, after the ceremony, we turned to each other and just grinned in delight, then spontaneously hugged. It was awesome. Here we are, nine years later - still married, undrugged (most of the time) and very much in our right mind.
The reception was amazing. Everyone had a wonderful time - especially the band (who still consider it one of their best weddings ever)! The highlight was when hubby leapt onto the stage, grabbed a guitar, and sang "Wild Thing" to me. Nine years later, he still sings to me, and we still grin and hug, often.
Enjoy yourselves. Laugh, dance, eat, relax, revel in the love of family and friends. Drink in the moment, and f*&$ everything else. Do you think, nine years later, I remember the colour of the flowers? The tablecloths? The invitations? I hardly cared about any of that - all that mattered was marrying my soul mate, inviting people we liked (okay some of them we didn't even know, given that our parents were paying for much of the shebang, but we just loved everybody!!), making sure we had good eats and good music, and the rest - as we say in French - is "narishkeit".
I had a fabulous dress which was comfortable, gorgeous, and inexpensive (Disclaimer: I did not feel like a "princess". I felt like the most beautiful, sexy woman on the planet. THAT is the key to the dress. That, and not wearing underwear. Panty lines = tacky. But I digress).
I was barefoot through the reception (I kept the shoes on for the ceremony, because I didn't want to step on glass...), and one of my favourite photos from the wedding is one taken towards the end of the night, showing me, makeup all sweated off, face shiny and ecstatic, hair a disaster, dress askew, sitting on the lap of some friends at their table, holding hands with my love, who was sitting on someone else's lap, everyone smiling and laughing, and holding up our glasses to the camera. L'Chaim. To Life!
Enjoy your wedding. Enjoy your husband. Enjoy your life!
Te Aro Arahina
6 years ago
I'm surprised no one seems to have caught this:
Do you think anyone has the slightest choice to NOT participate in society or social order? Just try it.
akk
6 years ago
Bess Lovejoy. Why is that name so familiar to me? My suspicion is that you're an old SFU Peak writer from days gone by, since I read it ritually for years (having done my BA and so far most of my MA there), and can't think where else I would know the name from. If so, big congrats on, well everything (wedding, article in the peak, working for Terminal City--also a great publication)!
This article was endlessly comforting, as over the course of this year, so many of my friends are getting (or will be getting) married that the unmarried are now the minority. Am I really that old? Let's just say, I don't really "get it" about big fancy weddings either. I mean, not that there's anything wrong with that...but, it's just not my bag.
Nice to hear of likeminded gals, but sad to hear how much trouble friends and family have given you. Hope it all goes well in the end!
akk
6 years ago
Oops... make that "article on the Tyee"...woopsie!
lynn
6 years ago
L'Chaim... one of the great blessings, sharonaleh.
If you looked up Murphy's Law, I'm sure you would find a picture of our wedding. It was a disaster. We very young and my soon-to-be husband had gone camping and fishing up the coast for a few days before we were to meet for a chat with the minister, a high Anglican church snob of a minister I might add. A big storm had blown up and so he was very late in returning...the minister was not a happy camper himself about this development..and decided he would not marry us, writing us the nastiest letter that said how irresponsible we were in not turning up on time, no excuses allowed.
So we ran off to the city, which made us real popular back home and organized our own wedding, finally getting married in North Van at a very pretty church, though now I wouldn't choose a church wedding at all. Somehow however, my old boyfriend who was then attending UBC and had not quite got over our break-up found out where we were getting married and turned up unexpectedly at the church (shades of Dustin Hoffman in the church scene in The Graduate)...ouch!...painful on all sides...and he is in many of our wedding pictures just to continually remind us!
We blew all the money we had on the honeymoon suite at the Devonshire...and to make a long convoluted story short, at three in the morning when we should have been making wild sweet love we were sitting in a deli on Robson along with who else... but the Supremes. I was never a big fan of theirs but they were very nice ladies... they weren't even quite the real Supremes as this was the seventies so Diana Ross was no longer with them then and had been replaced by someone else.
It was a night to remember... or forget... for two very small town kids who hadn't a clue about what they were about to embark on... that they were about to grow up together... very fast.
Thank God the marriage turned out much better than the wedding.
Steve P
6 years ago
Great article.
My wife & I took the plunge a few years ago and were dismayed at how suppliers began to drool with greed when we said the word "wedding".
It is possible to do something tasteful, simple, sincere and meaningful. For my wife & I, we had a great wedding on a tight budget on Mayne Island, behind a local Inn overlooking the water. We did a number of things to keep costs down, minimize wedding kitsch, and make the ritual our own:
- we wrote the script & had a civil wedding
- my wife (a feminist) was not given away by her father. Instead, we had the Dads take turns ringing a gong to announce the commencement of the ceremony. They got a kick out of this.
- We designed our own invitations.
- We burned CDs with different music for different portions of the wedding & reception
- We designed our own decorations. My wife designed a stamp with an interlocking ring motif, which we stamped onto rice paper. The rice paper was mounted on bamboo pillars, which we thrust into the ground. It was cheap, easy and looked great.
- We chose decorations from the local area -- sword fern leaves, stones from the beach, etc.
- We did our own flower arranging -- never say the word "wedding" to a flower company!
- We commissioned berry pies, rather than expensive wedding cakes. Yum!
- We brewed two batches of wine -- one red & one white -- through a U-brew.
Beware the evil wedding industry! =^)
elby
6 years ago
I totally agree! My husband proposed one month before we decided to marry, and we did it extremely inexpensively - approximately $1,000.
We had a lovely civil ceremony in a park - which we would have wanted even with a no limits budget - and the reception was in the common room of the co-op where both our mothers lived. I couldn't believe the price of everything whenever wedding was mentioned. I stopped looking in wedding sections for anything. Having an inexpensive wedding just means more creativity.
Good luck to you both...
willielee
6 years ago
Sounds like a lot of nuptial narcissism to me one way or the other. Whether the wedding and all the bridal accoutrements are expensive or cheap, elaborate or simple, the meaningfulness of it to me is expressing love to another person. And that's a many splendoured thing, giving birth to some of the highest expression of human language and aspiration. Far from being a "dialogue with the ickier parts of our culture", I like to think of a wedding and the marriage as dialogue with what is most meaningful, vulnerable and true. Yes Ms Lovejoy, weddings and marriage can and are continually "refashioning roles and traditions that work better for us". Just don't be a killjoy about having a very good time in celebrating the risky love of the other.
effle
6 years ago
Well, what to say about the self-evident, eh?
I really like the way that Moderate Man and his (assumably) Moderate Spouse did it up...I mean, berry pies? That's definitely the way I would want to do it, if I were going to do it (again).
In fact, I rather like the idea of marriage, the ritual that sanctifies that "risky love of the other" (well put willielee), but detest the drooling, lip-smacking profiteering that is so much a part of the whole affair.
It's a spectacle. And the thing that interests me most, I guess, is why, as a society, we are so seduced by it. Not to mention the question that begs to be asked of Ms Lovejoy; why are you, with all of your (errrrrrrr) feminist sensibilities not eating berry pie?
effle
6 years ago
Oh, and weddings aren't the only site of this conspicuous hyper-consumption and crazy ass self-absorption (and, yes, that's what it is)...
Has anyone seen a HIGH SCHOOL (yes, high school) graduation lately?
Oh, why stop there--has anyone seen what is, I take it, common practice when sending your just-out-of-toddlerhood kid from kindergarten to grade 1, or heaven forbid, from pre-school (can't get them into it fast enough) to kindergarten? It's bizarre.
juicygi
6 years ago
i have not one, not two, not three, but four weddings to attend at the end of this summer. as a bridesmaid (and yes, yet to be a bride), i've been privy to much of the stress that is part of an event like this. the stress is usually about money. but some couples have been pretty creative in their approach. one couple is having a garden party bbq. i found my bridesmaid's dress at the mall (and it's pretty foxy, if i do say so myself). i think a $40 wedding dress is something to be proud of (and knowing you, you'll look fantastic). some shining examples of how you can have a wedding and not break the bank. it's all what you make it and what it means to you.
congratulations bess - i'm sure you will kick ass in the tug of war of life.
gisele
redhandjill
6 years ago
My wedding was beautiful. We married in my sister's apartment on the 26th floor. We made the mistake of not meeting our JP and she turned out to be a bit of freak, oh well. The gold candles my sister bought at the dollar store went up like the towering inferno and we had to stop the ceremony to put them and open the windows to the let the toxic black smoke out. Our first moments of married life and one of my fondest memories is laughing like crazy in my husband's arms. We had open bar and a cheese ball in my sister's apartment and a smoking room and hockey suite downstairs in ours. My mom got totally pissed and my two gay friends looked after her all night. We had a lebanese feast to die for (my hubby's an arab) and the belly dancer entertained. Wonderful perfect night. Cost $3,000.