love

Mural in Puerto Vallarta, JA. Photo by the author.

I get really sick of hearing about love. 

I’m not sick of love itself or any less awed by our collective thirst for, yet inability to satisfy, it. I’m certainly not sick of experiencing it, both in intimate and abstract ways. More precisely: I’m sick of the clichés. I’m sick of the songs and poems we’ve heard over and over, the ones that get quoted and requoted and misquoted on cards and websites and poorly considered tattoos. 

I’ve been dodging these clichés a lot lately because I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about weddings. Ok, I’m always thinking about weddings, but recently I’ve been trying to figure out how to go to more of them. That is, I’ve been trying to figure out how to get hired to officiate more ceremonies. You see, fervor for ritual design and cultural construction isn’t often accompanied by rabid entrepreneurialism or honed marketing instincts, so, while working with a professional on the marketing front, I’ve been paying closer attention to the branding arm of the Wedding Industrial Complex to understand what lures customers in. Apparently, the pandemic changed nothing: the industry still relies on clichés, but those clichés are now Zoom-ready. And most of those clichés appeal to making a couple’s “special day” unique. And that’s where today’s rant begins.

The day of a wedding is, indeed, special. It’s different from other days. On that day, the tectonic plates shift - the people connected to a couple become a new community, a community bound by their encounters with the couple at the center. It’s the only day when that particular group of people will gather in that particular place to recognize and celebrate that particular change in the lives of that particular couple. That’s pretty fucking special. I don’t need a column of men in matching JCrew suits, a souvenir 3”x5” photo frame, or a DJ who mispronounces their names but doesn’t know how to rein in a rambling Best Man to tell me it’s special . 

Unique is equally vague. Most of the magazines and vendors promising a “unique” event are just pushing the things that have been done before, but that’s not what irks me. What really irks me is that the whole point of getting married is to do what’s been done before - specifically, to join an institution that, for better or for worse (#seewhatididthere), is treated as foundational for American society. Once you’re married, you’re treated differently - by the law, the IRS, and by everyone walking down the street. You can change your name without further explanation to the raised eyebrows behind the DMV counter. You get invited to events again by the married friends you haven’t seen in a while, the ones who apparently only socialize, like nuns, in pairs. You get to wear new jewelry that marks your status and sends the dual messages of “back off!” and “jealous?” 

Sure, there are responsibilities, too, but marriage mostly comes with social advantages. That’s why it’s so popular! To boot, in our culture, marriage is treated as an exclusive club whose heterosexual, cisgender, white Protestant founders mimicked the marital norms (from the icing on the wedding cake to gender roles at home) of European aristocrats. Like (as my mother referred to them) “those crazy, inbred royals” before them, the power players of European courts set the rules for everything from who can marry whom to what constitutes a marriage. Printed invitations, a bride’s gaggle of maids, a white gown, a father giving his daughter away after a walk down an aisle, rambling and terrible toasts, an elaborate meal with a performative cake cutting, a couple’s first moves to open the dancefloor, crass teasing about and decoration of the bridal suite, etiquette around gift giving and thank-you notes, the politics of who is and isn’t invited…all of the bullet points on the checklist of every typical American wedding planner was crystallized in European courts and manors. They also constitute the secret handshake that gets you into the American marriage club. 

Weddings that adhere to this checklist, though, unwittingly (or, maybe, wittingly) perpetuate the values that inspired these practices. They give form and life and power to archaic, problematic, outdated, or downright evil notions of identity. The most innovative and creative florists, musicians, officiants, caterers, and couples can’t strip the misogyny, heteronormativity, classism, and racism from these practices - they’re baked in. They seem to be baked into us, too - we’re conditioned to define “wedding” with these ingredients by the stories our families share, the pop culture we absorb, and the well-stocked warehouses and savvy media of the Wedding Industrial Complex. This isn’t to blame event planners and vendors - their businesses are built on the demand of marrying folx who want that special day they’ve grown up wanting (or expecting…or dreading). At a certain point, though, the paradigm flipped. Instead of serving the wedding, the wedding now serves the industry. 

This is poignantly problematic for me for two big reasons. First, I happen to believe that a person is more important than an institution. I didn’t say and don’t mean to suggest that the institution isn’t important, but when they are competing for priority, I opt for the person. When a couple encounters the wedding industry, they’re invited to conform to what’s already there. That works for many couples, because their experiences, values, and identities resonate with what’s been done before. But for couples whose experiences, values, and identities don’t resonate with industry norms, it’s not the couple who need to adapt. It’s the industry. 

Second, every interaction between humans is an opportunity for growth and transformation. Weddings are among those rituals, those formalized and strategic ways for humans to interact, that pack a punch. They invoke deep sentiment and stir emotions. As every comedian, campus minister, and politician knows, once you tap into their emotions, the audience is yours. When a couple is surrounded by family and friends who are dipping into their emotional reservoirs to recognize and celebrate their lives, they have a captive audience. They can communicate to those loving family and friends about the values, the experiences, and the identities that form the foundation of their relationship. They can give their family and friends (and all those plusses-one) a glimpse of the home they are building, of the world they want to live in. They can invite all those folx to support them and even to participate in making that world happen.

The starting point for planning a wedding shouldn’t be the standardized checklist of what’s been done before. The starting point should be a question: what’s the world you want to live in? Except for people who hope to see the world return to the norms of 1840 CE, most of those typical components fade away. Of course, many of those traditional components serve other, useful purposes like highlighting important relationships with parents or close friends, differentiating the space and dress with a particular mood, or moving things along efficiently and gracefully. Starting here, a couple (and a thoughtful officiant) can imagine and iterate ways to make their ceremony (not special or unique) authentic, impactful, and truly joyful. 

This prompts a second question for designing a wedding: what’s bringing you together? I don’t mean the how you met or how you popped the question stories. I mean, where do your experiences overlap? Where do your identities intersect? Where do your values align? As a couple discerns these questions, the ceremony emerges. They articulate the vows they want to publicly proclaim. They identify the words and music and ways of interacting with others that make them feel known and loved and inspired. They think about the people who have supported or shaped them and ways to integrate their love and care into the ceremony. They start to see the ceremony less as a photo opp on the way to a fancy party and more as an opportunity to impact the people and the world that sustains them. 

This approach to weddings doesn’t assume that the people getting married are passive participants. It assumes they are active and powerful agents, both in the event itself and in the broader institution of marriage. It assumes that marriage is a political act. It assumes that a wedding is more than sentiment and socializing, that it impacts people’s perceptions, that it deepens or challenges their assumptions, that it feeds the transformation of their relationships. It assumes that the core of a wedding isn’t the stock of goods and services readily available and ready to fill the coffers of the industry elite; it assumes that the core of the experience is love.