The moment I put my hand in my father's, I felt like a princess. In those six precious hours, I believe I grew in relationship with my father more than I ever have. I knew it was my night, and I treasured every minute of it,' said eleven-year-old Anna Tullis of our Father Daughter Purity Ball
my wrinkly balls, did an eleven year old say that.
As presented here, control and sexual panic screem from the page. Whether all participants are in this frame of mind I'm not so sure. If his daughter's girlfriends were doing it, you might get a sane dad to participate.
If his daughter's girlfriends were doing it, you might get a sane dad to participate.
I'd be willing to bet that about half of the dads doing it were dragged into it by their daughters, who at age eleven think getting to wear pretty gowns and have their hait done is the most wonderful thing ever.
But gah, this is creepy. My parents are about as conservative and religious as you can get, and this would have freaked them out. Dads should not spend that much time worrying about their daughters' hymens.
My high school had an annual semi-formal Father-Daughter Dance and the boys' schools all had Mom Proms. I only went once, my freshman year. Even without the virginity messages, it did have kind of weird undertones. There's something a little bizarre about going to Homecoming one week with your boyfriend and then having almost the exact same evening with your father not too shortly after (well, the dinner and dance part, at least).
I suspect I find this creepier because I assume the parents are conservatives. I'm much more willing to believe that Dems are simply well-meaning but benign freaks. But, then, I assume Dems wouldn't use the same language to describe things, and wouldn't feel comfortable with a dance whose conception revolved around their daughters' sexuality.
Waitaminute. I went to the website to check out the photos, and there's this one picture of some older girls dancing--and they're all wearing those stupid expensive modern dance sandals. In another shot, with a mixed crowd of older and younger girls, more than one of them are wearing the nice split shank ballet slipper. And that thing they're doing with their hands? Straight outta Giselle.
I think this might have been a dance performance. The girls just got some crackpot Christian sponsorship to lure their dads to it.
It looks as if there's a recital taking place before the ball. There are definitely girls dressed for ballet but also (mostly older) girls dressed for prom.
i also think the "princess" fantasy in a lot of american culture is creepy.
who wants to sit around all day looking pretty while not learning/having/using any skills or abilities or activities to be productive & make you feel accomplished or good about yourself?? blechh.
What revolts me about the thing (okay, besides the control freakishness and the sublimated incest stuff) is the idea that it's so wonderful because it gives the girls this "special moment" with daddy. What, dude, you're not gonna dance with your kid or make her feel special or let her play princess or give her your loving attention unless there's some special God-and-virginity associated reason for it? Even aside from the sex crap, it's like this massive excuse for shitty parenting wrapped up in one night of sick rationalization.
From the website, it seems as though it's not a dance recital, but maybe a ball everyone takes very seriously and so gets ballroom lessons ahead of time.
I don't think there's much wrong with the princess fantasy. It was never my thing, much to my mother's chagrin, or the sort of thing I'd push on a daughter. But a lot of fairy-tale princesses are not just beautiful, but clever, outwitting dragons and evil sorcerors, and never mussing their hair. My sisters were the pretty-princess types, and they're all managing to go to grad school and/or major in male-dominated fields, so somehow they picked up the 'pretty and kickass' part but not the 'pretty and clueless' part.
My cousin's ballroom dance heels cost between $50-$100. But you're right about the modern dance sandals.
Still, I don't think it's a dance recital, if only because the dresses don't look like costumes. Maybe the girls were told to wear nice shoes they could dance in, and some wore their dance shoes. It's not like you have a lot of choice when you're eleven.
Recent conversation with my niece (4) and nephew (6):
Niece: I'm a pretty princess!
Me: Some princesses were brave warriors! They killed dragons and fought bad guys!
Niece: No, they didn't. Princesses are pretty and wear pretty dresses and are pretty.
Me: Well, they're pretty, but they're also very brave!
Niece: No!
Nephew: This is America! There are no princesses!
Me: Well, that's true.
When my sisters and I played princesses we were usually mighty Princess of the Seasons (which if I remember, meant that we all coordinated the colors of our imaginary ballgowns with the imaginary jewels we were wearing), and we were all rescuing the imaginary princes. (Waiting for the princes to rescue us meant we'd have to, ugh, deal with boys.)
Re. princess fantasies: the secret truth is that boys also like being admired for being cute/pretty/fancy. I think it's a perfectly harmless fantasy, when part of a balanced breakfast containing all four food groups. It's when the princess fantasy is the primary fantasy, and the one all the adults encourage, and it starts to creep out of fantasy and into real life, that it becomes creepy and toxic.
We played a lot of cowboys and indians. In our version, the cowboys got locked up in a damp enclosure under the stairs, and the indians fed them leaves. The goal was a jailbreak, but since the lock was pretty good, that almost never happened. As one of the youngest, I always had to be a cowboy, which basically just sucked.
We also played a lot of pirates on the swingset. We were pirates, or fending off pirates, and we'd have to climb on the crossbars because, y'know, sharks.
31: If that's the only fantasy you have and that's all your parents expect out of you, sure. Otherwise, pretending to be a princess one day and an astronaut the next and a Jedi knight with a powerful umbrella-lightsaber (thirumm! crash thrmmmn!) and a normal girl the next who was riding her bicycle around the driveway when oh no! the driveway fell through and we were pedalling through sticky taffy to candyland! and now chocolate! and now we're fighting the lemon drop king!
There may be something deeply, deeply wrong with me, but if so, it extends far beyond princess fantasies.
That said, I hate wedding dresses. All of them. Why the hell would I want to look like a cupcake?
What I need to learn to calibrate is the appropriate amount of "discount" for something like this; that's what I was getting at with my "sane dads" musing.
For people in the liberal, (usually ex-radical) urban environment where my wife grew up, the rhetorical surrounds where I grew up would have been deeply spooky. The adults in her life avoided westerns, never saw a John Wayne movie, on purpose, and on and on. The Christian anticommunism, fervent patriotism, car-culture and casual teenage gun use and ownership of my youth were exactly what they most feared and protected their children from.
I don't like this stuff but I'm skeptical of the notion it's a perverse cult. Too much other stuff going on
Re. princess fantasies: the secret truth is that boys also like being admired for being cute/pretty/fancy.
True fact. Newt is all about the sparkly, and drags around a hunk of pink velvet cloth left over from making Halloween costumes like Linus's security blanket.
31: If that's the only fantasy you have and that's all your parents expect out of you, sure. Otherwise, pretending to be a princess one day and an astronaut the next and a Jedi knight with a powerful umbrella-lightsaber (thirumm! crash thrmmmn!) and a normal girl the next who was riding her bicycle around the driveway when oh no! the driveway fell through and we were pedalling through sticky taffy to candyland! and now chocolate! and now we're fighting the lemon drop king!
You betcha. Pretty sparkly princess nonsense isn't bad because it's diseased or anything, it's only bad when it's limiting. Running around and playing in a sequined tutu isn't any worse than wearing a Superman cape. (On the other hand, glittery plastic high-heeled sandals for little girls? Those are of Satan, because you can't run in them, all you can do is pose. The distinction should be clear.)
That said, I hate wedding dresses. All of them. Why the hell would I want to look like a cupcake?
Or, in my case, like Big Bird, but white. There were feathers. Lots of feathers. (I blame Dr. Oops.)
Well, you would have pried my princess dresses out of my cold dead hands when I was five, and you'd still have to today, but I do have some rather bitter memories of what a twit my first fundamentalist Christian best friend named Melissa used to be about the whole thing. She frequently made me be the boy, or the dragon, or whatever, because she was "dainty" and I was not.
(Oh, and I think it's probable that there was a performance portion of the evening, and a dance with daddy portion of the evening. I doubt the organizers went out and got Christian sponsorship if they weren't out to convey that message.)
Just the other day, our secretary, who still has a girl-crush on LizardBreath notwithstanding that she has been gone over a year, was showing me a picture of LizardBreath in her wedding dress and talking about how much she missed her and how pretty the dress was. I agreed that we all miss her. Lots of feathers on that dress, though (sorry, LB).
We usually didn't dress up to play princesses. I think my sister had a pair of the high-heeled sandals that came with the plastic jewelry, but she couldn't walk in them, and they didn't fit my feet, and plus, the rule of summer was 'What are you doing in the house? Get outside', so pretty-princess games were done by a bunch of little girls who were running around in shorts and t-shirts and describing the elegant dresses they were wearing.
(Not really unlike commenting in comment boxes, except we ran around more.)
There's more cheap dress-up stuff now than when we were kids; I'm not sure why. A tulle ballgown is like, $10 these days, and all the little girls have them.
Feathers? I bet you looked awesome anyway. As my boyfriend says when I mentioned (it's wedding season, everyone's getting married) that all dresses will make me look like a cupcake, that there's no such thing as an ugly bride, so I should quit worrying (even tho I'm sure apostropher has a link that will prove me wrong.)
And, you know, if you're getting married the wedding qua wedding is about the least important thing to worry about. If you don't want to do the wedding dress thing, get yourself a gorgeous regular dress in some style that isn't too far off what people are expecting (which is what the Big Bird suit was, a white evening gown. If I ever get invited to a winter costume ball I have a Snow Princess outfit ready to go.) which will be massively cheaper and probably much prettier.
45: Short, curvy, and princess dresses would make me look like a cupcake. (Think of it turned upside down, with all the fluffy layers like frosting.) And why white?
We're not engaged, but we're kind of talking about it by default because I swear, everyone I know who didn't get married two years ago is getting married this summer.
Until I contemplated my brother's fiancee, I would have wholeheartedly endorsed this sentiment. However, as I suspect she's pushing 250 and her sense of style runs to leather bustiers, thigh-high boots, and camel-toe pants, well... I'll let ya'll know in a couple months.
Absolutely. My wife avoided cupcake-osity, although it must be said that it required taking a firm hand with the ladies at the bridal shops. "No. No poofy dresses. Take that away." Etc. Her dress was subdued, tasteful, and pretty damn hot, and only the fact that it was white made it a "wedding dress."
We also played a lot of pirates on the swingset. We were pirates, or fending off pirates, and we'd have to climb on the crossbars because, y'know, sharks.
Whoah. Exact same childhood swingset experience. (Maybe it's not that unique but, still. Memories.)
61 - I thought this sentiment was well summed up by the quote "Have you ever wondered why it takes a bride months and months to plan a wedding, but a good funeral can be pulled together in two days? The elements are all the same -- church, minister, music, flowers, guests, food."
The stupid thing is that I want a fancyish sort of wedding because something has to lure my college friends into town. Though watching all of my friends go insane with wedding anxiety has made me think the smart thing to do is elope, and then throw a big party months later.
But I don't get the Most Special Day thing, or bridal sites that moon about how 'your dream wedding since you were a little girl.' I had lots of different dreams when I was a little girl, and none of them involved the perfect display of Ecudoran tulips and fretting over whether my style was 'classic' or 'romantic.'
My parents' wedding involved getting married in blue jeans in their living room in front of a handful of friends and family and then ordering takeout for everyone from the place around the corner. They have made it abundantly clear that that is the only type of wedding they'd be willing to pay for. Fortunately, I'm not really into weddings. I don't think I'd do blue jeans in the living room but that's much closer to the wedding I see having than the big church thing with a meringue dress.
My ex-boss threw a hissy when she found out that her parents were "only" allowing her a $35,000 budget for her wedding. How could she possibly have a wedding in D.C. for that amount!
I had those dreams when I was little. I wanted to get married in the snow, wearing a fur muff and a velvet cape (it could be fake fur), and ride off with my husband in a sleigh drawn by black horses.
My parents' wedding involved getting married in blue jeans in their living room in front of a handful of friends and family and then ordering takeout for everyone from the place around the corner.
Sometimes I think you make up stories about your parents just so I'll feel wistful about people I never knew. Not cool.
Your parents are very lucky in you, Becks. We had a simple wedding twenty odd years ago, but a lot of people in our circle who are younger, born after about '65, wanted a big wedding all their lives. What we once would have thought a permanent cultural change away from all that begins to look more-and-more like a temporary aberration, sort of like keeping your name is, apparently.
Tia, that's cute. I feel like I missed out and now I'm adrift in meringue land.
But I don't have $20,000 for a wedding (parents are of the 'Why would you get married anyway? You don't have a boyfriend. He's just a good friend.' variety) and that seems to be what it costs and for the life of me, I can't figure out how anyone ever gets married.
One of my sisters had a pretty cool wedding. A lapsed Mormon, she was marrying a lapsed Catholic, so they split the difference and got a Unitarian minister. They put up a party tent on my grandma's front lawn for the ceremony, then everyone tromped the two blocks to my parents house and ate cheese and shrimp in the back yard. The bride and groom thwacked at a pinata, and the children ate the candy. Then everyone left, and I got to eat leftover shrimp until I felt ill. Good times.
And these days, I do want a biggish wedding, but the part I'm really really looking forward to is the dance party. I don't want a band, only a DJ. All my friends will be there, and it will be so, so awesome. I want to be too exhausted from flinging myself about to "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and "It's Raining Men" to have sex on my wedding night.
Jesus H. Christ. The very rich are different from you and me.
Here's a tip for all you single folks out there: being married is pretty cool, but unless you're eloping or going the courthouse route, getting married sucks in a way few other events in your life ever will. Chemotherapy might be worse, I guess.
We kinda split the difference on the fancy wedding thing. Ceremony outdoors in a park, rented a cafe in the same park for a reception, spent maybe $5K? Which, for dinner and drinks for 80 isn't crazy. Planning took maybe six weeks of vague attention -- we got engaged in February, decided we should start taking action on the actually getting married front sometime in August, and did it the beginning of October.
Fun facts -- no one sane will notice if your invitations are printed at home, if you buy nice plain cards to print them on. Flowers look basically like flowers. You can buy a wedding dress in an afternoon. Absolutely no one will ever care or remember if there were or were not personalized favors. This all came out looking very much like a standard big wedding, but it cost about 1/2 what you'd expect, and took 1/10th of the attention.
Having a wedding is actually kind of fun, contra 81, if you enjoy planning a party and you don't go crazy with "big"-ness (time enough for that in your honeymoon bed), and you don't get cowed by your parents and in-laws. We had a pretty fancy, small but not tiny wedding in 1993 for in the neighborhood of 3000 1993 dollars -- obviously not chump change but we were able to scrape it together with halp from the two sets of parents. Those >$10000 price tags you hear about I think mostly involve the rental fees for fancy venues. Better to go with (a) if religious, your house of worship or (b) if not, your back-yard. (a) is inexpensive and (b) practically free. Then you can concentrate on getting some seriously tasty food and lots of alcoholic beverages -- lousy food and insufficient booze are wedding killers.
88: And that's everything, dress, flowers, pictures, officiant (literally from 1-800 Dial a Priest. They had an ad in the Yellow Pages.) We saved some money serving homemade beer and mead, but not all that much -- everyone drank the homemade stuff, and then the best man wandered off with all the leftover hard liquor and wine.
My other boss had the craziest over the top wedding I've heard of. When she was describing it on the first day of our project, we knew we were so screwed having her as our boss because she was obviously a crazy woman. She wanted an outdoor, backyard wedding at her parents' house and made them spend $20,000 relandscaping the whole place to her specifications only to freak out about the possibility of it raining two months before the wedding and move it to a (very expensive) reception hall. Their dinner featured French onion soup topped with croutons monogrammed with the couple's initials. The total bill topped $120K and they were still paying it off 5 years later. But it was soooo worth it for their special day!
For the entire duration of that project, whenever this woman made an unrealistic demand from us (which was often) my co-worker and I would look at each other, roll our eyes, and say "monogrammed crouton" under our breath.
I have planned parties and galas and things and find it oddly satisfying to create a festive mood and make a room look pretty and have some sense of occasion and drama. I'm still sorry I missed the wedding of a friend who worked for Hou/se Beau/tiful because she bought a thousand candles for the event, and lit up a whole promontory overlooking the ocean with them, without setting anything on fire. Pretty!
I have been consulted on the weddings of most people I know, and could probably have a successful career as a wedding planner, but for the slightly inconvenient fact I don't know that I entirely believe in marriage now and was against it for a long time, for ideological reasons.
I'm giggling over 'monogrammed croutons.' There's a girl who needed to play more Jedi umbrella-lightsaber as a kid.
I think my parents' church has a reception hall now. But now they have a year-long wait, which I'm suspecting is to make sure the bride isn't pregnant, since it used to be six months.
Does the church require classes to get married? That could be part of it. One of my friends and her fiancée had to take a class that met once a week for something like 4 or 5 months for their priest to perform the ceremony. An elder also did something like a "home inspection" to make sure they weren't living together out of wedlock.
Pre-Cana classes, yup. But they did those with the six month requirement, too.
It's weird, though, since this marriage process seems to be designed for people who are a) still living in their hometowns and b) haven't moved out of their parents' house yet.
Well there are some very nice old houses around Magnolia, though I'm not really sure who lives in them. Strike that -- a friend of mine lived in one of them and his father was IIRC something like a venture capitalist, so at least nouveau riche. And I think most of the people who live in the McMansion communities northeast of town are wealthy if not classy.
123: Our little girl can't be dating anyone because she's still in school and is focusing on her schoolwork. There's time for dating later.
(Boyfriends may be met and the meetings may go well, but the boyfriend must never be acknowledged by the parents as a boyfriend. I think they're worried I'll retroactively get pregnant and drop out of eighth grade.)
Love tutor. Heh. My parents are pretty normal in some respects, but it somehow became 'inappropriate' to take my boyfriend to a wedding (where a date was invited!), and I should instead take a high school male friend. "You wouldn't want to take Calaboy to that." I might acknowledge inadvertently that I do more than study!
I'd be curious to know what drives the preferences here: a general desire for the casual, an objection to bad taste (in crouton form), or a reaction against the princess aspect of weddings?
It seems totally possible, to me, to throw a fancy party with good taste. It can be an art form--especially if it is driven by something other than the desire to show wealth. And I recall some people here being more interested in, say, dressing up for the opera than I am. So I'm wondering if it's just weddings that seem problematic. Is it that they cause people to totally blow money, because expectations run so high? Or that the dreaming-since-girlhood/cultural implications make it squicky?
For me, it's the (1) crazy amounts of money; and the (2) incredibly inflated overimportance of bizarrely finicky details as if they were earthshattering due to unhealthy lifelong fascination with one's special day.
Parties are good, and well done, artful parties are especially good. Having people you love around to celebrate the change from one life-stage to another, also good. But throwing a party you can't afford, and getting insane about monogrammed croutons and personalized favors that don't actually make anything more fun for anyone, is just crazy. A multi-thousand dollar wedding dress, for someone who doesn't have the money to generally spend thousands on a dress, is crazy.
I suppose I meant the first joke in comments in response to the allusion in the post. It would be pretty strange if I had been waiting for the first Wesley Willis joke unprompted.
I agree with LB, though I think it's mostly #2. Every party should be fun. If you or your guests are worried that something will not go exactly as planned, that's not fun. Particularly in this day and age, I'm not sure that marriage strikes me as a particularly dramatic step that should be solemnly solemnized.
Part of it is just a guess that I won't enjoy the company of most of the people at an enormously fancy wedding.
Wedding dress: white silk sheath with long sleeves and beading at the hem and in a band at the waist. I had it made b/c they don't sell decent dresses in midwestern cities. No need to go the cupcake route. Ceremony: heavy hors d'oeuvres, jazz pianist, good wine, champagne and beer, rented penthouse at sunset with nice view. Guests: college friends, immediate family & grandparents, a select group of other good friends. Flowers: mostly greens and seasonal blooms. Photos: hired a guy for $150 to take candid shots and hand us the roll of film afterwards. Days before the wedding: entertaining out of town guests with big picnic at outdoor jazz festival, several meals at nice restaurants, hanging out at our place. Total cost: $7000. The thing was a blast--basically an excuse to hang out with all your best friends from near and far for an entire week with nothing else to do. I highly recommend it.
The dreaming-since-girlhood thing is so weird. There's really no reason that I didn't go along with my fellow little-girl compatriots in dreaming of weddings as a child, but I simply didn't. Last year, a friend of mine and I were invited to a (fancy) charity dinner for the ACLU, and upon walking into the ballroom my friend was immediately like "this place would be perfect for a wedding." I was thinking "Wtf? Who is thinking about weddings?" and she started to lament like how she worried she was "behind" and "would not be able to have the wedding she dreamed of." I was like "Dude, you're 24."
On the general topic of the father-daughter dance, I think bphd is right that it's just an excuse for shitty parenting. The father daughter thing is only "special" because a lot of girls don't spend hardly any time with their fathers. I remember that there was a father-daughter event with my girl scout troop in the 5th grade, and the troop leader said it was so we "could spend time with our fathers." I spent time with my dad every damn day. Girl Scouts was supposed to be to hang out with other kids. Fuckers. I skippe the event.
I love parties. I love going to weddings and dancing. And I've been at many tasteful weddings. But that said:
1) The amount of money involved is ridiculous.
1a) I don't have that kind of money, but I'm friends with people who do. It's not nasty jealousy so much as I want to put on a good show, too.
1b) It's promoted as, and seems to be normal, for a middling middle-class family with a middling amount of income, to spend thousands of dollars on a wedding. If it were only the real princesses, fine. But not everyone has the money to be a princess, but no one wants to throw a cheap wedding.
2) Every bride I've known melts down over something like the color of the edging of the napkins. It takes perfectly competent, intelligent young women and turns them into shrill dolls whose only thought is 'Ivory or Champagne?'
3) And it's just a party! It's a big day,and an exciting day, but I sort of resent the idea that the wedding is supposed to represent the entire point of my existence. (Which it must be -- I didn't spend $20,000 on my undergraduate education! )
A fancy party would be fine, but if it were just a fancy party, I a) wouldn't be spending money I didn't have and b) I'd be wearing a hott number in blue, not some damn cupcake edged in organza meringue.
Oh, in addition to printing invitations at home, you can actually just buy nice stationary and hand-write them. It's a good way to keep the guest list sane; if you don't like so-and-so enough to write them an invite, then there's no point inviting them.
My sister's wedding was quite tastefully done. She and her husband planned and financed it together out of a budget they had set aside specifically for the purpose. It was outdoors, in a small garden, in the evening, and they happened to catch one of those rare clear days in the summer in LA when you can actually see the mountains in the distance.
146 is what we did -- calligraphy is fun. A bit time-consuming, but it does keep you from inviting too many people that you aren't really anxious to see there.
The upper class in Modesto seems like a null set to me.
Au contraire. In established agricultural regions, there are often a number of families who own a lot of land, have done so for a long long time, and derive their income from supervising it and making it produce. Which I think is the traditional definition of "upper class," in fact.
Yeah well there are the Gallos and the DelMontes but I don't think they actually live in Modesto -- not sure but my hunch is they live on ranches elsewhere in the valley.
If you or your guests are worried that something will not go exactly as planned, that's not fun.
I never understood this: it seems to me that one hires caterers precisely so that one doesn't have to worry about things not going as planned. Pick a caterer, give them a general sense of what you want ("skip the cheese and veggie trays, and here's a recipe I really like for Vietnamese summer rolls--I'm thinking mostly foods that people can eat standing and that are made of good, fresh ingredients, okay? Thanks!"), and it's done.
Having said that, I figure at any event, at least one thing is likely to go horribly wrong. IMHO, when it does, you get to laugh and say "ok, we've had our disaster, now I know the rest of it will be great." In my case, the disaster was a pianist who I hadn't hired b/c he sucked and was an asshole: he showed up anyway, drunk, wearing white tails (???) and proceeded to insist that I had hired him and owed him money. My mom tipped him $50, told him that if he could dig up a signed contract we'd pay the balance of it, and walked him to the elevator.
The real pianist wore a dinner jacket, played what he liked (all I'd specified was "jazz piano"), and even stayed afterwards to play while the caterers and my mom and sis cleaned up because, he said, it was such a good piano (it came with the penthouse rental) and he was enjoying playing it.
134 - a lot of the wedding symbolism is squicky.
white dress, being given away by father to husband (the wedding contract was traditionally between those two, you know), icky enforced heterosexuality of matching sets of maids and grooms of honor, who sit on some dais with the bride and groom at dinner, all kinds of bad memories coming out of the cultural closet...
i also find engagement rings icky. it's like men marking their territory. the hebrew roots of that tradition is that by accepting the ring the woman agrees to be bound to the man - she gives him herself in exchange.
plus, nowadays, wearing a diamond - unless it was passed down through the family for years - is wearing something stained by the blood of african children.
i could imagine a good party, and a beautiful artful non-squicky wedding. but it would not look like a lot of the weddings i go to now...
and it would have WAY better music...
Part of my agreement may reflect my white trash upbringing. Getting married by a Justice of the Peace in Nevada is a family tradition. Indeed, when my father and step-mother got married, we (them and eight kids) took a Greyhound bus from near Sacramento to Reno, they got married, and then we all took the bus back that evening.
My honey wrote a wedding march for one of his friends. It involved crashing pots and pans, among other sounds. I've heard it went over well, but then again, I didn't exactly hear that from a disinterested party.
Indeed, when my father and step-mother got married, we (them and eight kids) took a Greyhound bus from near Sacramento to Reno, they got married, and then we all took the bus back that evening.
Streamers and cans and a "Just Married" sign on the bus, I assume?
Weddings are, indeed, loaded down with all kinds of icky symbolism, and have the potential to turn rational and sane people into the insane, but I can testify that it is possible to avoid all that insanity with some diligence. It's just planning a party, and that's fun.
Our wedding was relatively inexpensive, it was outdoors with a fabulous caterer and a decent DJ afterwards, and everyone (us included) claims to have a good time. My then-fiancee and I just made sure to give each other the appropriate withering look whenever either of us started to get over-the-top obsessed with a tiny detail (although I confess that I did print out personalized schedules of the day for every one participating in the wedding, with an alternate rain plan schedule on the back, each schedule color-coded based on the activities the person needed to be present for... and I generated the whole thing from a database).
OMG – I just remembered! I had blocked it out because it was so, so wrong. I went to a wedding where they made all of the guests at the reception form one of those long tunnel things with their arms like football players run through when they're being announced at the beginning of the game and the wedding party and bride and groom came running through it to the LET'S GET READY TO RUUUUUMBLE!!! song instead of entering to the wedding march. There's nontraditional and then there's just omigod.
You know, symbols have the meanings people ascribe to them. For example, no one is going to seriously think a bride wearing white is concerned about her purity if she's been cohabiting with her fiance for three years. It's just a fun tradition that the dress be white or cream or some light color. All the wedding rituals, absent the actual attitude that the woman was owned by her father and then will be by her husband, are just gestures and traditions that are free of inherent meaning and can be interpreted by the participants as they will.
165 - but why mimic them? when there are so many other things one could do...
especially when a good number of your audience members may not be (re)interpreting the gestures you make, along with you.
The fake princess market segment grows and grows: white wasn't traditional - there was in fact no traditional color for wedding dresses - until 1840 when Queen Victoria married her cousin Albert of Saxe-Coburg.
You mimic them for whatever emotional reason people always want to maintain old forms, even if they're draping them over new substance. I'm not sure what all the reasons are, but I know it's what people like to do. It's hard to make culture out of whole cloth, so you borrow a little and change it up when you need to. My mostly ex boyfriend and I believe in God not at all, but we both grew up around Christians and so we had a tree this year. It was purty. We gave each other presents. I made mulled wine. I'm regretful that I didn't celebrate Passover this year, because once a year I do like to drink some wine and quibble over the haggadah (sp?) and have an afikomen hunt. It feels connected and rooted. I can alter whatever needs altering so it's not oppressive.
166 -- But get ready for that state of affairs to change. As with so many other facets of our existence, the line between weddings and pro football is being gradually blurred. I think by 2013 at the latest we will see the role of clergy replaced by referees, and the procession down the aisle replaced by a 20-yard line rush. No facet of our lives is sacrosanct to these barbarians of the oblate spheroid!
163: When you're actually planning a wedding, the true nature and breadth of the wedding-industrial complex, which otherwise you mostly don't pay any attention to, is truly shocking. Favorite moment: Me: "Mr. B. doesn't want a boutonnière." Florist: "What? How will people know who he is?" Me: "Um, he'll be the one standing next to me at the altar? And we're not inviting people who don't actually know us?"
All the wedding rituals, absent the actual attitude that the woman was owned by her father and then will be by her husband, are just gestures and traditions that are free of inherent meaning and can be interpreted by the participants as they will.
No; they're not free of meaning, although this doesn't mean that they can't be reinterpreted or simply held on to for sentimental reasons.
My wife wore a pink linen dress to our wedding and I wore jeans and a good white shirt. So the only person wearing white was the guy and not a cupcake in sight.
In retrospect the jeans were not a good idea -- I look a bit goofy in them next to my wife who looks great -- nor was the overly short hair-cut I had which made me look bald.
We just hired a registry office in Glasgow, then everyone walked across the park to a nice pub/restaurant for drinks in the garden (it was a hot day) and a meal in the restaurant after. Various friends just dropped into the pub when they felt like it throughout the day -- from my point of view it was great and, given that I was a student at the time and I was paying, it was cheap. People mostly paid for their own meal -- there was just no way we could have paid for everyone to eat -- so we were major cheapskates.
Nice weddings are cool and all but some people are just nuts about them -- obsessive in a sick sick way.
In Switzerland, I attended a church-wedding followed by a seventeen-course meal followed by an ages-long wedding reception/party (during which, out of boredom, I accidentally enlisted about ten villagers in burgling a car).
In France, I attended a wonderfully spontaneous champagne on the Pont des Arts we-just-got-hitched-at-the-prefecture celebration only later to be deadened by the prefunctory evening dinner at the rented place (an upstairs hall at the Musee d'Orsay).
re: 178, the sums of money may be slightly smaller, I suspect, but yeah, I've met or heard of people through friends who are almost as crazily obsessed as monogrammed crouton woman.
So I don't think it's a specifically American thing.
My daughters are 8 and 6, and words cannot express how godamn creepy this is.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:11 AM
Beat my ass.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:29 AM
How can you measure the value
In cubic centimeters, obvs.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:50 AM
Goes oddly well with the Singapore branch of the Campaign for Real Patriarchy.
Posted by Andrew Brown | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:51 AM
Goes oddly well with the Singapore branch of the Campaign for Real Patriarchy.
Posted by Andrew Brown | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:51 AM
The moment I put my hand in my father's, I felt like a princess. In those six precious hours, I believe I grew in relationship with my father more than I ever have. I knew it was my night, and I treasured every minute of it,' said eleven-year-old Anna Tullis of our Father Daughter Purity Ball
my wrinkly balls, did an eleven year old say that.
Posted by dsquared | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 1:56 AM
Isn't the phrase, "Father-Daughter Ball" sufficiently creepy enough to set the JonBenet police on you? Ick.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 4:26 AM
As presented here, control and sexual panic screem from the page. Whether all participants are in this frame of mind I'm not so sure. If his daughter's girlfriends were doing it, you might get a sane dad to participate.
Posted by i don't pay | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 6:22 AM
scream
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 6:23 AM
I want to read about the parallel Mother-Son Ball which the other half of the family attends.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 6:25 AM
Screem: America's Only Industrial Noise Rock 'n' Roll Magazine.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 6:27 AM
Creepy. It's a bit like watching a car wreck that takes twenty years to complete.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 6:29 AM
This story is getting creepy all over my memories of learning clumsily to foxtrot with my grandfather! Argh, get the creepy off me!
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 6:33 AM
If his daughter's girlfriends were doing it, you might get a sane dad to participate.
I'd be willing to bet that about half of the dads doing it were dragged into it by their daughters, who at age eleven think getting to wear pretty gowns and have their hait done is the most wonderful thing ever.
But gah, this is creepy. My parents are about as conservative and religious as you can get, and this would have freaked them out. Dads should not spend that much time worrying about their daughters' hymens.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 6:37 AM
Man, those photos are something.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 6:46 AM
My high school had an annual semi-formal Father-Daughter Dance and the boys' schools all had Mom Proms. I only went once, my freshman year. Even without the virginity messages, it did have kind of weird undertones. There's something a little bizarre about going to Homecoming one week with your boyfriend and then having almost the exact same evening with your father not too shortly after (well, the dinner and dance part, at least).
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 6:47 AM
I suspect I find this creepier because I assume the parents are conservatives. I'm much more willing to believe that Dems are simply well-meaning but benign freaks. But, then, I assume Dems wouldn't use the same language to describe things, and wouldn't feel comfortable with a dance whose conception revolved around their daughters' sexuality.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 6:56 AM
Waitaminute. I went to the website to check out the photos, and there's this one picture of some older girls dancing--and they're all wearing those stupid expensive modern dance sandals. In another shot, with a mixed crowd of older and younger girls, more than one of them are wearing the nice split shank ballet slipper. And that thing they're doing with their hands? Straight outta Giselle.
I think this might have been a dance performance. The girls just got some crackpot Christian sponsorship to lure their dads to it.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 6:56 AM
It looks as if there's a recital taking place before the ball. There are definitely girls dressed for ballet but also (mostly older) girls dressed for prom.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 7:00 AM
i also think the "princess" fantasy in a lot of american culture is creepy.
who wants to sit around all day looking pretty while not learning/having/using any skills or abilities or activities to be productive & make you feel accomplished or good about yourself?? blechh.
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 7:02 AM
a radiant sense of self-worth and identity.
Humph. Typical liberal touchy-feely PC crap, talking as if instilling a sense of self-worth is the be-all and end-all of child-rearing.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 7:04 AM
Re: princess fantasy, see: bridal magazines.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 7:05 AM
What revolts me about the thing (okay, besides the control freakishness and the sublimated incest stuff) is the idea that it's so wonderful because it gives the girls this "special moment" with daddy. What, dude, you're not gonna dance with your kid or make her feel special or let her play princess or give her your loving attention unless there's some special God-and-virginity associated reason for it? Even aside from the sex crap, it's like this massive excuse for shitty parenting wrapped up in one night of sick rationalization.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 7:07 AM
From the website, it seems as though it's not a dance recital, but maybe a ball everyone takes very seriously and so gets ballroom lessons ahead of time.
I don't think there's much wrong with the princess fantasy. It was never my thing, much to my mother's chagrin, or the sort of thing I'd push on a daughter. But a lot of fairy-tale princesses are not just beautiful, but clever, outwitting dragons and evil sorcerors, and never mussing their hair. My sisters were the pretty-princess types, and they're all managing to go to grad school and/or major in male-dominated fields, so somehow they picked up the 'pretty and kickass' part but not the 'pretty and clueless' part.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 7:09 AM
Seriously, the modern dance sandals mean that it's not just a question of ballroom dancing. Those things must cost at least $40.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 7:14 AM
My cousin's ballroom dance heels cost between $50-$100. But you're right about the modern dance sandals.
Still, I don't think it's a dance recital, if only because the dresses don't look like costumes. Maybe the girls were told to wear nice shoes they could dance in, and some wore their dance shoes. It's not like you have a lot of choice when you're eleven.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 7:20 AM
Recent conversation with my niece (4) and nephew (6):
Niece: I'm a pretty princess!
Me: Some princesses were brave warriors! They killed dragons and fought bad guys!
Niece: No, they didn't. Princesses are pretty and wear pretty dresses and are pretty.
Me: Well, they're pretty, but they're also very brave!
Niece: No!
Nephew: This is America! There are no princesses!
Me: Well, that's true.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 7:20 AM
JM, that's adorable.
When my sisters and I played princesses we were usually mighty Princess of the Seasons (which if I remember, meant that we all coordinated the colors of our imaginary ballgowns with the imaginary jewels we were wearing), and we were all rescuing the imaginary princes. (Waiting for the princes to rescue us meant we'd have to, ugh, deal with boys.)
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 7:24 AM
Re. princess fantasies: the secret truth is that boys also like being admired for being cute/pretty/fancy. I think it's a perfectly harmless fantasy, when part of a balanced breakfast containing all four food groups. It's when the princess fantasy is the primary fantasy, and the one all the adults encourage, and it starts to creep out of fantasy and into real life, that it becomes creepy and toxic.
IMHO.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 7:33 AM
We played a lot of cowboys and indians. In our version, the cowboys got locked up in a damp enclosure under the stairs, and the indians fed them leaves. The goal was a jailbreak, but since the lock was pretty good, that almost never happened. As one of the youngest, I always had to be a cowboy, which basically just sucked.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 7:38 AM
I don't think there's much wrong with the princess fantasy.
You are deeply, deeply wrong.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 7:44 AM
29: Exactly.
We also played a lot of pirates on the swingset. We were pirates, or fending off pirates, and we'd have to climb on the crossbars because, y'know, sharks.
31: If that's the only fantasy you have and that's all your parents expect out of you, sure. Otherwise, pretending to be a princess one day and an astronaut the next and a Jedi knight with a powerful umbrella-lightsaber (thirumm! crash thrmmmn!) and a normal girl the next who was riding her bicycle around the driveway when oh no! the driveway fell through and we were pedalling through sticky taffy to candyland! and now chocolate! and now we're fighting the lemon drop king!
There may be something deeply, deeply wrong with me, but if so, it extends far beyond princess fantasies.
That said, I hate wedding dresses. All of them. Why the hell would I want to look like a cupcake?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 7:51 AM
32: I feel certain there's nothing wrong with you.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:07 AM
What I need to learn to calibrate is the appropriate amount of "discount" for something like this; that's what I was getting at with my "sane dads" musing.
For people in the liberal, (usually ex-radical) urban environment where my wife grew up, the rhetorical surrounds where I grew up would have been deeply spooky. The adults in her life avoided westerns, never saw a John Wayne movie, on purpose, and on and on. The Christian anticommunism, fervent patriotism, car-culture and casual teenage gun use and ownership of my youth were exactly what they most feared and protected their children from.
I don't like this stuff but I'm skeptical of the notion it's a perverse cult. Too much other stuff going on
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:09 AM
Re. princess fantasies: the secret truth is that boys also like being admired for being cute/pretty/fancy.
True fact. Newt is all about the sparkly, and drags around a hunk of pink velvet cloth left over from making Halloween costumes like Linus's security blanket.
31: If that's the only fantasy you have and that's all your parents expect out of you, sure. Otherwise, pretending to be a princess one day and an astronaut the next and a Jedi knight with a powerful umbrella-lightsaber (thirumm! crash thrmmmn!) and a normal girl the next who was riding her bicycle around the driveway when oh no! the driveway fell through and we were pedalling through sticky taffy to candyland! and now chocolate! and now we're fighting the lemon drop king!
You betcha. Pretty sparkly princess nonsense isn't bad because it's diseased or anything, it's only bad when it's limiting. Running around and playing in a sequined tutu isn't any worse than wearing a Superman cape. (On the other hand, glittery plastic high-heeled sandals for little girls? Those are of Satan, because you can't run in them, all you can do is pose. The distinction should be clear.)
That said, I hate wedding dresses. All of them. Why the hell would I want to look like a cupcake?
Or, in my case, like Big Bird, but white. There were feathers. Lots of feathers. (I blame Dr. Oops.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:11 AM
Was there a beak?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:16 AM
Well, you would have pried my princess dresses out of my cold dead hands when I was five, and you'd still have to today, but I do have some rather bitter memories of what a twit my first fundamentalist Christian best friend named Melissa used to be about the whole thing. She frequently made me be the boy, or the dragon, or whatever, because she was "dainty" and I was not.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:20 AM
(Oh, and I think it's probable that there was a performance portion of the evening, and a dance with daddy portion of the evening. I doubt the organizers went out and got Christian sponsorship if they weren't out to convey that message.)
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:24 AM
There were feathers. Lots of feathers.
Just the other day, our secretary, who still has a girl-crush on LizardBreath notwithstanding that she has been gone over a year, was showing me a picture of LizardBreath in her wedding dress and talking about how much she missed her and how pretty the dress was. I agreed that we all miss her. Lots of feathers on that dress, though (sorry, LB).
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:26 AM
We usually didn't dress up to play princesses. I think my sister had a pair of the high-heeled sandals that came with the plastic jewelry, but she couldn't walk in them, and they didn't fit my feet, and plus, the rule of summer was 'What are you doing in the house? Get outside', so pretty-princess games were done by a bunch of little girls who were running around in shorts and t-shirts and describing the elegant dresses they were wearing.
(Not really unlike commenting in comment boxes, except we ran around more.)
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:27 AM
She frequently made me be the boy
Ok, I'm getting a nice image there... Could you expand on that?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:30 AM
There's more cheap dress-up stuff now than when we were kids; I'm not sure why. A tulle ballgown is like, $10 these days, and all the little girls have them.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:30 AM
And it's nice to know that G. still misses me; she was fun to have around.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:37 AM
Feathers? I bet you looked awesome anyway. As my boyfriend says when I mentioned (it's wedding season, everyone's getting married) that all dresses will make me look like a cupcake, that there's no such thing as an ugly bride, so I should quit worrying (even tho I'm sure apostropher has a link that will prove me wrong.)
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:37 AM
How are cupcakes ugly? I could see not wanting to look like a cheese danish, or a scone; but cupcakes are quite attractive.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:40 AM
And, you know, if you're getting married the wedding qua wedding is about the least important thing to worry about. If you don't want to do the wedding dress thing, get yourself a gorgeous regular dress in some style that isn't too far off what people are expecting (which is what the Big Bird suit was, a white evening gown. If I ever get invited to a winter costume ball I have a Snow Princess outfit ready to go.) which will be massively cheaper and probably much prettier.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:41 AM
45: Short, curvy, and princess dresses would make me look like a cupcake. (Think of it turned upside down, with all the fluffy layers like frosting.) And why white?
We're not engaged, but we're kind of talking about it by default because I swear, everyone I know who didn't get married two years ago is getting married this summer.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:45 AM
And why white?
Y-you mean to say you're not pure?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:47 AM
I mean to say that white is a hideous non-color.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:49 AM
there's no such thing as an ugly bride
Until I contemplated my brother's fiancee, I would have wholeheartedly endorsed this sentiment. However, as I suspect she's pushing 250 and her sense of style runs to leather bustiers, thigh-high boots, and camel-toe pants, well... I'll let ya'll know in a couple months.
[Yes, I know I'm evil, but come on]
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:49 AM
I'm sure apostropher has a link
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:52 AM
Absolutely. My wife avoided cupcake-osity, although it must be said that it required taking a firm hand with the ladies at the bridal shops. "No. No poofy dresses. Take that away." Etc. Her dress was subdued, tasteful, and pretty damn hot, and only the fact that it was white made it a "wedding dress."
We also played a lot of pirates on the swingset. We were pirates, or fending off pirates, and we'd have to climb on the crossbars because, y'know, sharks.
Whoah. Exact same childhood swingset experience. (Maybe it's not that unique but, still. Memories.)
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:53 AM
leather bustiers, thigh-high boots, and camel-toe pants
black lipstick?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:53 AM
Possibly. Not around my family, but it would fit.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:58 AM
I want this dress.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:58 AM
I want the outfit the guy behind her has on.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 9:00 AM
'Postropher, you want a stalks of hay stuck to your ass?
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 9:08 AM
Grrr. "a stalks" s/b "stalks." Or "twigs" or "sheafs" or whateverthehell.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 9:09 AM
I've always thought it's more of a broom look than a cupcake look, Cala.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 9:15 AM
meringue
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 9:25 AM
Fluffy desert product. Though I could see broom, pdf.
Something about weddings. Everyone has to wear white and otherwise sane people spend $3000 on flowers.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 9:27 AM
"more of a broom look than a cupcake look"
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 9:27 AM
broom look
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 9:49 AM
'Postropher, you want a stalks of hay stuck to your ass?
Are you offering, Matt?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 9:51 AM
61 - I thought this sentiment was well summed up by the quote "Have you ever wondered why it takes a bride months and months to plan a wedding, but a good funeral can be pulled together in two days? The elements are all the same -- church, minister, music, flowers, guests, food."
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 9:54 AM
When I was a kid, my dad offered us girls five thousand dollars if we'd elope.
He now claims it was a joke.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:08 AM
people look more cute, and more pretty, if they are at least partly unconscious of it.
that especially includes little kids.
(anti-princess)
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:12 AM
Ben Wolfson, you can really kick a mountain lion's ass! You are a rock star in Jesus' name!
Posted by Wesley "FL" Willis | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:13 AM
The stupid thing is that I want a fancyish sort of wedding because something has to lure my college friends into town. Though watching all of my friends go insane with wedding anxiety has made me think the smart thing to do is elope, and then throw a big party months later.
But I don't get the Most Special Day thing, or bridal sites that moon about how 'your dream wedding since you were a little girl.' I had lots of different dreams when I was a little girl, and none of them involved the perfect display of Ecudoran tulips and fretting over whether my style was 'classic' or 'romantic.'
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:16 AM
My parents' wedding involved getting married in blue jeans in their living room in front of a handful of friends and family and then ordering takeout for everyone from the place around the corner. They have made it abundantly clear that that is the only type of wedding they'd be willing to pay for. Fortunately, I'm not really into weddings. I don't think I'd do blue jeans in the living room but that's much closer to the wedding I see having than the big church thing with a meringue dress.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:21 AM
My ex-boss threw a hissy when she found out that her parents were "only" allowing her a $35,000 budget for her wedding. How could she possibly have a wedding in D.C. for that amount!
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:23 AM
66 - Wow, he could have just sold you to the Oklahoma guy for 1/5 of that.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:25 AM
I had those dreams when I was little. I wanted to get married in the snow, wearing a fur muff and a velvet cape (it could be fake fur), and ride off with my husband in a sleigh drawn by black horses.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:25 AM
My parents' wedding involved getting married in blue jeans in their living room in front of a handful of friends and family and then ordering takeout for everyone from the place around the corner.
Sometimes I think you make up stories about your parents just so I'll feel wistful about people I never knew. Not cool.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:26 AM
Your parents are very lucky in you, Becks. We had a simple wedding twenty odd years ago, but a lot of people in our circle who are younger, born after about '65, wanted a big wedding all their lives. What we once would have thought a permanent cultural change away from all that begins to look more-and-more like a temporary aberration, sort of like keeping your name is, apparently.
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:30 AM
Tia, that's cute. I feel like I missed out and now I'm adrift in meringue land.
But I don't have $20,000 for a wedding (parents are of the 'Why would you get married anyway? You don't have a boyfriend. He's just a good friend.' variety) and that seems to be what it costs and for the life of me, I can't figure out how anyone ever gets married.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:32 AM
You could make your muff furry for the occasion, Tia.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:32 AM
72--No, he couldn't; we worship pigs.
One of my sisters had a pretty cool wedding. A lapsed Mormon, she was marrying a lapsed Catholic, so they split the difference and got a Unitarian minister. They put up a party tent on my grandma's front lawn for the ceremony, then everyone tromped the two blocks to my parents house and ate cheese and shrimp in the back yard. The bride and groom thwacked at a pinata, and the children ate the candy. Then everyone left, and I got to eat leftover shrimp until I felt ill. Good times.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:33 AM
I think my parents were both in formal attire, but my dad wore flip-flops to their wedding.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:34 AM
And these days, I do want a biggish wedding, but the part I'm really really looking forward to is the dance party. I don't want a band, only a DJ. All my friends will be there, and it will be so, so awesome. I want to be too exhausted from flinging myself about to "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and "It's Raining Men" to have sex on my wedding night.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:34 AM
"only" allowing her a $35,000 budget
Jesus H. Christ. The very rich are different from you and me.
Here's a tip for all you single folks out there: being married is pretty cool, but unless you're eloping or going the courthouse route, getting married sucks in a way few other events in your life ever will. Chemotherapy might be worse, I guess.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:35 AM
And I have actually lain in bed making up invitation lists with Clementine and I. Don't. Care. Who. Knows. It.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:36 AM
Also, Jackmormon's nephew is right: royalist fantasies are a sign of the moral decay of the republic.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:39 AM
flinging myself about to "Total Eclipse of the Heart"
Synchronicity. I have just the version for you.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:41 AM
We kinda split the difference on the fancy wedding thing. Ceremony outdoors in a park, rented a cafe in the same park for a reception, spent maybe $5K? Which, for dinner and drinks for 80 isn't crazy. Planning took maybe six weeks of vague attention -- we got engaged in February, decided we should start taking action on the actually getting married front sometime in August, and did it the beginning of October.
Fun facts -- no one sane will notice if your invitations are printed at home, if you buy nice plain cards to print them on. Flowers look basically like flowers. You can buy a wedding dress in an afternoon. Absolutely no one will ever care or remember if there were or were not personalized favors. This all came out looking very much like a standard big wedding, but it cost about 1/2 what you'd expect, and took 1/10th of the attention.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:45 AM
Having a wedding is actually kind of fun, contra 81, if you enjoy planning a party and you don't go crazy with "big"-ness (time enough for that in your honeymoon bed), and you don't get cowed by your parents and in-laws. We had a pretty fancy, small but not tiny wedding in 1993 for in the neighborhood of 3000 1993 dollars -- obviously not chump change but we were able to scrape it together with halp from the two sets of parents. Those >$10000 price tags you hear about I think mostly involve the rental fees for fancy venues. Better to go with (a) if religious, your house of worship or (b) if not, your back-yard. (a) is inexpensive and (b) practically free. Then you can concentrate on getting some seriously tasty food and lots of alcoholic beverages -- lousy food and insufficient booze are wedding killers.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:46 AM
Link in 84 should go here.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:48 AM
$5K for 80 people is $62.50/head, which isn't crazy at all in the circumstances.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:49 AM
84: I couldn't make it play, apo.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:49 AM
royalist fantasies are a sign of the moral decay of the republic
When I was a kid, we fantasized about being philosopher-kings. Arete was the name of the game, baby!
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:49 AM
I couldn't make it play, apo.
That's tragic, 'cause it's tops, baby.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:51 AM
88: And that's everything, dress, flowers, pictures, officiant (literally from 1-800 Dial a Priest. They had an ad in the Yellow Pages.) We saved some money serving homemade beer and mead, but not all that much -- everyone drank the homemade stuff, and then the best man wandered off with all the leftover hard liquor and wine.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:53 AM
Homemade mead?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:56 AM
Arete was the name of the game, baby!
Arete?
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:56 AM
oops, my computer was on mute. Will report.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:57 AM
Can anyone comment?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:01 AM
I just re-installed mod via delay, and now I get messages telling me I'm posting from a blacklisted server.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:05 AM
But then I delete mod via delay, and ... no such messages. Bizarre!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:05 AM
Homemade mead?
Very tasty, too -- dry and sparkling, it looks like champagne. Tastes completely different, but very pleasant.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:08 AM
Can anyone comment?
I had a comment held for moderation for no reason (it wasn't that interesting anyway).
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:11 AM
Sorry, I let a bunch through and must have missed yours -- let me go find it.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:16 AM
My other boss had the craziest over the top wedding I've heard of. When she was describing it on the first day of our project, we knew we were so screwed having her as our boss because she was obviously a crazy woman. She wanted an outdoor, backyard wedding at her parents' house and made them spend $20,000 relandscaping the whole place to her specifications only to freak out about the possibility of it raining two months before the wedding and move it to a (very expensive) reception hall. Their dinner featured French onion soup topped with croutons monogrammed with the couple's initials. The total bill topped $120K and they were still paying it off 5 years later. But it was soooo worth it for their special day!
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:17 AM
For the entire duration of that project, whenever this woman made an unrealistic demand from us (which was often) my co-worker and I would look at each other, roll our eyes, and say "monogrammed crouton" under our breath.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:19 AM
101 -- it showed up at 94. Oddly, when I posted 100 I got an internal server error, but it didn't prevent the comment from posting.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:19 AM
How the fuck does one monogram croutons?
Also: any wedding plans that require going into debt are over-the-top.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:20 AM
I have planned parties and galas and things and find it oddly satisfying to create a festive mood and make a room look pretty and have some sense of occasion and drama. I'm still sorry I missed the wedding of a friend who worked for Hou/se Beau/tiful because she bought a thousand candles for the event, and lit up a whole promontory overlooking the ocean with them, without setting anything on fire. Pretty!
I have been consulted on the weddings of most people I know, and could probably have a successful career as a wedding planner, but for the slightly inconvenient fact I don't know that I entirely believe in marriage now and was against it for a long time, for ideological reasons.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:20 AM
Maybe one of those creme brulee torches?
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:21 AM
topped with croutons monogrammed with the couple's initials
This is awesome. I am going to cherish this and bring it back to mind if ever I am feeling blue and need something to cheer me up.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:21 AM
A little branding iron? (I'm serious, I think this is how you'd have to do it.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:22 AM
109 gets it exactly right.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:22 AM
And then you get to keep the branding iron forever. Maybe brand each other, someplace private, as a memento of your special day.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:23 AM
I was going to say that 109 makes sense--except that absolutely nothing about that stupid wedding should make sense.
Now I'm imagining the crazy bride micromanaging the ironsmith at his forge.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:26 AM
I'm giggling over 'monogrammed croutons.' There's a girl who needed to play more Jedi umbrella-lightsaber as a kid.
I think my parents' church has a reception hall now. But now they have a year-long wait, which I'm suspecting is to make sure the bride isn't pregnant, since it used to be six months.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:32 AM
Monogramy.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:33 AM
113 -- Well, you're in no hurry, right?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:35 AM
So they're trying to ensure that more kids are born out of wedlock?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:36 AM
No hurry, but what the hell. People get engaged at Christmas or New Years and married in July.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:39 AM
Or Groundhog's Day and early October.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:44 AM
Does the church require classes to get married? That could be part of it. One of my friends and her fiancée had to take a class that met once a week for something like 4 or 5 months for their priest to perform the ceremony. An elder also did something like a "home inspection" to make sure they weren't living together out of wedlock.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:49 AM
Of course, for my other sister's wedding, I had to wait outside in the parking lot with almost everyone else.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:51 AM
Pre-Cana classes, yup. But they did those with the six month requirement, too.
It's weird, though, since this marriage process seems to be designed for people who are a) still living in their hometowns and b) haven't moved out of their parents' house yet.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:52 AM
Does the church require classes to get married?
I remember it was a scandal back in Modesto when the upper class got engaged to the working class.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:53 AM
You don't have a boyfriend. He's just a good friend.
You know, I'm still puzzling over this. Is it "Our little girl can't be dating anyone"?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:56 AM
I remember it was a scandal back in Modesto when the upper class got engaged to the working class.
The upper class in Modesto seems like a null set to me.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 11:57 AM
I am so glad that my best friend from high school is not getting married in the Mormon church. Flying out for a ring exchange isn't the same.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:00 PM
Well there are some very nice old houses around Magnolia, though I'm not really sure who lives in them. Strike that -- a friend of mine lived in one of them and his father was IIRC something like a venture capitalist, so at least nouveau riche. And I think most of the people who live in the McMansion communities northeast of town are wealthy if not classy.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:01 PM
123: Our little girl can't be dating anyone because she's still in school and is focusing on her schoolwork. There's time for dating later.
(Boyfriends may be met and the meetings may go well, but the boyfriend must never be acknowledged by the parents as a boyfriend. I think they're worried I'll retroactively get pregnant and drop out of eighth grade.)
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:03 PM
"You don't have a boyfriend. He's just a tutor."
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:04 PM
The call me the Love Tutor.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:07 PM
Some people call me Maurice.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:08 PM
68: I was reading through the thread wondering where the first Wesley Willis joke woluld be, and hoping I could make it. So I murdered your family.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:09 PM
127: Don't worry, Cala. Things get a lot cooler in high school.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:10 PM
Love tutor. Heh. My parents are pretty normal in some respects, but it somehow became 'inappropriate' to take my boyfriend to a wedding (where a date was invited!), and I should instead take a high school male friend. "You wouldn't want to take Calaboy to that." I might acknowledge inadvertently that I do more than study!
/rant off
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:12 PM
I'd be curious to know what drives the preferences here: a general desire for the casual, an objection to bad taste (in crouton form), or a reaction against the princess aspect of weddings?
It seems totally possible, to me, to throw a fancy party with good taste. It can be an art form--especially if it is driven by something other than the desire to show wealth. And I recall some people here being more interested in, say, dressing up for the opera than I am. So I'm wondering if it's just weddings that seem problematic. Is it that they cause people to totally blow money, because expectations run so high? Or that the dreaming-since-girlhood/cultural implications make it squicky?
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:13 PM
132: Everything gets better after the Purity Ball!
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:14 PM
131: You follow my policy too, eh?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:15 PM
For me, it's the (1) crazy amounts of money; and the (2) incredibly inflated overimportance of bizarrely finicky details as if they were earthshattering due to unhealthy lifelong fascination with one's special day.
Parties are good, and well done, artful parties are especially good. Having people you love around to celebrate the change from one life-stage to another, also good. But throwing a party you can't afford, and getting insane about monogrammed croutons and personalized favors that don't actually make anything more fun for anyone, is just crazy. A multi-thousand dollar wedding dress, for someone who doesn't have the money to generally spend thousands on a dress, is crazy.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:17 PM
The real question here being: is a very fancy gay wedding better?
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:22 PM
I suppose I meant the first joke in comments in response to the allusion in the post. It would be pretty strange if I had been waiting for the first Wesley Willis joke unprompted.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:23 PM
Maybe it's my upbringing, but marriage seems incredibly personal to me. There's something about making it a spectacle that makes me uncomfortable.
Of course, I'm also a cheapskate. (See LB's 137)
I think both of those would also apply to a fancy gay wedding.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:27 PM
I agree with LB, though I think it's mostly #2. Every party should be fun. If you or your guests are worried that something will not go exactly as planned, that's not fun. Particularly in this day and age, I'm not sure that marriage strikes me as a particularly dramatic step that should be solemnly solemnized.
Part of it is just a guess that I won't enjoy the company of most of the people at an enormously fancy wedding.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:28 PM
140: I think marriage is teh social.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:30 PM
Never played princess. Ever.
Wedding dress: white silk sheath with long sleeves and beading at the hem and in a band at the waist. I had it made b/c they don't sell decent dresses in midwestern cities. No need to go the cupcake route. Ceremony: heavy hors d'oeuvres, jazz pianist, good wine, champagne and beer, rented penthouse at sunset with nice view. Guests: college friends, immediate family & grandparents, a select group of other good friends. Flowers: mostly greens and seasonal blooms. Photos: hired a guy for $150 to take candid shots and hand us the roll of film afterwards. Days before the wedding: entertaining out of town guests with big picnic at outdoor jazz festival, several meals at nice restaurants, hanging out at our place. Total cost: $7000. The thing was a blast--basically an excuse to hang out with all your best friends from near and far for an entire week with nothing else to do. I highly recommend it.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:30 PM
The dreaming-since-girlhood thing is so weird. There's really no reason that I didn't go along with my fellow little-girl compatriots in dreaming of weddings as a child, but I simply didn't. Last year, a friend of mine and I were invited to a (fancy) charity dinner for the ACLU, and upon walking into the ballroom my friend was immediately like "this place would be perfect for a wedding." I was thinking "Wtf? Who is thinking about weddings?" and she started to lament like how she worried she was "behind" and "would not be able to have the wedding she dreamed of." I was like "Dude, you're 24."
On the general topic of the father-daughter dance, I think bphd is right that it's just an excuse for shitty parenting. The father daughter thing is only "special" because a lot of girls don't spend hardly any time with their fathers. I remember that there was a father-daughter event with my girl scout troop in the 5th grade, and the troop leader said it was so we "could spend time with our fathers." I spent time with my dad every damn day. Girl Scouts was supposed to be to hang out with other kids. Fuckers. I skippe the event.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:31 PM
I love parties. I love going to weddings and dancing. And I've been at many tasteful weddings. But that said:
1) The amount of money involved is ridiculous.
1a) I don't have that kind of money, but I'm friends with people who do. It's not nasty jealousy so much as I want to put on a good show, too.
1b) It's promoted as, and seems to be normal, for a middling middle-class family with a middling amount of income, to spend thousands of dollars on a wedding. If it were only the real princesses, fine. But not everyone has the money to be a princess, but no one wants to throw a cheap wedding.
2) Every bride I've known melts down over something like the color of the edging of the napkins. It takes perfectly competent, intelligent young women and turns them into shrill dolls whose only thought is 'Ivory or Champagne?'
3) And it's just a party! It's a big day,and an exciting day, but I sort of resent the idea that the wedding is supposed to represent the entire point of my existence. (Which it must be -- I didn't spend $20,000 on my undergraduate education! )
A fancy party would be fine, but if it were just a fancy party, I a) wouldn't be spending money I didn't have and b) I'd be wearing a hott number in blue, not some damn cupcake edged in organza meringue.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:32 PM
Oh, in addition to printing invitations at home, you can actually just buy nice stationary and hand-write them. It's a good way to keep the guest list sane; if you don't like so-and-so enough to write them an invite, then there's no point inviting them.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:32 PM
My sister's wedding was quite tastefully done. She and her husband planned and financed it together out of a budget they had set aside specifically for the purpose. It was outdoors, in a small garden, in the evening, and they happened to catch one of those rare clear days in the summer in LA when you can actually see the mountains in the distance.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:32 PM
146 is what we did -- calligraphy is fun. A bit time-consuming, but it does keep you from inviting too many people that you aren't really anxious to see there.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:39 PM
The upper class in Modesto seems like a null set to me.
Au contraire. In established agricultural regions, there are often a number of families who own a lot of land, have done so for a long long time, and derive their income from supervising it and making it produce. Which I think is the traditional definition of "upper class," in fact.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:39 PM
Yeah well there are the Gallos and the DelMontes but I don't think they actually live in Modesto -- not sure but my hunch is they live on ranches elsewhere in the valley.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:43 PM
God, I'm so opinionated about weddings.
If you or your guests are worried that something will not go exactly as planned, that's not fun.
I never understood this: it seems to me that one hires caterers precisely so that one doesn't have to worry about things not going as planned. Pick a caterer, give them a general sense of what you want ("skip the cheese and veggie trays, and here's a recipe I really like for Vietnamese summer rolls--I'm thinking mostly foods that people can eat standing and that are made of good, fresh ingredients, okay? Thanks!"), and it's done.
Having said that, I figure at any event, at least one thing is likely to go horribly wrong. IMHO, when it does, you get to laugh and say "ok, we've had our disaster, now I know the rest of it will be great." In my case, the disaster was a pianist who I hadn't hired b/c he sucked and was an asshole: he showed up anyway, drunk, wearing white tails (???) and proceeded to insist that I had hired him and owed him money. My mom tipped him $50, told him that if he could dig up a signed contract we'd pay the balance of it, and walked him to the elevator.
The real pianist wore a dinner jacket, played what he liked (all I'd specified was "jazz piano"), and even stayed afterwards to play while the caterers and my mom and sis cleaned up because, he said, it was such a good piano (it came with the penthouse rental) and he was enjoying playing it.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:45 PM
134 - a lot of the wedding symbolism is squicky.
white dress, being given away by father to husband (the wedding contract was traditionally between those two, you know), icky enforced heterosexuality of matching sets of maids and grooms of honor, who sit on some dais with the bride and groom at dinner, all kinds of bad memories coming out of the cultural closet...
i also find engagement rings icky. it's like men marking their territory. the hebrew roots of that tradition is that by accepting the ring the woman agrees to be bound to the man - she gives him herself in exchange.
plus, nowadays, wearing a diamond - unless it was passed down through the family for years - is wearing something stained by the blood of african children.
i could imagine a good party, and a beautiful artful non-squicky wedding. but it would not look like a lot of the weddings i go to now...
and it would have WAY better music...
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:47 PM
Yeah Gallo headquarters is in Healdsburg now, near Santa Rosa. So they're prolly living over there.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:47 PM
I think 137 has it pretty much right.
Part of my agreement may reflect my white trash upbringing. Getting married by a Justice of the Peace in Nevada is a family tradition. Indeed, when my father and step-mother got married, we (them and eight kids) took a Greyhound bus from near Sacramento to Reno, they got married, and then we all took the bus back that evening.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:49 PM
God, I'm so opinionated about weddings.
Why should that topic be different from any other?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:50 PM
My honey wrote a wedding march for one of his friends. It involved crashing pots and pans, among other sounds. I've heard it went over well, but then again, I didn't exactly hear that from a disinterested party.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:51 PM
155: This is a true point.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 12:55 PM
Indeed, when my father and step-mother got married, we (them and eight kids) took a Greyhound bus from near Sacramento to Reno, they got married, and then we all took the bus back that evening.
Streamers and cans and a "Just Married" sign on the bus, I assume?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 1:26 PM
Streamers and cans and a "Just Married" sign on the bus, I assume?
Hardly. But it was the beginning of the trauma of having my ex-girlfriend as my step-sister.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 1:29 PM
Weddings are, indeed, loaded down with all kinds of icky symbolism, and have the potential to turn rational and sane people into the insane, but I can testify that it is possible to avoid all that insanity with some diligence. It's just planning a party, and that's fun.
Our wedding was relatively inexpensive, it was outdoors with a fabulous caterer and a decent DJ afterwards, and everyone (us included) claims to have a good time. My then-fiancee and I just made sure to give each other the appropriate withering look whenever either of us started to get over-the-top obsessed with a tiny detail (although I confess that I did print out personalized schedules of the day for every one participating in the wedding, with an alternate rain plan schedule on the back, each schedule color-coded based on the activities the person needed to be present for... and I generated the whole thing from a database).
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 1:38 PM
NERD!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 1:41 PM
OMG – I just remembered! I had blocked it out because it was so, so wrong. I went to a wedding where they made all of the guests at the reception form one of those long tunnel things with their arms like football players run through when they're being announced at the beginning of the game and the wedding party and bride and groom came running through it to the LET'S GET READY TO RUUUUUMBLE!!! song instead of entering to the wedding march. There's nontraditional and then there's just omigod.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 1:41 PM
The whole big wedding thing bothers me because it feels like something we've been manipulated into wanting by some huge wedding-industrial complex.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 1:46 PM
162 -- is it traditional for the bride and groom to enter the reception to the wedding march? I thought that was only played at the ceremony.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 1:53 PM
You know, symbols have the meanings people ascribe to them. For example, no one is going to seriously think a bride wearing white is concerned about her purity if she's been cohabiting with her fiance for three years. It's just a fun tradition that the dress be white or cream or some light color. All the wedding rituals, absent the actual attitude that the woman was owned by her father and then will be by her husband, are just gestures and traditions that are free of inherent meaning and can be interpreted by the participants as they will.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 2:00 PM
164 - I don't know what they traditionally enter to, but it's not LET'S GET READY TO RUUUMBLE.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 2:06 PM
165 -- Listen, if she's wearing white, I wanna see an intact hymen dammit! Don't fuck with the signifiers!
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 2:10 PM
I think what happened is that someone fucked the signified.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 2:12 PM
165 - but why mimic them? when there are so many other things one could do...
especially when a good number of your audience members may not be (re)interpreting the gestures you make, along with you.
The fake princess market segment grows and grows: white wasn't traditional - there was in fact no traditional color for wedding dresses - until 1840 when Queen Victoria married her cousin Albert of Saxe-Coburg.
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 2:29 PM
You mimic them for whatever emotional reason people always want to maintain old forms, even if they're draping them over new substance. I'm not sure what all the reasons are, but I know it's what people like to do. It's hard to make culture out of whole cloth, so you borrow a little and change it up when you need to. My mostly ex boyfriend and I believe in God not at all, but we both grew up around Christians and so we had a tree this year. It was purty. We gave each other presents. I made mulled wine. I'm regretful that I didn't celebrate Passover this year, because once a year I do like to drink some wine and quibble over the haggadah (sp?) and have an afikomen hunt. It feels connected and rooted. I can alter whatever needs altering so it's not oppressive.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 2:41 PM
166 -- But get ready for that state of affairs to change. As with so many other facets of our existence, the line between weddings and pro football is being gradually blurred. I think by 2013 at the latest we will see the role of clergy replaced by referees, and the procession down the aisle replaced by a 20-yard line rush. No facet of our lives is sacrosanct to these barbarians of the oblate spheroid!
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 2:41 PM
"Barbarians of the Oblate Spheroid" is the name of my power metal/free jazz project.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 2:44 PM
Hey Ben, when are you gonna have a show later in the day, so I could listen to it?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 2:46 PM
Are we not all barbarians of the oblate spheroid?
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 2:57 PM
Your mom's so oblate, her equatorial bulge is really big. Or something.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 3:02 PM
163: When you're actually planning a wedding, the true nature and breadth of the wedding-industrial complex, which otherwise you mostly don't pay any attention to, is truly shocking. Favorite moment: Me: "Mr. B. doesn't want a boutonnière." Florist: "What? How will people know who he is?" Me: "Um, he'll be the one standing next to me at the altar? And we're not inviting people who don't actually know us?"
All the wedding rituals, absent the actual attitude that the woman was owned by her father and then will be by her husband, are just gestures and traditions that are free of inherent meaning and can be interpreted by the participants as they will.
No; they're not free of meaning, although this doesn't mean that they can't be reinterpreted or simply held on to for sentimental reasons.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 4:49 PM
My wife wore a pink linen dress to our wedding and I wore jeans and a good white shirt. So the only person wearing white was the guy and not a cupcake in sight.
In retrospect the jeans were not a good idea -- I look a bit goofy in them next to my wife who looks great -- nor was the overly short hair-cut I had which made me look bald.
We just hired a registry office in Glasgow, then everyone walked across the park to a nice pub/restaurant for drinks in the garden (it was a hot day) and a meal in the restaurant after. Various friends just dropped into the pub when they felt like it throughout the day -- from my point of view it was great and, given that I was a student at the time and I was paying, it was cheap. People mostly paid for their own meal -- there was just no way we could have paid for everyone to eat -- so we were major cheapskates.
Nice weddings are cool and all but some people are just nuts about them -- obsessive in a sick sick way.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 7:27 PM
Nice weddings are cool and all but some people are just nuts about them -- obsessive in a sick sick way.
Is this equally true in England, as in America?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:24 PM
In Switzerland, I attended a church-wedding followed by a seventeen-course meal followed by an ages-long wedding reception/party (during which, out of boredom, I accidentally enlisted about ten villagers in burgling a car).
In France, I attended a wonderfully spontaneous champagne on the Pont des Arts we-just-got-hitched-at-the-prefecture celebration only later to be deadened by the prefunctory evening dinner at the rented place (an upstairs hall at the Musee d'Orsay).
It's not just America.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 8:38 PM
Is prefunctory an alternate spelling of perfunctory, or a new word that I have never heard before and don't know the meaning of?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 9:05 PM
What Tia said in 170.
Also, I once attended a wedding in which the groom came down the aisle to the Star Wars theme. Played on the bagpipes. By a pregnant woman.
Possibly a unique occurance.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 04-21-06 10:09 PM
re: 178, the sums of money may be slightly smaller, I suspect, but yeah, I've met or heard of people through friends who are almost as crazily obsessed as monogrammed crouton woman.
So I don't think it's a specifically American thing.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 04-22-06 12:59 AM