I blow my nose on dirty socks: why my wedding won’t reflect who I am
My wedding — as an event — will not represent me as a person, because that person rarely brushes her hair, would rather sleep for five more minutes than shower, and can’t cut paper in a straight line. I’ve always secretly dreamed of unleashing my long-suppressed inner fancy bitch for the “big day,” princess style.
I’m more than a bride-to-be
I’m excited to get married and I’m excited to throw a big party. That being said, I’m more than just a bride-to-be. I am not the first, nor shall I be the last, to feel frustrated about gendered bias. So what can I do? How can I battle these questions and expectations? This is my plan.
Reconciling marriage as a feminist: Does everything about the wedding have to be a feminist battle?
I feel that each of the choices we make for our wedding need to be conscious choices. We need to weigh the comfort of tradition against the statement (overt or otherwise) that it may make. Not every feminist wedding is going to look the same — and certainly one can be a feminist and have a more “traditional” wedding. I don’t decide who is a feminist and who is not — I only get to determine how my feminism manifests itself.
Why we had a very, very gay wedding (not “just a wedding”)
One of the arguments we hear a lot is that weddings aren’t “gay” or “straight,” they’re just weddings. Of course, that’s true… but our wedding was also very, very gay, and that was one of our favorite things about it!
In the fight for marriage equality, there’s a risk that the thing that makes queer lives different will get lost in the shuffle. We wanted to celebrate the gayness of gay weddings and the importance of our broad family-of-choice to our lives. We ended up writing the following passage and printing it in our wedding program:
Realizing I can’t do it all on the wedding day: A “Type A” bride’s crisis
I never realized how “Type A” I can be until I started planning a wedding. It’s giving me an inordinate amount of stress to know that I can’t actually be the one cuing the music during our wedding ceremony. I can’t be the one decorating the tables at the reception hall. I can’t sit with the DJ and make sure he picks the perfect sequence of songs. Fellow Type-A brides: How are you handling having to relinquish control of your wedding day to other people?
What if you don’t want to play “princess for a day” at your wedding?
“I’m not really into princess-y dresses.”
“Oh, but why not?” asked Frannie, bustling behind me to unpin. “It’s your only chance to be a princess for a day. Every girl wants that.”
“Actually,” I replied, suddenly tired of being “helped” by this well-meaning woman and others like her, “I don’t like princesses.”