A couple of months ago there was a bit of a kerfuffle following Rev Dr Giles Fraser’s claim on the Today Prgramme that modern weddings are overblown and narcissistic. And let’s face it, he has a point. They don’t always have to be that way, but a lot of the time the occasion itself drains the life out of the reason for having it. Chelsea and Mark, Tom and Katie et al set the bar exorbitantly high, but in our woeful attempts to cling on to their dress trails we’re forced into spending ludicrous amounts (GBP20,000 a time on average) on our ‘special days’.
Rebecca Mead in The Guardian reckons:
“The trauma of planning a wedding under such commercial pressure is, in some sense, a stand-in for the experience of real nuptial trauma that was experienced by earlier generations”.
Is this true? Have we become so materialist that we’ve taken the weight and significance associated with committing to a single person for life, and re-attached it to decisions about placemats? By the time most people get married these days they’re already living together with sex, a car and a mortgage, so their focus shifts to dresses, lists and catering. Meanwhile, the bloated wedding industry greedily spurs them – and their maxed-out credit cards – on. Lump all this in with the conspicuous presence of religion, over-bearing parental pressure and archaic, generic vows, and perhaps it doesn’t add up to much.
Having said all that, I’ve actually really enjoyed a lot of the weddings I’ve been to. If you can fight your way through stubborn vicars, self-interested family members and soul-destroying wedding magazines, it’s eminently possible to pull it off. I wouldn’t go as far as Cameron and call for a tax system that penalises people who happen not to want to get married (how crazy is that by the way?)… but if you do want to, then great, I’m right there with you. I love the romance of the occasion when the couple has room to make it their own, the meeting of families and friends and the sense of celebration. I love the established ritual that both unites us with and sets us apart from other cultures around the world too.
So if you’ve made that big decision, and you’re both happy with it, I wish you all the luck in the world for your big day. Just try not to let god and marketing get in the way.
