The Anti Anti-Bride

It was not only my 'medical leave' that kept me from this blog for so long. Oh, no. I hesitated to 'fess up before, but I got married in January and most of the latter part of 2005 was taken up with the planning of said event.

Now, this blog is meant to be a forum to discuss my reading on social justice, simple living, and other matters I find important or interesting. Though it may not seem intuitive at first, planning our wedding was a conscious attempt by my now-husband and me to live our values. So many people have been interested in the choices we made and how we came to make them, that I decided to post a bit about the topic.

I call this post the Anti Anti-Bride Guide because I had looked to that book, by Carolyn Gerin and Stephanie Rosenbaum, to provide some inspiration and support for the unconventional decisions E and I knew we would be making. Ha! Though the book counseled brides to stay away from the Jordan almonds if they really didn't like them, it did not speak to the kind of intentions we had about our nuptial event. I was so pleased that I had followed my usual strategy and checked it out from the library rather than spend any money on it. (In fact, I am--absurdly? stubbornly?--proud that I did not look at one bridal magazine during the entire course of our engagement.) My co-worker, who got married a few months before me, quipped that I was the anti, anti-bride because I simply didn't give a shit about any of the things mentioned in Gerin's and Rosenbaum's book. I laughed and filed the comment away for later.

So what does characterise the anti anti-bride? Rejection of the traditional wedding industry is the main thing, of course. But what does that entail? For us, there were four major components:

Being Intentional about What Is Important (and What Is Not)
This may seem obvious, but all we've read the horror stories of brides railroaded into making decisions because of family pressure. Being a bit older, E and I had the luxury of not caring about convention. Our goal was to make the wedding into a true reflection of our personalities and beliefs. Anything that fell outside of that goal was eliminated from the wedding, such as favors, ring bearer and flower girl, and the garter/bouquet toss. We were also lucky in that our families helped financially without demanding anything in return, not the guest list (much), not the apparel, not the venue.
For us, making the wedding a true reflection of our beliefs meant not spending huge wads of cash, and making sure we felt good about the money we did spend. So, we got married at my local church and had the reception in the hall, which fostered the community spirit we were hoping for. We spent more than 50% of our budget on the food, because we're both passionate about good food. We spent about 20% of the budget on the photography, because we love having good photos of loved ones around the house. Nothing else even came close to costing that much. Some people genuinely want a bigger splash than we made with our wedding; the most important thing is to be intentional about decisions and ensure they fit your values and beliefs.
When the focus is on the overall intention, compromise is easier because there is bound to be more than one way of living out that intention.

Using the Time and Talent of Family and Friends
Our willingness to ask our friends and family to share their gifts of time and talent with us, instead of their treasure (in the form of an expensive wedding present) is the aspect of the wedding most often commented-upon by our guests. It's obvious to have talented friends and family members do readings or sing at weddings. We wanted to go further than this. I knew that wedding planning was going to be overwhelming no matter what, so my goal was to spread out the tasks among as many people as I could, especially since those we asked to participate could do a better job than we could. Friends and family did the flower arranging, sang and read at the ceremony, designed and executed the reception hall decoration and clean-up, baked and decorated the wedding cakes, designed the program, developed the website, created a map to get to the wedding, and made the invitations. This involvement cut costs for us, made everything less stressful, but most of all, made our guests feel more a part of the whole thing. Every person we asked to help us said yes and told us that they were glad to be involved.

Bringing a Focus on Others to the Wedding
Weddings often demand one, two or even three gifts for the couple. E and I felt uncomfortable about this, since our reason for having a large-ish wedding was simply to celebrate with people we love, not to extort presents from them. So, when E's mom asked to throw a shower for me, we turned it into a charity shower: all of the guests brought food for a local food bank and instead of playing silly games, we made scarves for the homeless. E and I did register at a store, since we knew that some people would want to give us traditional gifts, but we also put a list of 10 charities on our website and suggested that guests could donate to those on our behalf. To our delight, people did donate for us. Many also generously gave us the gifts we'd registered for, but by doing so, they supported a local, independent business because that's where we'd chosen to register. Finally, I knew our caterer because I've worked with him at his restaurant since 2002, where he leads a monthly event to cook food for 200 homeless persons. I had to miss January's event, but E and I were able to donate our leftovers instead.
In these ways, E and I felt that our wedding allowed us to use the gift of our love for the benefit of others.

Spending Lots of Time with Guests
E and I were utterly exhausted during the wedding weekend, but it was absolutely worth it. Why were we so tired? Because we turned our wedding into a weekend series of parties to give guests the chance to spend time with us. There was a cocktail party on the Friday, a family-friendly open house on Saturday afternoon, followed by a more grown-up party on Saturday night, and mellow hanging-out time at our local pub on the night before the wedding. By the time we got married on Monday (yes, Monday), we felt that we'd had at least some quality time with guests who had traveled so far to celebrate with us. We didn't provide much at the open house, but we provided our time and attention.

Our wedding day was extremely joyful. E and I were exactly where we wanted to be and everything went beautifully. Even if things had gone wrong, we would have laughed because we'd long ago decided that, though the wedding merited our attention, it's really all about the marriage. Our themes were love and community and by bringing these to every decision, we created a wedding that was perfect for us and which guests time and again told us was special. It was a wonderful start to our marriage.