When my partner Daniel and I reached our twenties, our social life became about attending other people's weddings.
Another Friday night, another welcome party: his-and-hers signature cocktails, your best friend's toast about embarrassing high school antics, and Caprese skewers at the buffet. On Saturday night the coordinated bridesmaids parade took place; the couple's vows (he is her support, she has made him a better man); the first dance followed by the father-daughter dance; cake cutting; and a performance of “Celebration” by Kool & the Gang. On Monday morning, the bride's Instagram post, which featured a black and white portrait of the happy couple, confirmed this.
Ta-da: married.
Over and over again we saw the same impersonal and unoriginal spectacle.
When it came to our engagement and wedding, I was determined No to recreate these ornaments. He wanted our marriage and the hustle and bustle surrounding it to feel personal, modern and authentic.
So before the proposal, I set three requirements for Daniel: 1. Sapphire instead of diamond. 2. Do not kneel. (Let's start this on a level playing field, shall we?) 3. We had to do something with his left ring finger because he wasn't going to walk around like branded cattle while he rubbed shoulders like an apparent bachelor.
The moment finally came during a hike in the San Gabriel Mountains on a Saturday morning. He was a sapphire. He stand up. Later that week, we went to tattoo his left ring finger. I felt like myself; we feel like ourselves. So unique, right?
Of course not.
Wait. Asked. I have jewelry for that finger. Neither Pinterest nor the patriarchy trembled. Here we were: another couple on another hike with another ring.
Ta-da: committed.
But I hadn't given up yet. I was determined to plan a wedding that didn't unthinkingly adhere to patriarchal conventions or Instagram-ability.
The dress seemed like the easiest place to start. I liked the idea of blue or green, maybe something with a pattern. But when my mother, sister, and I arrived for our first date, we were met with a multitude of tulle and glitter, sweetheart necklines and tea-length hemlines, and white, white, white.
Before I knew it, I was standing on a pedestal surrounded by mirrors. The curtain was closed by me stylistand when I came to the silent conclusion that I hated all dresses and, come to think of it, despised the color white in anything (pastels, clouds, printer paper), she had zipped me up, adjusted the dress to fit , I transform. She went to the mirror and opened the curtain.
There was.
A girlfriend.
“Oh my God,” I said.
I had transformed. I was my mother in the wedding photo that my father keeps on his dresser. I was Sleeping Beauty and JLo in “The Wedding Planner.” I was Grace Kelly and that nameless bride in the daguerreotype at the antique store and every woman who's ever gotten married wearing something.
For a moment I forgot to be me. Yo enjoyment the idea that I looked like someone else. someone doing that thing. Someone who is getting married.
A few months later, my grandparents hosted a 65th anniversary party. Nana and Grandpa are the cutest couple in the world and the party reflected that. Guests cried as my grandfather lifted my wheelchair-bound grandmother and swayed her to the song that was her first dance: “On the Street Where You Live” from “My Fair Lady.”
As I left the party, I looked at the photo they had left by the door. There was my grandfather with his ink black hair. There was my grandmother holding her bouquet, with a veil over her white dress. She wasn't inspired by Pinterest and would never see an Instagram grid. But it was the same thing that every couple also receives every weekend after each ceremony: their wedding photo.
And at that moment, I wanted a exact replica. Put me on the steps of the church and cover me with a veil. Take it, frame it and call it togetherness. Because how else could I explain this thing we're doing? What original language can be put to the decision to spend the rest of my life legally, spiritually and emotionally intertwined with another human being?
Then it hit me, and after months of planning, I came to understand what the simple wedding was all about. Although I kept my foot firmly on the more overtly sexist aspects, I stopped resisting the feeling that I was unoriginal and an imitator and began to see the beauty in repetition.
Proposals, hallways, first dances, tiered cakes? Yes, they are tired and tired. But they are also the most precise way we have of saying: “Hey. You know that thing? That stupid, inexplicable, magical thing: marriage? We're doing that.” It's funny language for such lofty, ineffable ideas, but it gets the message across: we are part of a timeless tradition of something that cannot be described in words.
Daniel and I got married last May. We didn't have matching bridesmaids and I don't think I used the word “rock.” But my dress was as white as cake. We ate our Caprese skewers with abandon. We had a first dance, a father-daughter dance, and a mother-son dance, just in case. And obviously, the band played “Celebration.”
So did we do what everyone else did? Yes, and … so what? Of all the things to emulate, to copy and paste from the internet, eternal love seems like a pretty good option to me.
The author is a writer, editor and singer-songwriter from St. Louis. His short fiction has been published in Narrative, Ninth Letter, and Epoch, among others. She is the editor of December, a literary magazine. He also just finished his first novel. He lives in Long Beach and is on Instagram: @isabellestillman
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