The Wedding Post (Part 1)

I suppose this is blog-worthy, but I’ve been putting it off for so long because I didn’t know how to write about it.  Luckily, now I’m pissed off and have lots to say.

I got married in a pretty plain, minimalist way.  I didn’t have a wedding or flowers or a party. I didn’t have guests or friends or family there either.  I did have a dress, however, because damn I love a good party dress and nothing will change that.  The day I got married was definitely not the best day of my life.

It wasn’t the worst day, though.  In fact, it was pretty good.  I had a bunch of boring meetings at work, had a colleague unknowingly advise me to avoid marriage, and had a fight with Ryan about traffic on the way to the church.  But the ceremony was really nice, I got a walk down by the river, and I got a little tipsy just before a delicious dinner at which time I convinced Ryan it was probably okay for me to kiss other people.  By 7pm we were home and by 9pm we watched some stolen TV in pajamas.

The fall-out was also pretty minor.  My mother was both a little disappointed and a little relieved.  People invited us to dinner and I actually got to spend time with people and celebrate all this in a much less overwhelming manner.

Having said that, things have gotten annoying since then.  I naïvely thought that by avoiding the traditional wedding, I was also avoiding all the traditional gender shit that goes along with it.  I was very wrong.  In order to appease the United Church of Canada, we had to attend a two-day, pre-marriage counseling course after we were married.  I was totally game for this because it was done in a group setting and this, I was sure, meant skits.  Sadly, it did not involve skits.  Rather, it involved almost an hour and a half where we went around the circle and the female of the couple talked about how she was proposed to and the male about the wedding plans (well, the ones he could remember.  Because boys don’t care about weddings.  They just do it to appease the girls, right? Right? Aren’t rigid, offensive gender roles just adorable?).  And people ate this up.  No one even seemed embarrassed when their plans mirrored another couple’s plan (even the length and location of the honeymoon).  One woman even included how her fiancé asked her father for her hand!  In this “counseling” session we also talked about how women were secretly the boss and how love equals respect.  I’m pretty sure had we been able to stomach the whole two days (we made it through one) our facilitators would have simply popped in the first season of Everyone Loves Raymond while we took notes and learned about the true meaning of marriage.

And then today when I was in a bookstore I picked up a book that documents important firsts during the honeymoon phase.  The book appeared super innocent (all pink and white and cartoony) and I was curious about all the stuff about sex inside.  But no, nothing to do with sex.  Instead, it was coded in pink and blue to denote when it was a boy’s entry or a girl’s.  The boy’s entry said things like:  The first time I realized my favorite memory is now my wife walking down the aisle and not the winning touchdown of my favourite football team.  The girl’s entry was:  The first time I introduced him as my husband and felt like trumpets should be heralding.  And, the joint entry:  The first time that I realized HIS pin number had some macho association like the year he lost his virginity and thought it was adorable/The first time that I realized HER pin number was the date of our wedding.  Fuck.  Who are these people?  Can I beat them?

I’m sure I’m much too angry about this.  I don’t have to complete the marriage course or buy that awful book.  I don’t even hate weddings.  I really enjoy going and drinking and scrapping.  However, I am tired that we are being sold all this bullshit that fucks us up and makes us believe that this should be the highlight of one’s life.  I’ll get on board for all this unified wedding shit as soon as they allow ritual suicide on the way back down the aisle.