Getting married is a grownup decision, and ought to be a grownup affair

Watching a Taylor Swift video this morning, in which she wears a long white linen dress and wanders across an empty countryside, at times with some dead foliage in her hands that she might have pulled off a bush (it's a tie-in song to the Hunger Games), I began thinking about the semiotics of weddings and whether western society's wedding obsession really is as ridiculous as I've long imagined. I suspect it is, but am willing to explore the idea to some length before ceding to my original point. In planning my own wedding, an event agreed upon mostly to satisfy the wants of others, I've consistently struggled with the many wedding-specific symbols and rituals that seem important to everyone else but carry no meaning at all for me. After being talked out of a red dress, and into a not completely outrageous white strapless affair that makes me look like I am attending a 1962 prom, I've drawn the line at such staples as bridesmaids, flowers, a cake, a photographer, to say nothing of a color scheme, a personalized cocktail, favors and all of the other features that seem to have become necessary in everyone's minds. I'm closer to 37 than 36; no one is 'giving' me to my betrothed apart from myself. My friends are all my age, and most are married, some divorced, one widowed - the bloom is well off the bridal party rose, and while I was happy to serve as a maid in some of their weddings, I've never had a need for several women to be dressed alike in outfits of my choosing. Flowers are very pretty, but when they are cut they die sooner than they would have if left alone, and it makes me sad. I was never going to carry a bouquet, but even the centerpieces are just bamboo plants and a small lantern. If people want to take any of them home at the end of the night they should feel free, but I don't understand why people have recommended we have the lanterns inscribed with our names and the date. If someone wants a lantern for their home, why the hell would they want our names on it? No one's got a sweeter tooth than me, but making a decision about and paying for a cake was just one decision too many for us. There'll be a dessert tray that I am certain will be able to satisfy the sweetest molar. And in this era of camera phones, I didn't understand why we would pay thousands for 500 photographs of ourselves, only perhaps three of which we would ever look at. I know that I've seen some wonderful photos taken of my friends and family by professional wedding photographers, and I'm glad to own some of them. But I have to believe that out of the 88 guests with camera phones (my father and grandmother excepted), someone will get a decent photo of us and it will go into a frame to commemorate the day. So in spite of actually having a wedding, the important aspects of which for me were vows, rings, dinner, and dancing, I'm clearly trying to sidestep what I consider to be nonsense. I keep running into opposition about each item that I omit, however, and I want to try to address that very opposition from people who ostensibly should know better, yet can't help themselves. I do acknowledge that the image of Ms. Swift in her white dress in the fields, holding what maybe used to be flowers, stirred a sense of longing in me. I wanted to be the pretty girl in the white dress and the half light too. I wanted to embody that representation of innocent beauty and possibility; I could also see it through the eyes of a man, perhaps not the one I am marrying, but I bet he would agree as well. But I think that's because it is ingrained in me, in most of us, to see that image as a fleeting ideal, like a firefly whose desirability lies in its untrappability. We like to think that each man longs to catch his wood nymph, and we want to be that object of desire - but toward what end? To be put in a jar and left to die? The wedding industry perpetrates a dangerous misrepresentation of womanhood and marriage under the guise of innocence and a hoped-for connection to the natural world. Brides have not always worn white - not all societies have insisted that women be virgins before marriage, and white does not represent innocence in all of the societies that do make this stipulation. We have taken this idea of a young girl, running wild through the woods yet dressed to go to at least to church, if not to a party, and transposed that onto a ceremony in which two people make a very adult commitment to one another. The dress, no longer remotely simple, is still in a shade of white to represent that unlikely, and unreasonable, purity. It signifies the bride, distinguishes her from the others - other women in the party are chastised for wearing white on another women's wedding day. The flowers appear to represent that long lost connection to nature and the wood nymphs. The bridesmaids were originally dressed like the bride, in order to create confusion in the event that the bride might be a kidnapping target amongst enemy tribes, but today only the idea of making them dress like one another has survived. The cake I suppose represents the sweetness of the day, as well as the promise to care for and nourish one's partner. The photographs exist to remind you of that one special day in which you were presented so perfectly and everyone showed up to celebrate you. Likewise, the favors are gifts to your guests, to thank them for joining in your personal celebration and to give them a reminder of this wonderful day to take home with them. This is all making me a little nauseous. My society is one of grown men and women making their own decisions about whether they will marry at all, whom to marry if they do decide to, and how their own lives will connect to nature, if at all. Thank god we are long past the days of parents paying older men to take young girls off their hands, so as to have fewer mouths to feed, and for the man to have a servant he does not have to pay, who will, he hopes, bear him a male heir to take care of him in his old age. We would like to be better connected to nature than we are, but the practice of cutting flowers and carrying them around in order to signify this connection has outlived its sustainability. And we have a reached a time in which cake is so prevalent that its place at celebrations is nearly an afterthought. We can eat cake whenever we like, and most of us have eaten too much of it in our lives already. It is no longer so rare as to be offered only on special occasions, and therefore has lost its value, if not its celebratory significance. And while I am certainly in favor of documenting as much of our lives as we can, in order to preserve the images for posterity to enjoy the way we enjoy those from before our own time, the staged, unworldly nature of wedding photography is something I can't assign any meaning to myself. However, I do not wish to begrudge others, in this time of everything, the opportunity to take meaning from these symbols, particularly in the absence of any other symbols that might have more resonance in this modern existence. By all means, perform the rituals, if it gives the commitment you are making to one another more symbolic import. If feeling 'like a bride' will give you the confidence and drive to be a wife, then it is important for you to feel that way and you should - however that expresses itself through you. Please leave me to my own symbols, however, and allow me to decide what is important on this occasion! Left to my own devices I would have preferred to engage in a much smaller, yet heavily ritualized, ceremony, such as washing one another's feet or toasting a marshmallow for each other over an open fire, followed by an exchange of rings and vows, and possibly the signing of a document. I would not have involved any members of my or his family, nor our friends - this is a decision we are making with one another, and we understand that this level of commitment to another person brings with it a certain commitment to their family and friends, if only for the sake of that person. I think it is interesting that as a participant, I do not understand why a greater community needs to celebrate this decision, yet as a celebrant in others' weddings I have certainly felt the joy inherent in the knowledge of a new and promising union. Therefore we are including our families in the ceremony, and exchanging vows and rings, and then opening up the party to a larger number of people and providing them a feast and dance. I love a good feast and dance, so can certainly see why this is a good thing to do. I just wish people would let us do it - and stop trying to make it something that has more meaning to them than to us!