There was a long thread (200+ comments) over at Pandagon last week about the pressures on both men and women regarding marriage expectations, which was quite fascinating. Amanda was reading a book about proposal angst and was worried that people might think she was reading “bridal p*rn” because of the picture of a woman in a wedding dress on the cover, and that they would then conclude that she was one of those who’d bought into the hype of needing to be married, the fear of being “left on the shelf”.
The post concentrated particularly on the romantic and dramatic expectations regarding the proposal itself:
- how long into the relationship should a proposal be expected?
- were guys who didn’t propose after several years together playing some power trip?
- was a woman resorting to a “propose to me or I’ll find someone who will” ultimatum being unreasonable or just communicating clearly?
- is a man who responds to such an ultimatum being trapped, giving in or just being brought to a realisation of what he might lose?
- was a woman who asked a man to marry her forever going to be held up as desperate by her community?
- was it OK for a man to propose without having chosen the ring and having it on hand?
The responses surprised me, and I wondered whether the answers would be different here in Oz: there were a lot more traditionalists about who should propose than I expected, although there was also a strong showing of women who asked, and couples who just discussed the issue and came to an agreement, without a big dramatic question being involved at all. The really big surprise to me in that thread was the very strong expectation externally imposed on relationships that the man would choose the ring before “popping the question”, or if he got surprised into a low-key proposal he would “make up for it” by enacting the whole romantic cliche complete with diamond presentation as soon as possible. There were couples who’d bypassed that who had to defend their relationship to people around them, as if without the romantic gesture the proposal somehow meant less, and the relationship therefore must as well.
Then it got onto dresses and weddings and the whole Wedding-Industrial Complex. Apparently there are people who believe that if a woman doesn’t become a Bridezilla she’s not sufficiently excited about getting married and mustn’t really love her husband-to-be. If she wants to keep her own name after marriage? – she must be one of those cultic feminists Pat Robertson
warned us against:
“Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”
- Rev. Pat Robertson (1992 GOP Convention)
Now Americans generally get married in higher proportions than we do, and they’re generally a(n even) more consumerist society, so the tentacles of the Wedding-Industrial Complex wrapped around this most personal relationship to this extent is perhaps not surprising. But I nonetheless was surprised – maybe because I was never really the girl who dreamed about My Perfect Wedding (TM). When other young women at places I worked at got married and pored over bridal magazines and asked my opinion, I wouldn’t mind the first three or four dresses, but then they all merged into a white frilly mass.
That said, I did wear white for my wedding, my father did walk me down the aisle, and I did toss my bouquet in the direction of unmarried women, so I hardly had the perfect rad-fem wedding. But: it was via a civil celebrant in a friend’s waterfront garden, the reception was very low key in a local community hall (decorated only with helium balloons tied to the chairs) and we paid for it, not my parents (so at least I didn’t succumb to the Wedding-Industrial Complex entirely). I kept my own name and I refused to have an engagement ring (we had matching gold bands which we wore on our right hands during the engagement and put on the left hand during the ceremony).
As for the proposal, we were the type who came to a mutual agreement about the time being right to get married after several previous discussions where we knew we were both looking for a coparent and felt good about each other but wanted to be sure. When we decided that yes, we wanted to have kids with each other and nobody else, I actually would have been happy just to cohabit. However mr tog wanted a marriage certificate and I had no objection to the associated party, gifts and honeymoon, so I agreed.
I was pleasantly surprised by the powerful emotion of standing before kith and kin declaring love and commitment, which I would highly recommend as a ritual moment even for those who don’t want a piece of paper from the state. This is not to say I didn’t later envy the relative who had a quiet ceremony during a holiday abroad (in order to avoid his intended’s family’s ginormous traditional display wedding expectations), and who then had a big joint family party to celebrate the wedding a month later after their return home to Australia, which was just a big jolly feast instead of the huge Bridezilla production.
So, larvyproddas, I’m curious about your views:
- Is marriage a trap (either of the patriarchy or of clutching women), or is it that without which a woman is unfulfilled and a man is never mature?
- Do/did you dream of a big wedding with all the works, or is/was it your nightmare?
- Were you forced into the upper/middle-class wedding extravaganza and resent it, or was it actually fun?
- Did any of you blokes do the full romantic cliche of ring in your pocket and bended knee?
- Have any of you girls had to reject a bloke who went to all that trouble?
- Where are the girls who proposed?
- Where are those (men and women) who will never propose and never accept?
- Who’s going to keep their birth name, who can’t wait to get rid of it, and who really wishes their partner did take their name?
Now I acknowledge the questions above smack hugely of heterosexism, so I’m intrigued to know how gay partnerships have negotiated the shoals of ritual partnering arrangements too. I know there are some radicals who reject the idea marriage or a form thereof as irrelevant, and others who take a more traditional yet liberal view of the joy and power of a public declaration of commitment, and others who view insisting on homosexual marriage recognition as a political act. How has that affected the courting and proposals?
Last but not least: has anybody ever really thoroughly enjoyed themselves at a monumentally consumerist Bridezilla wedding?
Marriage is, for me, quite baffling. I see it as a religious and legal custom and little more. I don’t need to be bound to my partner in the eyes or the state or a god I don’t believe in to know I’m going to spend my life with them. Coupled with the typicallky extravagent “look at me!” wedding, nothing could seem less romantic.
However, my partner doesn’t see it that way. I mean, we’re good together, we just don’t see eye to eye on this issue.
I much prefer the idea of having all our friends and family together in a low-key gathering in some kind of symbolic celebration of the fact that we are certain we are for eachother. No religious or legal aspects involved. Might not be valid in the state’s eyes, but fuck it.
Oh man, and those hideously expensive wedding dresses. *vomits*
Yup.
Excellent post tig.
As for me:
1. If you marry because of love and all the good things and choose wisely how can it be a trap?
2. Nope. A lovely ceremony on a pagoda by the water in a Japanese Garden with koi leaping about. Only glitch was when the celebrant (An Anglican/Catholic priest) decided to do a sermon. He had a captive audience so to speak.
3. The wedding and reception was fun. About 50 guests which was perfect. The main idea was for everyone to drink, mingle and have a good time. I even played some Nick Cave on guitar (a mate sang) as well. It went well.
4. The proposal was a formality as we had the rings all sorted and agreed to get married. No bended knee but the romance was still there when I presented the ring with candles and french champagne. Then we visited The Beloved’s parents and then got some KFC.
I’ve been happily married for over 5 years, but I know I still would be stoked if we never said ‘I do’. It has never been the defining moment of my life. I really didn’t mind either way.
He proposed in London after we had been travelling for a year, with the huge family hierloom ring. (which I didn’t wear much cause I’m not a big jewerally person and it is worth more than a small African nation).
We had a total hoot of a wedding. Relaxed, informal and fun. Celebrant and a outside picnic for reception. We still spent alot of cash but it was where we wanted to spend it….mostly booze and food.
The Bridal mags scared me, one they are full of expensive crap and two it seems that the Groom is just a afterthought, a cardboard cut would work just as well if you listen to the industry.
I wore green, we walked in together, I kept my name, and the universe continues.
I think way to much stress is placed on marriage. If folks just chilled out about it I think there would be alot less problems. I reckon take out a contact for say 5 years, reveiw it after that, if all is going well then continue. If not then bow out gracefully, no stigma, no hassle. Of course emotions don’t work that way but kinda makes sense to me.
I think the question behind this question is: Do you actually love me, or just love the idea of getting married?
Who would want to marry a woman who sees marriage itself as more important than the person she is actually married to?
I would only accept with the Kanye clause (We want prenup), and I would never want kids, which means its unlikely anyone will ever ask me
I would consider getting married to help out a friend (with a visa or something) though, and in fact have already promised someone I will marry them if they want to migrate here. Apart from that though I can’t see it happening.
There really is nothing in marriage for a man these days (if there ever was), especially when you take into account the bias of things like the divorce and family court.
The hard-core view (or the misogynist view if you like) is that marriage is an institution invented by weak men to prevent Alpha Males from monopolising all the women. I think Neitzsche would approve of this view.
If you can get women without being married to them then marriage is quite useless.
50 years ago it wasn’t possible to spend your life tomcatting because A:) Most girls wouldn’t do it unless you were married to them and B:) People didn’t tend to have more than 1 partner, and cheating was less tolerated and occured less.
Nowadays a man simply doesn’t need to get married in order to have sex, so there goes 90% of the point of it in the eyes of Neanderthals like me.
You’d be surprised at the number of blokes who want to help out a “friend” with visas. You actually do have to show quite a lot of evidence that your relationship is genuine when dealing with DIMA. Of course, some people go to a lot of trouble for their “friends”.
In this day and age, there’s probably no reason to get married at all, unless you believe in the religious significance of the event. My parents were together for 35 years without being married.
Marriage is not a trap, but I think a lot of people fall into “Everybody Loves Raymond” syndrome. That is, immediately adopt a traditional view of what it means to be a wife or a husband because that’s what they think they need to do. I think some young girls still do a Muriel, but that’s probably related to self-esteem issues etc
I think it’s fine to dream of marriage, but if people don’t become financially independent, they are headed for trouble down the track.
“You’d be surprised at the number of blokes who want to help out a “friendâ€? with visas. You actually do have to show quite a lot of evidence that your relationship is genuine when dealing with DIMA. Of course, some people go to a lot of trouble for their “friendsâ€?.”
Well the kind of relationship we are talking about is a real one. I.E. living together, sleeping together, being a couple etc for however long it takes to get the key to the country and then after that there’s a get out clause for either party.
Of course I know people who’ve done it and then decided to stay married anyway because they rather liked each other, but I also know others who have come to Australia, got their visa and then broken up afterwards.
It’s not that uncommon – and I guess a lot of guys see it as an opportunity for a kind of marriage trial to see if they actually like being married or not. That way they’ll know in either the affirmative or negative if they would make a good husband and can base any future marriage decisions on that
The big unanswered question is really—why do people so willingly equate permanent monogamous commitment based around affection and love, with the bourgeois institution that rides romance like a parasitical sucker fish?
Consider the tensions between one famous couple:
The answer to the question above: “was a woman resorting to a “propose to me or I’ll find someone who willâ€? ultimatum being unreasonable or just communicating clearly?” is obviously that the woman was acting entirely reasonably and rationally. She’s just articulating a vison of status-centred marriage, in which affection and love have a peripheral part.
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Incidentally, three cheers for the FBI for catching Warren Jeffs!
Amen, Darlene, amen.
We were one of those couples who talked about the idea for a few days and mutually agreed to get married. Sometimes I think that I would have liked him to make some big proposal, but it would have been kind of weird and talking it over like adults seems so much more sensible for us.
We wanted a small casual wedding, and were a little surprised by how much family expectations impacted on our choices. In the end, we got the casual, but not the small (we both have massive families). We married on the beach, had vegan yum cha for our reception (which was only $20 a head instead of the $100 that we were quoted elsewhere) and the music came from our Ipod (and included such hits as Ice Ice Baby). I bought my dress from a normal dress shop on sale and while it was mostly cream it was very non-traditional. My husband didn’t wear a tie and didn’t tuck in his shirt. Our friend did the photography.
I had a great day and did enjoy formally joining our families together and declaring our love and commitment to our nearest and dearest. Two years later I am still trying to decide whether or not to take his name – he thinks the whole idea is crazy.
I think that if a guy or girl sees marriage as a trap (rather than as an unnecesssary formality), then they are actually not ready to commit to someone and the couple should probably go their separate ways. I don’t think that either party could remain happy when they want different things from a relationship.
On the traditional wedding question – I have friends and cousins who have done the whole traditional thing and had an absolute ball. One of my cousins enjoyed her traditional wedding so much that she actually wanted to do the whole thing again the next day.
I’m curious – was that one where she didn’t do most of the planning, but left it to mum etc? I could imagine that being much less stressful in some ways, although the cardboard cut-out groom issue that Coz raises might still be bubbling away.
I’m not sure that affection and love are necessarily peripheral for women who have a traditional view of only raising children within marriage. Affection and love are still two of the legs of the tripod, but for some people the status is the third leg without which everything topples, and for them it’s statement of public dignity about their affection/love – they’re not just shacking up for sex, it’s the “real deal” (I don’t subscribe to that view, but I can see why some might). That’s a different issue from the bourgeois display wedding to flaunt a family’s wealth as a status thing.
No, she did the lot. She just really enjoyed the day. I should say that she is an extremely relaxed individual and didn’t let the planning stuff get on top of her – she just did what was needed (and nothing more) and took it all in her stride.
In some ways, doing everything quite traditionally means that there isn’t that much planning to do. You book the church and reception venue (and they do the rest), you book a photography and some fancy cars, buy a dress and tuxedo, ask your bridemaids and groomsmen to do the same, and send off the invites to everyone who ought to be invited. If you have 12 months to do it, it isn’t all that bad.
Tigtog, I meant ‘bourgeois marriage’ in the Engels sense—an institution implying ownership, a power relationship, and certain divisions of labour. Personally, I think such a thing is antithetical to affection and love, but that’s just me. (Though I also agree that The Big Wedding as an event has also itself become a bourgeois artefact.)
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I had a conversation once with an Aboriginal friend of mine who said that in the Sydney Aboriginal community nobody usually bothers going to weddings, or baptisms, or confirmations, just funerals. After all, he said, that’s the only permanent one.
The last wedding I went to was in 1987. I must say that both the brides looked very spiffy in their white formal suits and bow ties.
Liam, I was originally quite opposed to marriage because I felt that it had all of those property/ownership meanings and that I didn’t want a bar of it. However, I changed my mind because I realised that it is still a powerful cultural symbol that tells your family that they now have a new permanent member and it is a way (not the only one, but a useful one) of ensuring that you and your partner have really thought through the issue of commitment and are actually on the same page (about commitment, having kids, life expectations, etc).
The fact that my partner is the kind of guy that could never consider me to be his property or buy into any of those kinds of stereotypes also took away the other stigmas of marriage for me.
Also, while I have seen some weddings that are all about displaying status symbols etc. I don’t think that this is an apt description for all weddings at all. Many are just low-key celebrations, and don’t involve any displays of status or wealth at all.
Ah, with you now, Liam, and in essential agreement, although Engels didn’t think enough about the gender roles throughout society and not only in marriage (there’s been many a women disgusted at the sexism of the oh-so-egalitarian comrades). The divisions of power/labour thing in a relationship doesn’t only come with the marriage certificate, although perhaps that’s a better discussion for another thread.
I can see why some people do that whole “marry me or we break up” thing. My boyf and I have been together four years now, and occasionally talk about maybe getting married at some future point… and if we havn’t made moves in that direction by five years of relationship, we’re going to have to have a serious talk!
The thinking being- we’ve been together a long time – if we can’t see ‘forever’ yet, if it scares either of us, then something is wrong, and maybe we should cut our losses and move on.
Fingers crossed though, thats not going to be an issue!
The best wedding I ever went to had a little jazz band which got everyone dancing all night long. And plenty of good wine too!
More recently, in 1997, I did have the pleasure of attending a “love festival” in a bushland setting just off the Murwillumbah-Kyogle road at which two of my cohabiting friends made their vows of lifetime commitment, albeit outside the framework of legal marriage. I am not convinced that legal marriage offers any benefits beyond those of a mutually genuine commitment such as my friends made, and given the current and potential future shape of family law under the present Federal government legal marriage contains major pitfalls for women if the relationship founders, especially if kids are involved.
Cristy, it wouldn’t surprise me if most folks frequenting a left-leaning blog were the sort of folks who largely opt out of display weddings and the whole Bridezilla thing. Most of their friends and family would probably be more likely to opt out of than into the conspicuous consumption gig generally, not just for weddings. All the best weddings I’ve been too were well under 100 guests.
Yet the Wedding-Industrial Complex makes obscene gobs of money from convincing people that the wealth display and the whole “most important day of a woman’s life” wedding is what makes a marriage “real”. The profits from the bridal porn mags alone are staggering.
I hated that idea: the birth of our children was much more important than our wedding day, lovely though that was, and I always knew it would be. Hell, the 24/7 intimacy of our 7-week honeymoon (affordable when one doesn’t waste money on sparkly finger accessories) was much more important than the actual wedding day.
I am fairly sure that all of those pitfalls apply to defacto couples too though Paul. I can’t think of any family law provisions regarding disolution that do not apply equally to defacto and de jure marriages. Are there any?
An alternative view, Yob, is that marriage was invented by strong men to make sure that the children they were expending time and effort raising were actually their own. No woman has ever looked at her offspring and thought ‘I wonder if it’s really mine’, but men don’t have that luxury. Creating a social contract whereby they will provide for the wife and children if she will raise them traditionally gave men a greater level of certainty (albeit not 100%) that they weren’t carefully nurturing someone else’s genes. Obviously for men who don’t want children there is nothing to be gained here – similarly, for women who are more than capable of providing for and raising their own offspring (which is most of us these days), that arrangement is fairly redundant. It’s still pretty special, though, to stand up in front of all your family and friends and declare your love and committment to each other. Plus you get to spend thousands of dollars on a dress (which I’ll never do again), drink copious amounts of champagne and receive loads of presents… As for name changing, I had a good name and my husband has an awful one so there was no way I was changing it, but not for any rad-fem reason. Personally I don’t think it’s any less sexist for women to use their father’s name than their husband’s.
For the record, I got the full, down-on-one-knee, 11:59 NYE 1999 proposal but he knew better than to try and pick a ring for me!
Really? I always wondered who actually read those things.
I picked a couple of them up while waiting at the supermarket checkout to frighten my partner before our wedding, but they were just full of advertising and white puff. I couldn’t work out what anyone would do with one.
They’re full of advertising because of their high circulation figures. I’ve worked in a few offices where there were enough young women that there were two or three weddings a year, and there were plenty of bridal porn mags circulating. Lots of the already married women were right into offering advice as well.
how long into the relationship should a proposal be expected?
I’m not sure I’d ever expect a proposal. But I think it’s probably a good idea to discuss quite early on what your attitudes to committment are so you’re not on a totally different page from your partner.
were guys who didn’t propose after several years together playing some power trip?
This question quite wrongly assumes that it’s always the girl who wants to get married, and so guys can either nobly grant their girlfriend’s wish, or withhold a proposal as some kind of power trip. This is wrong is so many ways!
was a woman resorting to a “propose to me or I’ll find someone who will� ultimatum being unreasonable or just communicating clearly?
Resorting? Ultimatum? This sort of ultimatum can only come from a woman?
is a man who responds to such an ultimatum being trapped, giving in or just being brought to a realisation of what he might lose?
Trapped??? Giving in??? This sort of ultimatum can only come from a woman? Again with the assumption that women are desperate to dash to the alter, and have to trap a man into marrying them. The way these questions are framed says a lot about how the whole subject is still being framed in our culture.
was a woman who asked a man to marry her forever going to be held up as desperate by her community?
Not in my community.
was it OK for a man to propose without having chosen the ring and having it on hand?
Of course it is – what’s marriage about anyway? Diamonds or committment? My Dad never gave my Mum an engagement ring. Mum gave Dad a ladder after he suggested they get married (an extension ladder, a very good one and very useful in their house which has very high ceilings). They’re still happily married nearly 33 years later, despite the lack of a ring. Anyone who thinks the ring is the important part of the proposal is heading for trouble, methinks.
Oh yes, which is exactly what I found fascinating about the original discussion at Pandagon. Amanda’s from Texas, and said that the culture surrounding her is so full of these expectations that for her to walk around with anything that looked like a bridal magazine felt like giving in to the wedding-pod-people.
I think in most big cities there are more alternatives to the traditional proposal/wedding narrative being explored, but the sociocultural expectations about which sex wants most to get married and how that marriage should be performed/celebrated still swirl around us all.
Well, I bought my partner a ring to celebrate the birth of our child. Thats a close as we’ll get – but personally, I reckon it was famously romantic of me.
Go original. When I see those mill-brides lining up for betrothal with standard issue dress, ugly bridesmaid outfits (sole apparent function – make bride look better), the cars, and the whole $20k deal, I frankly wonder what its trying to say. “Our love is economically competitive; a market player”.
Mind you, other people’s weddings are a great place to pick up when you’re single.
Lefty E, I love your baby ring idea.
As for the industry bridesmaid dresses, I second your yecch. I chose a fabric in a nice dark shimmery claret colour, and told my two attendants to have it made up as a cocktail dress however they wanted (considering one was 20 and the other 40, they simply wouldn’t have wanted the same frock). They both got several years of formal use from them afterwards, so that worked out well.
I have to confess to the engagement being a question from my then partner of six years. Not very romantic but the whole will you marry me and look I’ve bought this ring no pressure type thing doesn’t seem necessarily the way that a couple that have lived full lives together do this.
Living overseas we were quite naive about the whole wedding thing and thinking we were ready to rock by a having a lovely dress and a spiffy suit, a chapel and a reception place was far far from the mark. Returning to Perth two weekes before it was-
Have you worked out your table floral arrangements?
Now whose sitting where?
Have you spoken to the organist?
Bridal mags had a time line with things like – “6 months before -have mothers meet to discuss coordination of outfits”.
A busy two weeks but our theory was that if you put people together with a few drinks and some good food they should be able to have a good enough time of it was correct. Wedded by good natured former olympic water polo playing priest, great pics by a photographer that hated weddings but ‘just this one time’, and a restaurant on top of Steve’s pub by the river. And then down to the pub after for a few hours to finish a fabulous day.
This has my confirmed [smug] theory that people get the weddings they deserve. What made the wedding was friends, parents, and family and if you get them wrong, no amount of white limos and taffetta will save it. And they’re the reason why we do get married. I didn’t love my wife any more after we were married but what we did was share this as part of a small community we had built up over the years. My grandfather told me that it was “the best steak he’d ever had” and when he passed away a couple of years later, it was the first thing I thought of.
Now you’ve got me all sentimental, I’ll have to drag out the wedding pic
How lovely
PaulAnthony.“The big unanswered question is really—why do people so willingly equate permanent monogamous commitment based around affection and love, with the bourgeois institution that rides romance like a parasitical sucker fish?”
Yes, Liam. I ask that question every time I see the Socialist Alliance and Greens banners at very poorly attended gay marriage demos. It’s kind of ironic but there you go. If one group can have access to a bourgeois institution that rides romance like a parasitical sucker fish, everybody else can as well!
Some gay commitment ceremonies can be woefully tacky – matching kilts, “Wind Beneath My Wings” two grooms at the decorative cake centrepiece….. kind of reassuring in a way
I actually think that gay men have been frontier innovators in designing relationship structures that are non-traditional, that don’t necessarily equate commitment and enduring love with monogamy and that allow for a much more central focus on friendship networks, etc.
No-one has touched on the cultural dimension offered by Greek/Italian/Lebanese weddings as a kind of community rites and customs celebratory validation thing that is actually much bigger than the couple concerned.
When I got engaged I was surprised how many people’s first response was almost always ’show us the ring’, often before they had said congratulations. I started to wonder if it was only worthy of congratulations if the ring was big enough
There was no big ‘popping the question’, simply deciding together that we were ready to take that next step. Engagement ring/s didn’t even occur to us.
My mother was scandalised that I didn’t intend to wear white. She even started sending dresses for me to ‘try’. In the end I bought a white dress for $60 at a sale.
I had 4 flower girls, but only because I didn’t want to disappoint my nieces who had expectations, all dressed in pink (their choice). I still have one of the dresses. The youngest niece was tiny and her dress was like a little doll’s dress.
I also had a run in with AEC a few weeks after the wedding. I received a letter from them addressed to Dear Mrs New-husband’s-surname suggesting that IF I had changed my name when I got married I had to notify them.
I wrote to them and pointed out that as a newly married person I was unlikely to be offended by being addressed by my maiden name (even if I had decided to change it) but as someone who had decided not to change my name I took offence at the presumption that I HAD, particularly in a letter that by its very nature recognised I may not have changed it.
I received a (correctly addressed) letter of apology that also indicated they had changed their policy.
Ahhh, ancient history. All this was back in the mid 80s
I think marriage, like any relationship can be a trap if both people are not emotionally strong and independent. I have seen those shortcomings in the marriages of people in my family, even if they have remained married. I also don’t think it is necessary to be married to show an intention of commitment to another person. Like Paul, I believe that commitment can more than adequately be expressed outside the framework of the State.
I used to spend a lot of time near a spot that is regularly used for post-ceremonial wedding photography. It is something that definitely turned me off big weddings. So much extravagance and no real evidence of great happiness in a lot of cases.
I got married because there was no other way for my partner and I to stay together at the time, as she is German and she wanted to stay here. I’m fairly sure the decision consisted of us talking one day, figuring that we could spend a lot of money on trying to get a de facto visa and fail and deciding “Oh well, I guess we’ll have to get married then!”
In the future, we may end up spending time in Europe, but right now we are living here. If we hadn’t married, I’m sure we would have eventually had some kind of celebration or ceremony involving friends and family, which is essentially what our wedding was – a ceremony presided over by a celebrant by the river, surrounded by friends.
My wife (an expression which sounds very weird to me) made her own wedding dress with one of our friends. We had plain silver rings engraved with a design we had produced and neither of us wear it on the ‘ring’ finger. we had the reception at our house (although we could have probably done it better at a community hall). My wife took my name, which was completely her decision – I personally would have been happy if she had kept her former surname.
Well, my relative and his beloved were the ones who escaped such a big Mediteranean wedding by eloping while overseas.
They still had to have a blessing of their union in the church here to keep her parents happy, but they did that in a low-key way, and then we had a large dual-family gathering at my relative’s parents’ home.
His beloved felt that she saw all her cousins and aunties at a dozen weddings a year at least anyway in their community, so she didn’t feel the community ties would suffer that much is she denied them a big production out of hers.
On a slight tangent, but relevant to the whole the whole expectations thing, my wife was suprised by the large number of people upon seeing the photos of her in a blue wedding dress assumed she had been married before.
I refused to have anything to do with the dresses that my bridemaids wore. I didn’t want to take on that kind of responsibility. I just asked them to make sure that they liked whatever they wore, that it didn’t cost too much (if they felt the need to buy something new) and that they were sure that they would wear it again. They ended up all buying their dresses separately in different shapes and colours and they looked great – because they were comfortable.
I wondered how long it would take for that one to come up. My surname isn’t primarily my father’s name, it’s MY name that I’ve answered to all my life, and for the future we’ve combined our surnames for the kids.
Patriarchal naming traditions are one form of sexist acculturation, changing names on marriage is an entirely different one. I don’t think it’s an especially rad-fem position to see the name-change tradition as a much larger sexist imposition than the patriarchal surnaming tradition. Why the big assumption that women will stop identifying themselves by the name they’ve borne all their lives and change all their paperwork, but it’s absolutely not expected of the man?
“An alternative view, Yob, is that marriage was invented by strong men to make sure that the children they were expending time and effort raising were actually their own.”
A nice thought but that doesn’t really fit into the standard evolutionary theory.
In the animal world the male is usually just an inseminator and has no role in raising the young (although there are exceptions).
The person expending all the time and energy raising the child would be the female. It is in her interest to choose a strong man with good genes to impregnate her – because she only gets about 15 good years in which to reproduce and a limited amount of eggs to attempt it with.
So her best chance of passing along her genes are to find a good man to impregnate her and then spend a lot of time making sure the baby lives long enough to reproduce itself.
The man on the other hand can just play the numbers game. Just go around impregnating every woman you see and the odds are that one or more of your sproglings will make it.
Now, of course every other bloke wandering around has the same idea, so you will have to either prove to the woman that your genes are superior to the competition, or just eliminate the competition by beating the hell out of them or running them out of town.
The problem is for some blokes is that they just weren’t a good fighter or hunter or generally very good at convincing cave women to root them. So how to pass on the genes?
The solution was marriage – make a rule in the tribe that every man can only have 1 woman so there will be enough to go around. The stronger, smarter or more charismatic guys will still get the best ones but that’s ok because at least now there are still going to be some left over for us.
The benefits of marriage are pretty obvious in even a hunter-gatherer society. Monogamous marriage means more men will stick around because they have a mate. More men means more hunters and more warriors. Your society is stronger and therefore more able to conquer or assimilate others.
And that’s how monogamous marriage became the dominant MO for most of the world, by brutal attrition.
After having agreed to get engaged and choosing a ring together, my fiance and I decided to move in together. After telling my parents my dad came over all Catholic and demanded that we get married immediately, to my shock and horror. So I had to tell my fiance that if we didn’t immediately set a date we couldn’t move in together, because there was a high probability that my Dad’s cancer would recur and I couldn’t bear to be estranged from my Dad because he might die on me. With some negotiations from my Mum we set a date for nine months later, and moved into our place together. The swift wedding date and empire line dress had lots of rellies talking but there was no baby then. Dad didn’t go to the doctor until after the wedding, but the cancer had come back, and 18 months later he died. Almost ten years and two kids later, hubby has forgiven Dad and we are still happily married.
Having the same surname as my father may be equally as sexist as using a husband’s name BUT I didn’t get to make that decision, it was made before I was in a position to make any decision.
I did get to make the decision about changing names when I got married. By that time I identified myself as being the person carrying the name my parents chose for me. It simply did not feel right for me to change my name.
I struggle with the name changing issue, because I would like our children to have the same name as both of us and I really don’t want to hyphenate. My mother’s family has passed a name down the matrilinial line for generations, and I have considered using that name and my husband’s last name as a compromise and passing both of them (unhyphenated) on to our kids. It all seems like a bit of a production though and so I have yet to do anything about it.
I would probably be opposed to the idea if my husband was all about it – because I would feel as though he was applying double standards and being all patriarchal – but he thinks that it would be strange for me to change my name and has offered to have the kids take my last name instead. That doesn’t seem like a good solution to me though, because it would upset his family and it doesn’t really create a permanent solution to the dilemna etc.
It just frustrates me that this continues to be an issue. Hyphenating doesn’t seem like a longterm solution because surnames would just get too long, but nothing else seems to have emerged as an alternative option. Why is this?
Agreed, Geoff Honnor. Suckerfishes for all—it ain’t remora ’till it’s equal.
I am proud to say that all those things that most who read this site either envy or hate – we did. The full monty.
I had a ring made without her knowing. Put on a suit and tie and went and asked her father for his permission. I then asked her in the traditional manner, and she said yes! Full military wedding in the school chapel – she looked wondeful in her off white Thai Silk dress – still remember that first glimpse over my shoulder to this day. Yacht Club reception. She changed her name to mine. Best wedding I’ve ever had (or been to, but I’m biased). Cost the parents a motza.
Still happily married more than a decade later.
Simple tip for blokes – weddings and pregnancy/child birth aren’t about you – just turn up when your expected, looking half decent and don’t get too drunk and everybody should be happy.
He who expects nothing is seldom dissappointed.
Re naming thing
I always thought his surname (simply because it is the norm) and mine as a middle name.
Anything but hyphenating!
Well, my only probem with hyphenated surnames is the present-bound nature of the solution. I mean – what do the kids to do when they face the same dilemma? Have three to four surnames? IMHO, Its kind of a one-shot solution that may create more problems down the track.
Personally, I reckon the Spanish and Portuguese speaking world have this problemo nailed, much better than Anglos. Everyone has two surnames (so you dont stand out in the crowd – and there are accepted rules for dealing with four surnames coming together). Its somehwat less patriarchal as one’s from mum side, and one’s from dad.
Admittedly, the patriarchy is still there – your main surname is the fathers (you only tend to publicly use the mothers where the father’s is really common eg garcia; hence ‘garcia marquez’). Plus, The two ‘grandmaternal’ surnames are the ones drop off a child is born – so the next generation gets the two grandfathers main surname.
But still, its better.
Good posts Yobo.
‘Paul’ the other one Anna
My wife Toni kept her family name so I didn’t have to effectively marry myself – there are limits to my vanity y’ know.
Yobbo, there are several problems with your theory.
“A nice thought but that doesn’t really fit into the standard evolutionary theory”
If human social behaviour was solely dictated by evolution, we wouldn’t have such a wide variety of behaviour between cultures.
In the Middle Ages, when marriage was important to the upper classes because they wanted to ensure their offspring were their own because they would inherit the property, peasants often didn’t bother getting formally married – why? Because there was no property to pass on.
“In the animal world the male is usually just an inseminator and has no role in raising the young (although there are exceptions)”
There are exceptions even among our own close relatives, monkeys and apes. Male Penguins sit on eggs. You simply can’t use this as an argument – humans may well be an exception.
“The person expending all the time and energy raising the child would be the female”.
That varies a lot between cultures, and is arguable.
“It is in her interest to choose a strong man with good genes to impregnate her – because she only gets about 15 good years in which to reproduce and a limited amount of eggs to attempt it with”.
Well, der. But that doesn’t mean it’s her only consideration. Equally to be considered are whether he might bring her food (especially meat) when she is heavily pregnant or recovering from the birth or needing extra calories because she is lactating, and whether he’ll help look after the offspring, maximising their chances of survival. There’s pretty good evidence that tribal people tend to go for serially monogomous relationships – they tend to last about seven years which is enough time for a child to be raised past the critical age of five (in cultures with high infant mortality once you get to around six you’re usually pretty safe from childhood diseases etc).
“So her best chance of passing along her genes are to find a good man to impregnate her and then spend a lot of time making sure the baby lives long enough to reproduce itself”
And to make sure the man sticks around to feed her and the child and etc.
“The man on the other hand can just play the numbers game. Just go around impregnating every woman you see and the odds are that one or more of your sproglings will make it.
Now, of course every other bloke wandering around has the same idea, so you will have to either prove to the woman that your genes are superior to the competition, or just eliminate the competition by beating the hell out of them or running them out of town.”
Or you could prove to the woman that you’re going to stick around and bring her wooly mammoth meat and help keep the cave tidy so they might decide you’re a better bet than the man running round trying to stick his dick into any woman he comes across.
“The problem is for some blokes is that they just weren’t a good fighter or hunter or generally very good at convincing cave women to root them. So how to pass on the genes?
The solution was marriage – make a rule in the tribe that every man can only have 1 woman so there will be enough to go around. The stronger, smarter or more charismatic guys will still get the best ones but that’s ok because at least now there are still going to be some left over for us.”
You really don’t know anything about tribal cultures, do you?
“Your society is stronger and therefore more able to conquer or assimilate others”.
Many hunter-gatherer cultures are pretty peaceful, and almost all of them see people outside their tribe as not being properly human – why would they want to assimilate others if they don’t see them as human?
“And that’s how monogamous marriage became the dominant MO for most of the world, by brutal attrition.”
Your theory is totally half-baked. You need to do some basic research about tribal people and also history before you start making up anthropological theories.
Sometimes transitional solutions are what is required. Use the hyphenating to break the patriarchal surnaming tradition and then let the next generations work out a new way of generating a family name once the hyphenating gets unwieldy. There’s many a family of English toffs blithering happily along with three or four surnames hyphenated together. I even did a post on hyphenating traditions a few months ago over at my old place which still gets several hits a day.
Rebekkah, well said and thanks for taking on that one – I hadn’t had time to do more than splutter yet.
No probs tigtog.
I actually have always thought the whole hyphenating thing was a bit silly, because of the whole ending-up-with-16-names-after-four-generations thing, and that really the mother is the one who is pregnant for nine months and then goes through the whole birth process, so why not just give them their mother’s name?
The other advantage for this being that you can always tell who the baby’s mother is, whereas the father is less certain.
That said, my partner and I plan to merge our names into one new ubername, solving the problems of hyphenation, the whole family not having the same name, etc.
We also toyed with this idea, but our creations ended up sounding quite silly and so we went cold on the idea. Perhaps it was just an unfortunate combination…
We got married for tax reasons – in those days in the UK a man (yes, only a man) got tax deduction for being married (didn’t matter how much his wife earned) and we were about to move there. I think we would have got married anyway, just not for a few years.
I hated the idea of engagement rings, as they were one sided, and hence a symbol of ownership to me, so we bought a painting together instead.
And I kept my name – it’s not just my father’s name, it’s also mine. What I wanted to do about the children was give boys his name and girls mine – we couldn’t agree on that, but luckily we had two boys, so we both agreed they should have his name.
But I’ve rarely met anyone in real life (unlike this blog) who has done anything similar, or doesn’t think I’m weird for all of the above, so I don’t think you can regard this blogs’ readers as typical!
My daughter has her father’s name cause:
I thought it was the least I could do, after having the absolute privilege of being female, and having the starring role in the reproduction saga, and all the intimate physical bonding with said infant… and also the life-long “I’m always right, cause I’m mum” role.
I think fathers should be rewarded for playing the support role…. and it encourages them.
I think children are brought closer to their fathers by naming them in honour of their DAD’s .
(And if the parental relationship breaks down, the child is forever linked to their father in a very public way (good 4 child support!)
You might have an attachment to your surname – but your baby doesn’t.
Unless you are living off the fame and or fortune of famous relatives, you can always bung in any family name, and Great Granny’s name as well as middle names, and carry traditions on this way.
Cause hyphenating is pretty boring for the kids & everyone else who has to type in double-surnames for these kids. Sorry, but it seems to appeal to middle class women and/or educated women who are a tiny bit self-obsessed, and are dumping their preoccupations onto their kids, rather then putting the needs of their kids first. And let’s not deny that the hyphen thing has this real posh ring to it…. there isn’t an urge to upgrade said sprog into the upper classes is there? I know waiting lists as Cranbrook and Ascham can be rather long….
Gawd, didn’t realise there was such a deep well anti-hypenating antipathy lurking inside – sorry if I’ve offended the hyphenators.
On the point made above by Liam about marriage as an instution, I agree. With all respect to people like Cristy who can find a mutually agreeable way to inhabit it, I’m inclined to think that as a cultural institution it does tend to produce stereotyped behaviours which reflect its patriarchal origins.
Before anyone jumps in, it’s not a choice I’d make, but I don’t condemn anyone for making it – particularly if they’ve thought deeply about its implications – which can only be for the good.
And I do think that for those who want it, it ought to be extended to gay and lesbian folks.
And to observa and Tiddles the Cat and weird dudes.
jo, i’m not sharpening a pitchfork with your name on it yet.
Hyphenating isn’t so posh these days precisely because so many people are doing it, and the really posh people have only ever done it when the wife’s family is more prominent than the humbler-ancestored husband, and they look down upon those who are hyphenating for less Establishment reasons.
We’ve told the kids they’re welcome to choose new first names and surnames by deed poll when they’re 18 anyway.
Also, a couple of other quick points.
I understand in Queensland until the advent of the Goss government it was legally impossible to register a baby with a hyphenated surname. The legal position was that if a father acknowledged paternity, the baby had to take the father’s name. A deed poll could be done after the birth registration, but it’s indicative of where the law was on these matters. I don’t know what the situation was in other states.
On tigtog’s point about Engels, yes, but it was still a remarkable book and with the caveats about the prevailing climate of opinion at the time, and the contemporary state of anthropological knowledge when he wrote, it’s still a remarkable book and worth reading not just as a historical text.
As is J.S. Mill.
Engels’ book, and the often forgotten ideals of Communist feminists, led to some very interesting developments around the law of marriage in the first phase of the Bolshevik Revolution, which were to a great degree modified by Lenin’s traditionalism later on.
But it’s still an undeniable fact that the legal position of women was generally better in the Communist East for a long time. And that some things went backwards in countries like Poland after the Velvet Revolutions.
[waits for Rob to accuse Kim of being responsible for deaths of millions killed by Stalin because she made a historical observation about one area where Soviet Marxism was more progressive than the generally conservative authoritarianism in the West til the 60s/70s/80s
]
Is marriage a trap (either of the patriarchy or of clutching women), or is it that without which a woman is unfulfilled and a man is never mature?
I’m (very newly) single, and I do have reservations about getting married, in terms of the traditional role that is expected of a ‘wife’. That said, I think I may like to make that commitment to someone in the distant future, as long as it is a marriage of equals.
Do/did you dream of a big wedding with all the works, or is/was it your nightmare?
I’ve never been one to imagine my wedding really. I’m not that girly.
Were you forced into the upper/middle-class wedding extravaganza and resent it, or was it actually fun?
N/A
Did any of you blokes do the full romantic cliche of ring in your pocket and bended knee?
N/A
Have any of you girls had to reject a bloke who went to all that trouble?
N/A
Where are the girls who proposed?
I’d consider it if I wanted to get married and my partner wasn’t taking the initative.
Where are those (men and women) who will never propose and never accept?
N/A
Who’s going to keep their birth name, who can’t wait to get rid of it, and who really wishes their partner did take their name?
I think I’ll keep my birth name.
Not a problem if you are/were from the August Arch-House of the Hapsburgs because everyone married their cousins…
I should also point out as someone that is (among other things) a professional photographer, weddings do provide people with degrees in Fine Arts a good way to make a good living
Oh, and for your odd commitment ceremony needs, try this link:
http://www.bmezine.com/news/pubring/20050401.html
Warning: Ewww factor present in link.
“I think marriage, like any relationship can be a trap if both people are not emotionally strong and independent”
You’re right I think dj. Both parties have to be comfortable with themselves lest they look to their partner to make up for what’s missing. Mind you, without a good measure of selflessness, it’ll end in tears anyway.
So I’ve been in a relationship for 3 years, should I be checking out jewellery shops?
I was at a wedding a couple of weeks back where both the bride and groom where around 22 years old. Interestingly almost every person I’ve spoken to has commented on the age of the bride and groom – most people have said “gee, that’s a bit early isn’t it” (actually, sometimes that was said in German but I think you get the point). It seems that right from the outset this couple is fighting a paradigm that says that young marriages almost always fail.
Kim: Eeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwww.
That just shows, mick, how much the institution has shifted over a few decades. When my parents were young, 22 or 23 would have been considered about the right age to be married, and 25 to 26 a tad old. We’re not that far removed from the “30 year old spinster” paradigm.
The census results will be interesting when they come out. The % of women who never marry has been on the up and up for quite a long time. Around 20% I think now?
tigtog – yep!
Even the interviewer from BMEzine seemed incredulous.
I nearly forgot as the thread’s gone on – Razor, as the only full on big-weddinger to post thus far, yours does actually sound like a lot of fun. I’m glad to seee at least one guy fess up to getting totally caught up in the romantic mythiness aspect of the proposal (though Shaun comes a close second with his champagne and candles ring presentation).
I think it’s fair enough to get a bit soppy over the wedding thing if you’re going to do it at all – its just the consumerist appropriation of the sentimental side that I find disturbing.
Just on that, Gillian was an intern at BMEzine. They didn’t offer her a continuing position.
She’s got a blog. I forget the link though.
Google “Gillian Hyde”.
Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! Kim, you weren’t wrong about the ewww factor!!!
mick, and the terrible thing about it is that she seems like a talented writer and a vibrant young woman… was her previously married partner the inspiration for this very odd sign of commitment?
They did mention something about previous relationships as having something to do with their choice. They were obviously both into extreme forms of symbolism.
I think the rum they were drinking might have helped the process along a bit as well.
Yeah, but they must have decided to do it before they got stuck into the rum?
Or maybe they were suffering from some sort of psychosis induced by too frequent rum drinking?
Did you get the impression from the interview that maybe Clive was thinking of getting an amputation before they did this? He said when asked about it that he wasn’t into it before and that it was spontaneous, but earlier in the interview Gillian said he was “knowledgeable about amputations”.
It was interesting to read what their flatmate said, basically, that he thought they were kinda nuts and that they got fixated on the idea.
Yes, mick, precisely.
I got the impression he was older than her, and the dominant personality in the relationship.
And that it was his idea.
Maybe playing on the whole “you’re an intern with a bodmod website, this will give you cred” thing.
I should try to find her blog to see if they’re still together, and what she thinks of this “sign of commitment” now.
It’s pretty irrevocable!
Correction – it is irrevocable!
Not an expert but I’d like to marry a beautiful plump woman who’d cook for me and give me babies. In return, I’d do anything for her.
Actually, C.L., in a way, that’s a sad desire given how her marriage turned out. Top marks to her though for seeing her husband through an enormous amount of pain to the next world…
I phrased that badly!
I don’t mean your desire is sad, C.L. Just that her marriage ended sadly for her. I hope I’m making some sort of sense. Too much wine tonight. I must go to bed!
Night all!
xx
I understand.
Like someone else, I saved the good wine till last
I have to confess to being a Wedding Mag addict, make that recovering addict since I can’t afford them any more. I have them back to the 1980’s but they’re part of my fashion library and fun to go back and laugh at what was considered fashionable. Has anyone noticed that these days, it’s all strapless gowns, tiaras and scrapped back hair whether it suits or not?
AND RINGS
My daughter unfortunately chose a bunch of friends whose mothers are all ‘stay at home & married to executives’ and they could pay off a small pacific nation’s debts with their RINGS – it is a HUGE part of getting married for straight (ie. not bent) people, I’ve discovered since having a child.
Even after 10 – 15 – 20 years of marriage, these gals are still fiddling with, examining, showing off and re-telling their RING stories.
The RING people can spot other RINGS a mile away, and just like your clothes, shoes, hair-cut etc, they are a big statement about your wealth and styling and your ability to hook a male with serious earning potential….darling.
Deadset…. I learnt this last Monday after school:
The Cartier Russian Wedding Ring (this particular one being JUST an anniversary present – not THE RING or the Diamond Cluster Engagement ring) is a famous RING of 3 intertwining rings: one in rose gold, one is yellow gold and the other is white gold. And for good measure there were little tiny diamonds studded along the centre of one of the rings – cause you know how pretty that is…
There would have been around 100K’s worth of jewellery on just four right hands – the eastern suburbs of Sydney…
As to real provenance of their gems and minerals, it is never discussed and I’m only tolerated as my daughter is a play friend…..so I ain’t about to sacrifice her social life – BUT the politics and environmental devastation behind gold and diamond jewellery is rarely acknowledged.
The dirty gold campaign http://www.nodirtygold.org/ has been very successful in the US with major jewellers signing up. Considering that nearly all gold is mined for jewellery, and that Cyanide leaching is still the most widely used process in gold mining and so many gold mines are in developing countries are associated with militarism, pollution etc.
As to the politics of diamond mining and other minerals that fuel so many horrible wars in Africa and is behind indigenous people like the Bushmen of the Kalahari being kicked off their land etc., lets say this isn’t a big topic at School Club morning teas!
But maybe it should be……hhm
Tigtog:
Right on all three points.
The problems for marriage in the Australian economy are that [i] It is a form of licenced prostitution for the sole benefit of money-lenders, like banks; and [ii] If the participants can be conned into thoroughly unrealistic expectations of marriage, a lot of money can be made …. and when they eventually separate or divorce, through unfulfilled expectations, even more money can be made.
No, I’m not cynical, just observant.
Find someone you like to be with as well as love. Listen to your friends’ opinions of your intended spouse {they might stop you falling into disaster) but follow your own heart. Accept them as they are, faults and all. Ditch all the come-in-sucker stuff you might read in glossy magazines. Marry them. Live happily ever after ….. well, that’s the plan.
Razor:
Sovereign advice for ALL blokes!
[btw - we were married in a military chapel .... while I was on course - honeymoon came later]
JahTeh – yes, why is everyone wearing such simliar dresses and updo? There was a lovely girl locally who got married a few years ago in similiar, yet she had long hair which would have looked fabulous gently styled into waves and ringlets, and she was just a little too lacking in gym-tone to have a strapless gown do her justice – she would have looked much better in something with a little sleeve, particularly as she’s a very modest twice-weekly churchgoer.
If they can get a girl like that to choose something that so blatantly didn’t suit her (she still looked lovely, but she could have looked absolutely stunning with her hair out and cap sleeves) then the wedding-industry tentacles are wrapped tight around us all.
Having a boy and a girl the surname choice conundrum was easy, although you have to decide upon the rules with the first. Ms O keeps mums name and MasterO keeps mine. It was fairly logical for mum as a teacher to keep her name upon marriage, which was of course her dad’s name traditionally. You have to start somewhere though because the hyphenating thingy clearly runs into ludicrous length probs. However the name you go by doesn’t change who you are. That’s called character and both mum and dad are intrinsically involved in creating that.
Well, Yobbo’s view of the world is sorta half right for real blokes. Basically we’re lazy at the finer nuances of the mating game and generally go with the flow. What Yobbo doesn’t realise yet is that flow is largely controlled by a master race of intelligent space beings, for which we mere earthlings are no match. At best we can confuse and confound their master plan for us on occasions, because of our awkward clumsiness in these matters, but deviously nuanced, military precision will always triumph over lethargic apathy in the long run. So it was with the Observa and so it will be with young MasterO.
You start off footloose and fancy free chasing skirt at discoes and the pub scene. Like most blokes you do more chasing than getting, but that’s half the fun and besides the easy ones are the hardest the morning after. You know, one night you’re at a disco and you’ve laid a really fancy line on a sort like –‘Gidday how yer goin and haven’t I seen you somewhere before?’ Well next thing you and the mates are situated at the same table with her and her mates and then next thing you know the initial object of interest has vanished into thin air and there’s her girlfriend, the attentive young Mrs O hanging on your every word and fluttering her eyelashes seductively. Unbeknownst to a basic earthling, a higher life form has decided that said tall earthling will be an ideal accoutrement for a similarly tall alien who likes to wear high heels and sees her monumental challenge in life. That life challenge consists of turning a crude earthling who likes beer, bundy, racing motorcycles and hanging out with similar earthlings, into a higher life form, with an appreciation of the finer points of life like mortgages, furniture, soft furnishings and the like.
A familiar tale to which we fast forward some years to the ultimate graduation ceremony of said earthling to the world of his higher life form elites. I’m back from racing motorcycles OS and working for a while surveying with the old man in the Mid North of SA. The not yet MrsO (MissO)and I are commuting back and forth lovingly as you do on weekends between country towns where she’s also teaching away from Adelaide. I’m living in a remote farmhouse out of town and we pop in to the folks in town. This serves 2 purposes. MissO can use the modern conveniences rather than the oneholer, etc and I have to spend an hour or so painting some new survey pegs ready for the next week’s jobs as we’d run out. You got that? The O is busily greasing the wheels of industry outside, while his mum and MrsO are inside having a cuppa and a friendly telepathic exchange between space beings. Next thing the O looks up to see the 2 most powerful space beings in his orbit casually standing over him and blocking the sun. MissO makes some coy remark about ‘When do you think you’ll finish?’ and somehow it all ends up with a man’s mum saying- ‘And just when are you going to make an honest woman of this young girl O?’ Talk about fucked! This is like the Treaty of Versaille, Waterloo and Hirohito standing on the deck of the Missouri. It’s precisely that moment when you realise you have a choice of hari kari and jumping overboard pitifully, or taking the civilised pen being proffered with merciless stares and signing on with dignity. That way at least you get to keep the odd ceremonial sword or memento of past glories. Guys you will be proud of me as I proferred heroically- ‘Well err, umm ……I suppose we could get engaged to be married?’ Fat chance earthling! ‘Good!’ says mum and ’When exactly do you think you’ll get married?’….. ‘Awww….. perhaps a year or so?’ says I naively and somewhat pathetically. ‘I think December will be perfect’ says mum exchanging telepathic messages with MissO, bearing in mind this was September and with that, December it was.
By the time I cleaned up and went inside the whole shebang was done and dusted. The old man looks up knowingly and asks quizzically- “You’ve finished the pegs then…… and I hear some congratulations are in order?� We have a rare, dry telepathic moment as he’s nodding knowingly as if to say- “ So you thought you were you gunna run, jump, fuck, fight, wheel a barrow and ride a bike for the rest of your life didya?� Welcome to the real world son!
Tigtog, I love the wedding pages in the Sunday papers. According to style I can always tell who’s had the dress on layby the longest and being of the large economy size, I can get away with asking this. Why is it always the biggest girls who are in the lowest strapless dresses?
My wedding looked like a rehearsal for ‘Dimboola’. The last time I saw that many people pissed it was Melbourne Cup Day. The divorce was a more low key affair, a burning of the marriage certificate and a silent prayer of deliverance.
So anyone else been involved in an arranged marriage?
I had two goes at this marriage caper, once in 1964, when I was 24 and once 14 years later in 1978. The differences were substantial and may be of interest.
In 1964 while we knew people who were living together it was still regarded generally as living in sin. It wasn’t something you’d consider as an equal option. So we had a traditional marriage in a church, her daddy paid (he was the only one who could!) and we had a modest reception. There really was less money around at that time and only the rich could indulge in anything lavish.
A couple of things of interest. I didn’t ask my future wife’s father for her hand. Didn’t think of it as to me it was simply irrelevant, and in fact not the custom in the small district of German settlers where I grew up. At that time I wouldn’t have been thinking of who would pay for the wedding! But I did hear that there were mutterings that I should have asked.
The second is that in the photos in front of the church just to the left there was a poster for an appeal for the starving of the world with a picture to match. It does distract the eye when you look at the photos.
In 1978 I proposed on a balmy summer night on the highest part of the lookout at Mt Coot-tha. She was looking in this direction, I was looking into her eyes. We’d only been going out a couple of months and it was a complete surprise to her. Quick thinker, that girl, she said yes immediately and without hesitation. And says she doesn’t regret it.
We would have happily lived together but both had aged mums who would not have accepted it. So we planned a Registry Office wedding with both mum’s and one friend each as witnesses. My wife’s elder brothers got to hear and told her they were coming too and yes, there would be a party.
There was no time for a honeymoon for about a year and a half, so we had a two month engagement (no rings), looked up the Yellow Pages and selected a nearby Uniting Church (they’ll take anyone), my wife took a couple of days off and she and her sister made sandwiches and stuff which both families, plus the one friend each as before, consumed in her two bedroom unit after the ceremony. Honestly a lovely time was had by all. We went back to work on Monday. One of the friends did the photography.
On the Friday night a half an hour before the shops closed we realised the ceromony called for a ring. Panic stations! We were in the city and found a little shop where we bought a silver ring, Swedish silver no less, for the princely sum of $5.
At the wedding when people asked to see the ring my wife would hold it up and say “Swedish silver”. The usual response was “Ooh, that must have been expensive! Isn’t it beeyootiful”
My wife is very attached to it, but it is soft silver, now quite smooth and will probably drop off one day. I don’t like that sort of clobber on my fingers.
My wife didn’t even consider changing her name, and I actively didn’t want her to. To me it signifies subservience. It is an emotional position. Also there is a concept of what it is to be a Bahnisch and she’s not it (thank goodness!) The reverse is also true. I could never be mistaken for one of her clan.
The minister who married us was a honey and was totally cool about my wife’s decision on the name. In fact he said it was just as legal for me to adopt her name as the reverse. And sometimes I do when the plumber she called naturally thinks we have the same name. But I got pissed off when the RACQ changed my name to hers (we jointly own a car.)
Kim said that in those days you had to register your offspring in the father’s name if paternity was acknowledged, so there was no option there for our son (now 19 years old).
My wife did change her name by deed poll because she hated her first given name (she only heard it in full as a child when she was in deep trouble.) It was quite a hassle.
You might gather from the above that we are pragmatic people when it comes to externals. We own one car and one house in common but have bank accounts and investments (shares) in separate names.
Just one question. Isn’t there a statistic that says that people who don’t cohabit before marriage are less likely to divorce?
Mt Coot-tha – scene for me of some snogging and many icecreams but no marriage proposals yet!
Nice stories, Observa and Brian.
It’s always been one of my favourite spots, CL, though it’s a bit commercialised now. And a bit hard to park. But we still like to book a window seat at the restaurant on special occasions.
One of my favourites too, Brian. I suppose the commercialisation will only get worse and they’ll have to bulldoze a giant plateua carpark eventually, if future Sunday brunch isn’t to start with a hike from Paddington. But I can’t see that much bitumen, concrete and traffic doing much for the mountainous vibe.
I think there’s a bus that goes there, which would avoid parking problems.
Yes, Mark. But last time we were there we shared the place with a few busloads of Japanese tourists.
But back on topic, it’s not a bad place for a wedding, I would think, although I’ve seen ceremonies at the Slaughter Falls down the bottom. That is where my first wife and I went when we talked over splitting up.
Hey Guys (gender inclusive usage btw)
Just for the record i did a bit of a trawl and that story about the “Finger Nibbling couple” is a hoax. Albeit a very clever digitally manipulated one, but false nonetheless.
I checked her own blog and buried within is a piece mentioning the April Fools Day article about her ring finger. (Go back and check the date of the original article!)
Just thought i’d debunk that one for y’all.
tanja – who incidently, discovered through experience that it is legally impossible to get happily divorced in order to live in sin with the same partner once married. (Without separating for a year that is
In the last couple of months we’ve been to two delightful low key small weddings, a cousin and a friend.
We’ve just decided on the weekend not to go to another cousin’s full catastrophe formal cousins-can’t-bring-their-kids-but-the-neighbours-kids-can-come wedding-industrial complex extravaganza. The deciding factors were two. One, the engagement ring cost $13000. Two, they have asked for no gifts, but contributions to a “wishing well”. We love a good wedding, but have vowed to never attend one where two Anglos try and clean you out via such an enormity.
(The Anglo bit meaning that while I acknowledge there are some cultures where a preference for cash rather than toasters or ugly platters has a long and proud history, my cousin’s aint one of them.)
Yeah Zoe, I received an invite to some wedding or other that had bank a/c details on the card!
Needless to say, we gave that one a swerve.
I dont mind those approved gift lists though – makes it easy.
I agree asking for $$ up front is a bit rude. Better to take your chances and don’t ask for gifts at all, knowing that most people will put a little something in the card. Or have the Mums discretely let on that as you have been a couple for a while blah blah blah you have just about everything you need, but a little cash in the card would be really useful. Much nicer, less offensive way of going about it.
Yikes Zoe, is that like a month’s salary? Or is it just waaaay over the top?
Or maybe they could just admit they cant afford to get married!
De facto is, of course, a great economy option for wise investors.
If it was a month’s salary then the “wishing well” is even bloody crasser.
And LE, I don’t mind a gift registry, particularly where it’s a rello whose personal taste might not be so clear as an old friend.
The second of the recent weddings said that presents were not expected and dress was informal. They got a huge stack of lovely looking parcels delivered by happy, beautifully dressed up people. Bit of respeck for the guests goes a long way …
Tying the last few comments about the expensive present hurdle back to Brian’s point about there being a lot less ready money around for parties in 1964 – how do people pay for the bigarse parties you see every weekend? Credit cards?
On the naming of children: a friend my age with two daughters bearing his surname and not his partner’s said it was important to him that somebody share his name, as his mother divorced and remarried and his siblings had his stepfather’s name, he was the only person in his family with his surname. That seemed a good, real reason to me.
Parents – at least the ones that I have heard of.
Last wedding I went to between a postie and a bank worker in their late 20s I heard about 15k went on various credit cards.
I knew of a couple (via the photographer) who separated before the $10 000 wedding photo package was delivered.
I just remembered one of my wife’s younger rellies. Her parents gave her a pile of dosh, maybe $15k I don’t know, and told her she could spend it on a wedding or whatever.
She and her fella took a trip to the US and while they were there got hitched in Las Vegas in some wierd Elvis styled ceremony.
She always was a bit different!
I was in the Rocks on Sunday evening for a birthday party – as we drove along George Street there was a cortege of beribboned silver BMW convertibles. Then when we’d been at the pub for about 10 minutes and were looking out from the balcony at the fading sunlight on the coathanger, another cortege of beribboned BMW convertibles went past (black this time), and just as they swept out of view another cortege came into view from the opposite direction – vintage black Jaguars this time. Extrapolating for the rest of the day and the rest of the harbour, obviously quite a few families were showing off their solid financial footing by the water that afternoon.