Weddings are STUPID

Part One. (Because I haven't read a single wedding mag or visited "The Knot," I am sure there is a world of crazy out there that I have yet to encounter.)

So weddings = supposed to register. Apparently the whole world will be waiting with bated breath to find out where Ray and I are registering. We are too, as we have no idea what an inventory of stuff we need would look like (indeed, we both seem to feel awash in stuff right now and willing to not own more stuff, or, if we do, to get it our own selves).

HOWEVER, should we register, the people who are interested are supposed to find out how? By seeing that we're registered on our invites or enclosures in the invites?

Oh Lord God Almighty NOOOOO!!! HERESY!

They have to learn by Word of Mouth.

Maybe that worked back in the day, when going from Aurora to St. Paul was a big deal (circa 1925 or so actual distance: about 17 miles. In people's imaginations: GOING TO EUROPE, info from GMR). Today, when I have family and friends all over who don't really all know each other, that doesn't work so well.

If you are a bride who ignores this etiquette rule, you are a BAD PERSON. Check out the comments here. And God forbid you ask for money! I dare you to type some query along the lines of "I'm a bride and want cash" in Google (there is some pro-asking for cash advice, but it's all "this isn't classy and it takes tact," and the comments are all bile). Even Chinese people get mad about it even though we've all seen that scene in The Wedding Banquet where the red envelopes come streaming in. (Note that if you are a groom you are presumed to have limited, if any, agency.)

So this means that people have to come up to you or your family to ask where you are registered. They are forced into a conversation about someone's wedding. Maybe they want to talk about it, maybe they don't feel like getting sucked into the mountain of crazy that is wedding talk from someone invested in a wedding.

Frankly, I come down on the side of, just tell me on the invite so while it is on my mind, so when it occurs to me, I can go straight to the Internet and buy you something. I cannot be trusted to remember to ask someone or even know whom to ask. I appreciate the bluntness and ease and do not need to do some sort of pearl-clutching over breached etiquette. I do not feel I have been assaulted by someone's greed. People who feel like they are being assaulted by a line of ink that reads, "we are registered at the Sharper Image" need to take some Prozac, grab a ladder and climb over themselves.

Also frankly, it seems to me that there is a lot of free-floating bride hate out there. This culture absolultely hates when women decide to remove their (purely theoretical) sexual availability from the public pool. They hate women having a "day." They do everything they can to denigrate and hate on brides in particular — like the groom has no agency in having a celebration that is "too lavish," "too weird," "too selfish" or too whatever, or worse, that he's being suckered by a succubus so his masculinity is diminished. Even if all the trappings of a wedding are patriarchal and so are its roots, I think it bothers some people that women are taking control over their weddings, as much as they are their marriages, their careers and their fertility.

It bothers folks that women are able to spend their own money on weddings, that we're able to obtain credit to pay for it, too (although, hello, not really the best use of credit). They don't like that we're able to pick who we want to marry. They don't like that we feel we should have control over our own weddings and get mad when we find relatives doing things like inviting people we don't know, imposing their own feelings that they had a mediocre wedding and if only we do what THEY want it will be perfect because sad experience has taught them, or just generally making brides mad. It's always the bride's fault, in their narratives.

I'm not saying there aren't immature brides, but I'm saying they are the vast minority and the stereotype that is used to make all us other brides cower in fear of being compared to them. I'm also saying that they are playing into the culture's expectations for them. You think the magazines and the bridal-industrial complex are playing NO ROLE AT ALL in the creation of the stressed-out, bitchy, entitled Bridezilla? You think they're innocent bystanders? NO WAY JOSE. It's another sexist method of control and they are playing right into it.

It's time to liberate Bridezilla. It's time to unhook her from the culture of consumption, to unhook her from her frightful associations. It's time to recast her. It's time that all that energy be harnessed for some better project.