Married friends

[liv]

So I managed to grab a weekend in Cambridge with the excuse of robhu's wedding to pigwotflies. Many congratulations to the newly-weds!

The day didn't start out too well, because I was trying to visit a friend in hospital, and between problems with communication, really awful public transport (a journey that is supposed to take 40 minutes took about twice that), and me being confused about when it was actually possible to visit patients, I didn't manage to see him. Instead I found myself desperately hoping the bus would get me back into town in time for the ceremony.

I just made it, well, one minute late but before the bride so that's what counts, right? The service was not like anything else I've ever experienced, but then I don't go to all that many Christian weddings and have never had reason to go to an Evangelical type of service. The music was in a style that I've read about but never encountered, with drums and guitars and a keyboard, and sort of American-ish sub rock in genre. It's different enough from the sort of music I'm familiar with, whether secular or religious, that I couldn't pick up any of the tunes even after several verses. (They did do Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart, which I sort of know, but the arrangement was very odd.) If I believed in Christianity I might have felt bad about not joining in, and if I had any musical ability at all I might have felt bad about not lending my voice to the congregation, but as it was I was happy to just listen and observe. People were kind of bopping along to the hymns as well, even the bride and bridesmaids! Also waving their arms in the air like in the slow songs at a rock concert.

The reading was a potentially controversial, if topical, bit of Ephesians about the ideal marital relationship. So there was a sermon about how this passage is not sexist at all, honest, but in order to reach this conclusion the preacher ended up comparing marriage to Gethsemane, crucifixion and death, though he sounded very upbeat about his choice of metaphors. Also, they had a section a lot like our seven marriage blessings (well, except that there were eight of them), which I didn't know was in the Christian liturgy.

But other than that it was sort of what I expect from general cultural saturation in how CofE marriage ceremonies happen. Many thanks to atreic for patiently answering all my nosy questions about details of Christian liturgy and generally helping me to be less confused! jack was worried that I might try to heckle when I disagreed with the theology, but I know enough to know that Christians don't usually appreciate that.

There was a procession along the shopping street towards the bus station, with bubble blowing and a random passing busker serenading us with Here comes the bride. That was lots of fun, and very Cambridge the way that most shoppers and tourists just took a random wedding party in their stride. It seemed appropriate to make the wedding a truly public occasion.

The reception was also lovely, although I did not know that many people. The speeches were funny but also loving and personal. And the people I didn't know were interesting to talk to, though after a while we "circulated" so that we could chat to atreic and emperor. Also saw alextfish and woodpijn and the toothycats briefly. There was dancing, which I enjoyed although we are not very good at it (well, to be accurate jack knows how to dance but doesn't have much sense of rhythm, and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.) Also they had the cutest table decorations with hearts and pacmans and flying pigs, in keeping with the general theme.

Lots of fun people watching and admiring shiny clothes, including of course the bride herself. I was impressed with her choice of dress, which was a compromise between a modern, stylish outfit but just a bit more classic and less revealing than the typical fashion for brides. I wore my orange silk outfit, and garnered compliments on the jacket I bought to go with it, which is white with embroidery in bright colours including orange. Also jack looks ever so good in a smart suit.

There was general consensus that Rob and Bekki struck just the right balance between something that was formal and solemn, with something that was fun and modest and not ostentatious. Also they make a very, very cute couple and I hope they continue to be extremely happy together.

I was playing around trying to map the wedding ceremony onto a more familiar Jewish framework, and it hit me that the First Dance is playing the role of symbolic consummation. I mean, not everybody does it this way, but I've quite commonly seen the set-up where the band plays some slow, romantic music, and everybody stands around in a circle watching the couple slow-dance / smooch. Which is sort of Hollywood shorthand for romantic sex anyway, (though in Hollywood weddings they do this silly thing where the officiant tells the groom to kiss the bride).

Then we were walking home and I was slightly drunk on bubbly and I started expanding this into thinking about weddings as a general cultural ritual. (khalinche and any other real live anthropologists should look away now, because all my knowledge of the subject is odd scraps from popular works.) I came up with a theory that modern weddings are not really about relationship transitions, because most people in our society have been living together, or at least seriously dating, for a while by the time they get married. Instead they're about the transition to adulthood – but we already have coming-of-age ceremonies in the form of 18^th or 21^st birthday parties and possibly graduation.

So I postulated that the reason we do weddings the way we do is because we actually have two phases of youth (ie the period between childhood and adulthood): adolescence / teenage, which I believe is quite a modern concept, and the phase between leaving school and reaching what society regards as full adulthood, with university (if you move in those kinds of social circles) and possibly training, and trying out possible jobs and relationships and ways of being a person. And that second transition is marked not by any particular birthday, but by marriage. Which gives people a decade or more when they have some degree of financial independence but few real responsibilities or long-term commitments. But it rather sucks for people who don't want to or are unable to find a person to be their other half. I don't think this really holds up entirely, but it was fun to play around with and pontificate at jack.

While in Cambridge I used the excuse to spend Sunday afternoon with parents, Granny and my brother Thuggish Poet and his partner. It was really really good to reconnect with some of the family.

Comments

[rmc28]

I find your idea interesting but would like to add my own perspective, having got married nearly 5 years ago. At that point Tony and I were already living together (in a shared house), knew we wanted to have children, had been engaged nearly two years. We had a lovely wedding and a week's honeymoon together, and came back to carry on living together with our lovely housemates etc etc. On the surface, not much changed. We even got told by some nice women we got talking to at a B&B that "we didn't think you could be the honeymooners, we thought you'd been married for years". (I took that as a great compliment, actually.)

But deeper down, something was very important about making our commitment publicly in front of a very large number of family and friends, and then having a week together with no distractions other than those we chose together. We had silly conversations and really serious ones: we'd hammered out the major ideas about our future together long before the wedding day, but during marriage preparation and on the honeymoon we got into the detail a lot more. If not quite rebuilding our relationship all over again, we were certainly seriously refurbishing it, making it fit for long-term habitation. And we got some nice memories of doing fun stuff together.

So for us at least, I agree that there wasn't really a relationship transition, but perhaps it was more like a commitment transition, both internally and externally. I particularly like the part in the CofE liturgy where the congregation are asked to assert their support too: we aren't in little isolated pair-bonded nuclear families, but we are intertwined and interdependent with our friends and family.

[khalinche]

You've explained this in a really lovely way.

we aren't in little isolated pair-bonded nuclear families, but we are intertwined and interdependent with our friends and family.

Well, quite. I'd say that as long as the link between marriage and procreation is relatively strong, it still serves as a way to knit together different kinship groups and make a new node in the great big net of cultural and physical reproduction. Your kid is a great example of this, actually, with his 7th (or is it 6th?) generation name. The act of getting wedded takes one through a liminal phase into reincorporation into a larger kin and social group, which you're usually expected to continue enlarging :-) And even for people who don't intend to have children (hello Liv!) it cements their partner into a recognised role for present and future nephews and nieces.

Oh, and also there are different phases of adulthood in lots of societies, beginning with some kind of coming of age and leading on to marriage. The coming of age type process is usually understood to be a necessary precursor to marriage, sometimes by a few years, although obvs. that's not the case everywhere.

Also, yes! Slow-dancing with kisses totally is Hollywood sex! That is very prescient, and made me LOL.

[rmc28]

Thank you!

If I understand correctly, my son is the 7th Frederick Finch, and the 6th first-born son, the "original" Frederick Finch being a third son who did rather well for himself.

[liv]

*swoon* I should totally pontificate about my vague understanding of anthropology more often, if it leads you to explain lots of fascinating technical stuff like this! My life needs more sentences like The act of getting wedded takes one through a liminal phase into reincorporation into a larger kin and social group.

The idea of kissing as symbolic sex is one I picked up from papersky, but then I expanded it a bit.

[liv]

This is seriously fascinating, thank you so much for talking about this experience. It adds a dimension I hadn't thought about at all. Really interesting examples of what transitions can happen even when outward circumstances say the same. I love commitment transition and refurbishing a relationship! I hadn't considered the role of the honeymoon in this, the public commitment, of course, but not the implications of spending time together concentrating entirely on the relationship.

(atreic said that she thinks of me and jack as married because of the way we behave together. I don't know what adds up to that impression, not at all.)

[holyschist]

I think you're right, although it frustrates me as someone who doesn't want to participate in the institution of marriage, but who is partnered and committed and has, frankly, more responsibilities than I'd like at age 25 (a lot of things I'd like to do--teach English in Russia, do BUNAC in Australia, sail on a tall ship--are not so feasible for me because I settled down early, kind of by accident). I don't really want to get married just so other people will perceive me as having entered stage 2 of adulthood.

[liv]

Yeah, that's a good point too. Sometimes the model of using marriage as an adulthood transition fails because there are all kinds of reasons why people might not have met their life partner by the time they reach their late 20s / early 30s. But sometimes it's a problem because people meet their life-partner too young, and not being within the expected timetable can be a real strain on the relationship.

And then of course there are all the people who don't actually want to or are not able to organize their lives around a multi-decade, monogamous, domestic relationship. I can definitely see the point of objecting to the institution when it accords privileges to such a small subset of society.

[holyschist]

Eh, well, it's not so much that I object to marriage on account of privileges (although there is a lot to unpack institutionally); it's more that it's not something I feel would substantively change my relationship, so I don't really see a lot of point in doing it just because it's expected.

So marriage as rite of adulthood kind of bugs me because it's something that isn't going to happen for a lot of people, whether by choice or because they don't have the opportunity.

[littlemousling]

I think it holds up rather well, actually. Consider these two items:

The Catholic sacraments--everyone is supposed to do all of the every-person ones (that is, not becoming a priest/nun, but definitely yes to baptism, last rites, and, a-ha, marriage).

The stark changes in legal rights upon marriage--for instance, in Ontario family (divorce) law, the rights of the 18+ child to support from hir payor parent end, abruptly, with that child's marriage, regardless of why support was still being paid (full-time education, disability, etc).


Socially speaking, I'd say there's one offered alternative: having a child. Parents are full adults, marital status notwithstanding, with the more-or-less exception of teen parents (but we're not really talking about them anyway, eh?).

Also, I'd suppose that unmarried non-parents eventually get "granted" full adult status by virtue of age (40, maybe?); it's just that 22-year-olds can hop the queue by marrying.

[liv]

Thanks, this is really thoughtful. I didn't know that Catholicism expected everybody to get married, I assumed it was just a sacrament for those who chose to go down that path. That must be really hard for people living within that framework. The legal examples are very apt too; there's a few equivalents in the UK, almost like remnants of the old system where daughters were the responsibility of their fathers until marriage and then the responsibility of their husbands.

And yes, it's a very good point that having a child makes you an adult even if you don't go through the marriage part. I wonder if that's why people have such a problem with teenage mothers, actually, that they are seizing adult privileges before society wants to grant them. I really don't know whether single people can be considered full adults by reaching a certain age; I think it happens gradually, and gradual changes always come out differently from explicitly marked transitions.