The Fantasy Wedding… but whose fantasy?
Mar 22nd, 2007 by surfer_chick
It does makes you think, this Civil Partnership malarkey.
Is it the same as marriage?
What if we don’t get a chance to say “I do” or exchange vows when we register our partnership? Is it still a ‘wedding’?
If you compare Civil Partnership with the common idea of a wedding, it’s hard to ignore how much our expectations of marriage are shaped by historical and religious hand-me-downs.
This gets me thinking. What does marriage mean? And what do we WANT it to mean? I think that as notions of marriage change, these are the challenging questions that everyone needs to face if they are thinking about tying the knot.
But for G and me, it’s a great thing. People don’t have expectations about the proper way to celebrate a same-sex marriage. (Though the events marketing people will soon tell us all, I’m sure!)
So G and I don’t need to worry whether guests might expect a sit down dinner for 200 and lavishly decked out venue… we can focus on designing a celebration that represents the life we want to share.
What we want is pretty simple; an occasion for us and our guests to reconnect and relax. G is very creative, and I’m pretty good at organising stuff, so I’m fairly confident that we can plan a fun event which doesn’t involve excessive consumption or unethical buying choices.
We can plan our day to make use of things we’ve got, or can borrow from friends to reduce the cost and the waste… and best of all, we get to design our own special day.