I've been planning my wedding since I was five. At 13 I narrowed my wedding dress choices down to 2. When my aunt got married a few summers ago, I decided that I, too, wanted a reception in a castle. So its only natural that today I read an article about the top wedding traditions that you can't do without. The author was witty, which is why I have deemed it blog-worthy. I've summarized a bit, but I'm quoting the four best paragraphs in the author's article.
You can do away with the Macarena, YMCA, and Electric Slide, but the four traditions your wedding must have are:
1. Write your own vows. "The traditional 'for better or for worse' vows don’t do the bride and groom justice. These people have been through better and worse. They have planned an American wedding, an event that in modern dollars and man-hours equals approximately the entire Normandy Invasion. If you can plan a wedding together, you can live together, buy a house together, invade Nazi Europe together, etc."
2. Open Bar. "You don't want to be known as a closed-bar wedding. You could host an elaborate ceremony on a scenic Hawaiian bluff with the Rev. Jesse Jackson presiding as the bride and groom parachute from a B-52 Stratofortress while Yo-Yo Ma and Kid Rock perform a breathtaking duet and, if you don't provide free booze, the only thing any guy in attendance will say about that day is, 'Dude, closed bar.'"
3. Best Man's Speech. "Here's a man who's probably a lifelong friend of the groom. This man knows in the back of his mind that their friendship will never be the same. No one in the room has more to lose by this couple getting married. But if this man who is losing his best friend and facing many a lonely weekend playing Xbox, if this man can give his blessing, then who can object?"
4. Honeymoon. "Legend has it that Northern European men in the mood to marry used to abduct their wives from neighboring villages and take them into hiding while the bride's father and brothers hunted them down. This hiding period came to be known as the honeymoon. How romantic. The name itself came from a drink the bride and groom would share — mead — that was made from honey. Couples would drink a cup of mead per day during the first 30 days of marriage, presumably to take the edge off the wife's recent kidnapping. (Admit it. There’s a part of you that longs to be kidnapped by a take-no-prisoners Norseman who never wears shirts. I know how you women think.)"
(Taken from an msnbc.com article written by Joe Donatelli)
Monday, August 04, 2008
Weddings
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2 comments:
I'm not sure why but those don't seem so much traditions to me as much as standards. I don't think I've never heard of a wedding without a honeymoon, or one without a best man's speech. The only "tradition" that seems like a tradition of the 4 is the first one. And I think men everywhere DREAD it. Writing one's own vows... Guys aren't good at expressing their soft side, and so even though it's a growing trend, I think it'll put a lot of white hairs on a guy's head.
Tradition- 1: an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior (as a religious practice or a social custom) 2: the handing down of information, beliefs, and customs by word of mouth or by example from one generation to another without written instruction 3: cultural continuity in social attitudes, customs, and institutions
I think that anything a group of people (in this case, generally Americans) do regularly in response to a particular event can be considered a tradition. A wedding itself is a tradition- you don't HAVE to have a wedding or a reception, but there is a huge gaping hole, culturally, if you leave it out. It is the same thing with the traditions listed in the article. You COULD leave them out. But it would leave your wedding guests wishing for more. (And don't worry about writing the vows- a "good" bride will write both beautifully.) ;-P
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