More on Weddings
from Jessica Valenti at Feministing was too good not to share with you all. In fact, it had me tearing up a little bit when I got to the end of it, because it is SO TRUE, and I definitely can relate to her, even though I’m not a public figure at all. Being a feminist and deciding to get married opens up a whole can of worms I’m not sure anyone can be ready for. You struggle with identity, generations up on generations of advice and superstition and opinions and as much as you want to just let it roll off your back, you can’t.
Feministing
This post
Here are some of the highlights of the article, but you really should go read the whole thing yourself.
We wanted to make the wedding representative of the institution we’d like marriage to be, and I think we did a good job. Does any of this change the fact that marriage is a historically sexist institution or make it okay that millions of people are denied the right to be married? Of course not. But it made the celebration one that made sense to us, one that re-imagined what marriage as an institution should be about – love, equal partnership and community. (And seriously, to the some of the more conservative relatives at our wedding, hearing these sort of things at a wedding absolutely made an impact.)
And you know what? The wedding really was beautiful. Not because of where it was or because of the flowers (though I did love them!), and not because of the dress. It was beautiful because the thought Andrew and I put into what this day meant to us showed through – it felt like a ceremony and a celebration that represented who we are and who we hope to be together. But most importantly, it was beautiful because the people who matter to us most – our family and our friends – were there to support us and share their love with us. And it’s those people, our community, that I think about today, when I’m feeling so jaded about people’s basic goodness that the idea of writing another word on the internet feels impossible. And to them, I say, truly – thank you.