In Defense of Wedding Planning

Wedding Budget Help

Wedding Budget Dilemmas

In Defense of A Wedding

I hear and read a lot lately about how the economy is challenging couples to reconsider their wedding plans. This may mean they elope, reduce the guest list, or postpone their wedding plans entirely until a more secure time in the future. Many people involved in marriage (marriage counselors, clergy, marriage educators and some financial folks who work with couples) often poo-poo the wedding, challenging its very existance as a huge, wasteful spending spree. Afterall, you CAN go to the courthouse for the price of the gas (or bus fare) to get there and you'll get the same result as a wedding: a legally binding marital relationship.

So why do we defend the wedding as a worthwhile event in the midst of often stressful "people stress" with the drama coming from a fiance, parent, in-law, or friend? Why do we think the wedding is a worthwhile event in the midst of economic turmoil as a nation? We're glad you asked!

Weddings as a community event

Our core belief is that you do not exist in your marriage in a silo. You have a community around you of family, friends, and if you're a member of a religious organization, then added support for your marriage there. By getting married you are telling the world you are united as a team with this person and together you rise, together you fall, whether in riches and success, or ill health. But marriage is not just about two people. It's about your "supporting cast members", whether it's your parents whom you rely on for emotional support, friendships to keep you sane when your spouse works long hours, or your church when you're in a spiritual crisis and need some outside help. A wedding is likely the only time the entire cast of support will be in the same room, at the same time, to witness the union. (I will forever be haunted by the beauty of my mother-in-laws church ladies who knitted me a prayer shawl as I dealt with devastating heart damage from my pregnancy. Women I'd never met, never will likely meet, but their friend (my mother-in-law) had a daughter in serious health and they wanted to show support. This is community and this is marriage not existing in a silo.

Weddings as a family reunion

Most couples wax nostaligic to some degree on the marriages of their family tree. If you're like my husband and me, we counted over 200 years of marriage between our grandparents and parents. Adding a new "branch" to the family tree involves a tremendous number of people! It's not that everyone (third cousins once removed) will always be at weddings, but generally marriage involves the beginning of a new family, and relatives will make a very concerted effort to make a wedding. Family reunions outside a wedding may or may not happen, and certaintly would never involve family from BOTH sides of the family.

Marriages are also about sharing yourself with another family. No longer is it a guarentee where you'll go for the holidays, or for your vacation. The two family trees have their own expectations, traditions, and will likely share your time with future grandchildren. A wedding is the ideal time to get everyone together and start the "cross-family bonding."

Weddings as universal life transition

Across the planet, across all cultures, there is some form of marriage. And they all have some ritual around them to signify the end of two individuals and the beginning of a new union. It is great pagentry that gets everyone together and begins the emotional transition from "single" to "married." Just as funerals are a ritual shared around the world, weddings mark an important change, bring together people and give everyone, including strangers, a way to participate in one of the most joyous of life transitions - a new marriage. Strangers automatically smile when they learn you're newly engaged, or on your honeymoon. The world lines up to support you and helps you enter a new "club" from single to married.

Weddings as the first of many projects you experience as a team

Dating is fun for a reason. You don't have many responsibilities and you don't have to make many major life decisions together. But a wedding, in our view, is the primary motivation to look beyond your dating life into your new married life. All the decisions you'll have to make over your lives together collapse into wedding planning. Money and your value around it, project management (how each of you handles the tension and organization around a big event), how you view families and their role in your lives as individuals and as a couple, and your vision for your future (which can come out in where you have a honeymoon, what you register for, and even what type of wedding you have, whether a very small wedding or a massive wedding with everyone you've ever met.)

Elizabeth Doherty Thomas, is a co-founder of The First Dance, along with Marriage and Family therapist father Bill Doherty.� The First Dance is a 2007 Modern Bride Trendsetter award winner for taking on the complex family dynamics of wedding planning.� See what engaged couples and wedding professionals are saying about our book Take Back Your wedding. Our entire website is dedicated to offering advice on working through the people stresses of wedding planning as a couple, with your families, and how to strengthen your upcoming marriage through this enormous first task of married life.