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Wedding Etiquette Forum
mrsjapan
member
EDIT: What does the label "wedding" mean to you?
mrsjapan
member
Labels are confusing but important to understand. When it comes to the word "wedding", what does it mean to you? (EDIT: Original name was click-baity and confusing, so this is to clarify) (For the third option, I am aware that a religion cannot "legally" recognize marriage, but instead more so along the lines of your god(s) recognizing your marriage)
"I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request.... It means no." -Alistair, Dragon Age Origins
EDIT: What does the label "wedding" mean to you? 60 votes
A day where your family and friends are able to celebrate your union
6%
4 votes
A day where the government legally recognizes your union
41%
25 votes
A day where your religion legally recognizes your union
3%
2 votes
A day where you and your loved one celebrate your union
10%
6 votes
A day where you are the focus of all the attention
0%
0 votes
A day where everyone gets to look their best and celebrate
0%
0 votes
More than one of the above mentioned
35%
21 votes
None of the above
0%
0 votes
Your own opinion
3%
2 votes
Re: EDIT: What does the label "wedding" mean to you?
On my wedding day, our friends and family celebrated with us, we were legally wed, my religion recognized it (Christian but not Catholic, so it didn't really matter where or how we were wed for it to be religiously recognized), H and I celebrated our wedding, and we all looked out best and celebrated. The only one I don't put in there is where I was "the focus of all the attention." Sure, H and I probably were but I really hate that phrasing.
And all of that happened on the same day, at the same time in one wedding ceremony and reception.
Edited to fix spelling
A wedding ceremony is multiple things on this list, but you don't get multiple ceremonies.
It doesn't matter what a wedding is "to me". There is only one ceremony that changes a person's status from single to married. I agree with PP's, but @STARMOON makes it succinct; "A wedding ceremony is multiple things on this list, but you don't get multiple ceremonies."
Having said that, I would say it's wrong to expect other people to pay or contribute to more than one event. But if the couple is paying for it, it's "ok" for them to have as many ceremonies, as many times as they want.
JIC - I also included the original poll
I answered choice 2, when the government legally recognizes your union. Your question was phrased awkwardly, because as long as you're not deceiving guests and re-enacting anything it's "okay". But by definition, if there's not a legally binding union involved, it's not a marriage ceremony. My H and I personally combined choices 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 in one day.
This. It is not okay to pretend to get married if you already are, and it is even more not okay to deceive your supposed loved ones by doing so. The only way I find it acceptable to have a ceremony in which you do not get married is if it is at present illegal for you to do so in your home country/state. Happily, this is no longer the case for LGBT folks in the US (in spite of stupid state congressmen in my state trying to reverse that).
As an example, one of my mom's coworkers had a commitment ceremony with her wife a year or more before the Obergefell decision. They did end up having a private legal ceremony after, but I certainly did not and would not begrudge them a 'fake' wedding when they could not have had a legal one in our state.
OP asked.
I would love to hear your rationale behind such an AWing plethora of ceremonies.
Someone might want to have different ceremonies if they come from two different religions. Or if they have families that are far away or an important family member who is sick and can't travel.
It doesn't but often the ceremony IS where you're legally recognized.
In the Catholic church where I was married, the religious ceremony binding me to DH WAS the legal ceremony. We would not have been allowed to marry had we not brought the marriage license with us to the church that morning. It was that serious.
In some countries you may not be able to have your legal and religious ceremonies on the same day but that doesn't apply here in the US.
My grandma missed my sister's wedding because she was sick and couldn't travel all that way. That doesn't entitle my sister to a second ceremony.
Adulting is about choices. I have been to several multicultural weddings that included, for example, a Christian Ceremony, then a Jewish blessing, then the reception or a non-religious ceremony, then a Japanese tea ceremony, then the reception. The point is, it happened all on the same day. If it is just about religion, why do you need the attention of having a redo ceremony with huge amounts of guests? For example, if it's a Punjabi Sikh wedding that you would like to have blessed by Catholic Church, have the Indian ceremony/reception and then privately have your priest bless your marriage with a convalidation. Religious ceremonies don't require hundreds of guests, big white dresses, huge parties etc. That is attention-seeking. If it's truly about being blessed in a faith of your choice, either have it in that faith, compromise to have a same day blessing or do it privately at a later date.
As to to people that can't travel/ families, the couple can choose to throw a wedding close to those people. Or they can throw a party with them at a later date. No matter what you do, this isn't a wedding. You are a wife now, not a bride. Ceremony redos are attention-seeking.
It seems like you are really trying to split hairs to justify your choices. Your wedding ceremony is the day you are married. It is where you are legally single, a ceremony is performed, and you leave legally wed. If you can walk away from the ceremony without having to get an annulment/divorced, it's not a wedding.
It is a bianary state: you're either married or not. In most countries this happens at one ceremony (even in countries where you have a separate civil/religious, usually this happens within a day of each other and doesn't include 2 parties). You get 1 wedding.
Etf:typo
I think it's tacky and lame to do what I call a "wedding tour", having multiple wedding "ceremonies" (only one is the real one!), in multiple countries, states, etc. But if you're upfront about it to all your guests, and host them fully, I guess it's not as bad. But again, still tacky, still lame.
Being an adult means having to make tough choices. Sometimes that means making hard decisions about what kind of wedding you're going to have. My H and I wanted to do all sorts of different things. When it came down to it, we had ONE local wedding so that we could include the people we wanted to include.
In my country, Canada, you can only have one wedding (unless you get divorced). At this wedding, the government legally recognizes your union. Many choose to include their friends, family, religion, and fanciest clothes in this event, but an event combining any of those things without the legal recognition element cannot be called a wedding.
(Note: The above has been true since 2005 when same-sex marriage was finally legalized in Canada.)
But at the same time, a properly planned wedding can encompass all of these things at once.
I have a really hard time understanding why people can't just own their story. So you got married because you needed insurance? Cool. You got married because your FI is in the military? Cool. You got married because you just couldn't wait? Cool. So that's the marriage story - OWN IT! It makes no sense to parade around pretending you're getting married (again). If folks want to have a party at a later date, have a party! But pretending to be a bride and groom when you're husband and wife is strange. I'm married now and I can't imagine dressing up and pretending to be a bride when I'm already married. It's just so...odd.
A wedding, which involves a ceremony and if any guests are invited a reception, is an event where a couple show up single and leave married.
The ONLY ambiguity is if there are conflicts between a legal event and a religious event--I can understand if some very religious people get legally married at the courthouse and then later have a religious ceremony that they consider their wedding ceremony, for instance, only because they themselves did not consider themselves married until the religious ceremony even if the law did.
This is not to be confused with the idea that a couple can have a party whenever they damn well please, and celebrate anything they choose to celebrate at any time with anyone they care to invite. But if they're not showing up single and leaving married, then it's not a wedding!
Isn't that the excuse most PPD brides use? "We got married, but it wasn't 'real' until we had a big elaborate wedding." Like @LondonLisa said, it's a binary state, you're either married or you're not married.
I can't think of a reason one would need to get married at the courthouse and have a religious ceremony later and it not be a PPD.
This. You need two consenting parties who are legally able and willing to be bound in marriage. Then it's ok to get married. Unless you live in a state/country with legal polygamy, you'll need a divorce or annulment to do it more than once.
But here in Canada, that is a legal ceremony- wherever it happens, and whoever it happens with (i.e. guests or not). So I also wanted to pick "more than one of the above". I agree with Starmoon's comment- a ceremony can encompass multiple things, but you can't have multiple wedding ceremonies.
The day DH and I had our legal wedding, we invited our friends and family, celebrated our union, and looked darn good doing it.
Have all the parties you want, but there is no purpose to having more than one ceremony- you're already married. Having another ceremony doesn't make you more married, and if you invite guests to a second event, they aren't watching you get married, so what's the point?
At the very least, please do not lie about it. Tell your guests you are already married and are doing another ceremony so they can make the informed choice to attend or not.
I think there's a difference between people "not counting" the legal event and then having a PPD later, vs. a devoutly religious couple who think of the legal event as simply signing some papers, and then have a formal religious ceremony later, and only AFTER this religious ceremony do they consider themselves married. I really think this only applies to super-religious people...I'm picturing the people you see on TV shows that have arranged marriages and/or have never kissed before getting married.
Okay, but the signing of legal documents happens at the religious ceremony, too.
I can see giving this a pass in certain very limited circumstances as well. I have an acquaintance who "courted" her husband as opposed to dated and got "betrothed" rather than engaged. Back in Bible times, betrothal was a serious business that you couldn't just break off if you decided not to get married like an engagement nowadays. There were legal and other ramifications to ending it. They and their families wanted it more like back then, so when they got engaged/betrothed, they got legally married. They did it at the courthouse, and then had an engagement period like a lot of people, planned a wedding, and then "got married." They lived as if they weren't married - separately, didn't use it as "oh, we can have sex now!," no getting on each other's insurance, etc. Basically, they weren't doing it ahead of time to get anything.
I think it's silly, but I do give it a pass. But yea, this applies to very, very, very few people.
This is EXACTLY the type of exception I was referring to!
But in the US, regardless of the religious ceremony, doesn't one need to bring a license and have it signed by the officiant?
ETA: if they go to a courthouse and get married, then they are married. I don't really care what they consider themselves, if one can't call off the 'religious wedding celebration' without getting divorced, they're married. Why do they get a pass? They're married, they know they are. There is no way two consenting adults can go through a registry office wedding without understanding the implications. Why does belonging to a fundamentalist cult give you a pass?
To tbe bolded, this was because women were property to be exchanged rather than human beings with agency and rights. I don't think any woman should be supporting behaviours like this.
Yes, the implications are a legal divorce. But I disagree that they know they're married. Sure, they do know they're legally married. If other people want to put all the weight on that and consider the religious wedding a sham, fine, but they take it seriously. They didn't get married to get any of the benefits of marriage, just to create a certain higher level of commitment to the process. Like earnest money in buying a house. I'm sure divorce is off the table for them once the religious wedding happens. They're just upping the ante in different ways.
Uh you get your earnest money back if the deal falls apart, for whatever reason. So no, not the same thing at all.
ETA: let me rephrase - maybe not for *whatever* reason, but you do get that money back. If you don't, you made a shitty contract that your agent should have warned you about.
I don't sideeye it for several reasons. The two biggest are that, one, as far as I'm aware, no one was deceived. Everyone knew how and why they were doing it. Second, they didn't get married ahead of their religious wedding for any other reason then to make their "betrothal" more binding. They weren't using it to take advantage of government tax breaks, they weren't using it to get on each other's insurance, they weren't using it to get the military to pay for their move, they weren't using it to have sex sooner, they weren't using it to make their parents or family comfortable with them living together, or using it for any of the other myriad reasons we see brides saying on here to justify their "real" wedding/PPD later on.
I am am curious what you mean by "nearly every social standard." The way I see it, they were not married by nearly every social standard. Yes, they were married by the standard that matters probably the most, the legal document, but by social standards, no they weren't. They weren't living together, they were not presenting as a married couple, they weren't having sex, they weren't making joint decisions beyond the sort of ones you'd expect any engaged couple to make, they didn't have combined finances, they didn't change either last name, etc. I'm not saying every married couple meets or should meet all of these social standards, just that these are some of the things people tend to think of married couples doing. For them, nothing changed after they got legally married. Their lives went on as any other engaged couple.
In order for it to get a pass in my book, you have to be about at that ^^^ level. It's not good enough to just say the religious wedding is the most important so I can have a PPD because they can happen at the same time.