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Chit Chat
knottie6a3fe34e911a1a74
member
Our flower girl signs :)
in Chit Chat
Re: Our flower girl signs :)
I know to some I might sound like a PC-dictator who can't take a joke but, as I've gotten older and wiser, I've become much more aware of how insidiously, ugly gender stereotypes are slipped into our everyday world.
The first sign is an example of that. On the surface, one could argue that it is lighthearted and funny. But it plays into our society's stereotypes that women are the happy little family-focused nurturers, intent at snaring a man at all costs. "Happiest" when they're "tied down". While men are these, opposite of that, perpetual playboys who want to be free. For the same reasons, I hate those popular wedding toppers where the bride is dragging a groom across the ground. So awful and offensive.
Needless to say, of those two, the cake one is a lot better. Though, overall, I'm not a fan of signs.
Agree with PPs. If a sign 'has' to be carried, 2nd one only. I was at a wedding last summer and I wasn't the only guest that cringed when the flower girl carried something similar.
Yes, that's not how you mean it, OP. And I'm genuinely not a stick in the mud. But there are plenty of ways to be lighthearted or funny without resorting to gender-based stereotypes & low-hanging jokes. The cake sign is cute, and I would chuckle if one of the children in the WP carried that. If you're not able to use flowers at your venue, or looking for alternatives, the flower girls could also carry ribbon wands, a small lantern, fake flowers, or even nothing. The past few weddings we've gone to that have flower girls/ring bearers just had the children walking down the aisle, sometimes holding hands, which was just as sweet.
But, would you hang a sign in your birthing suite saying something like, "You can still bail! Don't sign that birth certificate, Guy!"? This is essentially the same thing.
But the other side is that while knowing your personalities I think a lot of us just wrinkle our noses a bit at those kinds of signs.
On another, though - I mean, presumably you asked these girls to be in your WP as flower girls because they are special to you. So having a sign that they're just here for the cake is... well, you're big on making the joke that people don't really want to be there with/for you, aren't you?
I just don't... why? It's not even like it's a fresh joke. If you like them, that's fine, but I don't think people will be trying to stifle their laughter in the audience, so it's really just for you and your pictures. And I think in 40 years you'd probably rather have just a sweet picture of these kids.
By posting in this forum, you asked for the opinions of people with other experiences, which include domestic violence, desertion and ugly breakups, as well as people who take marriage and wedding ceremonies seriously. They're not going to find anything appropriate in "last chance to run" signs at wedding ceremonies. What I think they will find are that these messages symbolize a mentality that is too irreverent and/or too immature for those persons to be getting married.
I hate all of the nonsense out there that show grooms/husbands as unwilling participants in a marriage. Before my husband and I decided on a small family only city hall wedding I was looking up cute nerdy/gaming cake toppers and ~90% of them had a pissed off bride with her arms cross standing in front of a groom playing a video game or a bride dragging a groom away from a console. It's just sad that this stereotype is still being perpetuated by people like OP who don't want to try and understand why people find these kinds of things distasteful.
It's like a coffee mug complaining about Mondays. Everyone has heard it a thousand times before. Is that really so funny to you that you want to see it in your wedding album for the rest of your life?