How Unique Is Too Unique?
I’m a big believer in making the wedding meaningful for and expressive of the couple getting married. I love the fact that friends of mine used Shrek and Fiona figures on top of their cake while the bride’s daughter wore fairy wings and strewed herbs with healing properties instead of flower petals. I thought it was great when my brother the alpaca rancher and his bride used her teddy bear as the ‘ring bear.’ I think it’s cool when couples marry in places that have personal meaning to them or incorporate their fondness for historical reenactment or classic cars or science fiction or anime or pirates or duck hunting…or nearly anything that tells you that this particular couple is getting married, as opposed to any other couple under the sun.
Then our own Never Teh Bride wrote about the Taiwan Toilet Wedding.
That got me wondering. How unique is too unique. I definitely think that getting mass-married in a public urinal counts as too unique.
So what say our intrepid readers? Do you draw your personal line at vows in a toilet or at a groom wearing Vulcan ears? Is underwater too wacky for you, or do you go as far as naked underwater vows before you have a panic attack? For that matter, do any of you find it too ridiculous that my brother had his Best Man carry that teddy bear?
Enquiring minds want to know.
You know, I’m pretty conservative in my own tastes, but I had to think hard of any wedding scenario where I genuinely thought the couple had gone too far in being unique. I came up with three: the toilet wedding, the “anti-wedding” protest wedding thrown by the women writing for the Washington Post, and the Jell-o Jacuzzi wedding. So I think my own personal line gets drawn at either a) anything that seems vaguely unsanitary, or b) plans that are different for the sake of being different, rather than a genuine reflection of the couple.
i think everyone is entitled to any kind of wedding they want as long it isn’t putting others in danger or putting them into tremendous debt that will inevitably ruin their lives. other then that, i am completely unconcerned about the ‘too unique’-ness of weddings in a restroom, or jello, or a restroom filled with jello.
I draw the line at physical danger to wedding guests, as in sky diving weddings, but seriously I sort of object to anything that seems to disparage the sanctity of marriage, a strip club or brothel comes to mind…
As long as the couple are happy and get married (which, I hear, is the point of all these shenanigans), I’m happy.
I do sometimes take issue when I feel like guests are being LIED to (*secret* pre-wedding weddings that means you’re already married at the ‘big’ wedding and the guests think they’re watching you get married but they’re actually just watching you renew your vows, or when couples use their wedding as an exuse to host a giant practical joke “haha we’re not really hitched”….that sort of thing). But in the end, I’m (99% of the time) not out any money and or meaningful amounts of time, so I roll with it.
That 1% however, those people are jerks.
I’m with everyone else who says that as long as no one is hurt, endangered, seriously inconvenienced, made ill, or subjected to severe and unavoidable discomfort, then people should go ahead and have the weddings they want to have. I’ll add one caveat, however. If your wedding is going to be so out there that it becomes inappropriate for some people — it’s underwater and I don’t scuba or you’re going to be nude and gran will have a heart attack — give your guests fair warning via your invitation or wedding web site. It’s no fun being unpleasantly surprised.
ah, de, thanks for letting me know i’m a jerk for wanting a wedding that means something to me *and* to be legally married, as these things cannot simultaneously happen with local laws being what they are. lovely. thank god you aren’t invited.
Libby, I think De is speaking not of the areas where a civil ceremony is required by law and a religious ceremony is a purely spiritual matter, but of here in America where the legalities can be dealt with at a religious ceremony.
Sometimes people here do have a ‘super-secret’ legal ceremony and then lie to people so they can ‘have a wedding.’ The problem I have, and that I assume De has, with this is the fact that these people are lying to their nearest and dearest about what precisely is being done and their actual marital status. That’s very different from someone having two ceremonies (one legal, one spiritual) in an open and aboveboard manner, let alone someone simply following the legal requirements of their own country. That’s an entirely different matter.
Good call on the “fair warning,” NtB. I think that was my main objection to the Jell-o Jacuzzi wedding, that they didn’t tell their officiant about their plan until the poor man showed up (and left smelling like orange Jell-o).
Libby, I interpreted what De said the same as Twistie did — the problem isn’t having two ceremonies, the problem is lying about it. Before Prop. 8 passed (sigh … ugh) a lesbian couple we’re close with tied the knot in California and then went back to their hometown to say their vows in front of family and friends. We all knew we weren’t seeing their legal ceremony, but that didn’t make it less wonderful!
But if the couple is lying to people, that’s a different story.
Oh my. libby, I didn’t in any way mean to offend or imply that meeting your local legal requirements made you a jerk!
I was specifically speaking of people who make a point to lie to everyone about what is going on – getting married in secret and then planning a huge affair and telling everyone invited that they are still unmarried in every way. Those people are LYING and people who lie to me are classified as jerks.