Patty and I both dreaded the very idea of a circus wedding. At the newspaper where we both worked at the time, the photographer and his fiancee got involved in planning a great big splashy wedding–and as more and more people got into the act, the two newlyweds-to-be were fighting like Greeks and Trojans.
We didn’t want that, so we eloped. We went to Elkton, MD–sort of the elopement capital of the eastern U.S. in those days–and got married there.
What a lovely time we had! We did a lot of fishing on Chesapeake Bay. Platters of steamed crabs at the Howard Hotel, with Billy Bob’s Kung-fu School on the floor directly over our table. Crabcakes at Your Family Restaurant. Lovely little town, with polite and friendly people. A lot of them remembered us when we came back the next year.
We got married in The Little Wedding Chapel and then did some more fishing. No squabbling, no fighting, no new grudges formed and old ones rekindled, no eruption of money, nobody falling down drunk at the reception. I’ve been to weddings that came very close to breaking into fistfights. We avoided all that and are much the better for it.
All you really need for a wedding is a bride, a groom, someone to read the service–and God.
How wonderful to have such precious memories, and none of the bad things to have to try to forget about.
Long ago, weddings and funerals included very public processions, in great part, because it was a way of establishing a public record. Somehow, this tradition has grown wildly into something untenable. I recall a series of weddings at a church I used to attend with each successive wedding having to outdo the last, with regard to spectacle. Frankly, I think the the young couples would have been far better off had all that money gone towards the down payment on a house.
I suspect that a gaudy wedding usually is the prelude to a shaky marriage.
Of the two specific wedding which come to mind, I know that one marriage didn’t last. The other, I’ve lost track of, but that poor guy married into a very bad situation. His role in that marriage was to bring in money to indulge his wife’s wants. I never saw it as a partnership, of any sort. I’d be surprised if they stayed together more than a few years.
In a traditional Armenian wedding the bride and groom are give crowns to wear.
Linda & I had a small church wedding with close family only in attendance. The reception was in a small house we rented and citrus punch was the order of the day. When our daughter was married we spent a bunch of money on the dress, the ceremony, and the reception with many in attendance. Fifteen years later she got divorced – now I wish they had eloped.