My relationship is not a statement: Stop viewing our wedding decisions as some sort of socio-political performance
It started with the oh-so-popular taking of my husband’s last name question. The reason I really wanted to keep my own name had nothing to do with feminist ideals — I simply like the sound of my own name. Needless to say, this was just the first of MANY questions I’ve answered with similar responses.I’ve learned that no matter how I respond, someone will view it as a statement. All we’re really trying to do is throw a beautiful and fun wedding with all of our friends and family. Our relationship is a relationship… not a statement open for critique.
Take this ring keep it to yourself: why we skipped the ring exchange
When we started thinking about writing our own ceremony, both my husband Clayton and I felt that there was something that wasn’t really feeling right for us about putting a ring on each other’s finger. It could be that we’re punks, it could be that we’re feminists, it could be for a bunch of different reasons. But even the idea of us saying “please take this ring” instead of “with this ring, I thee wed” or something like that, was just not feeling right for us. So I thought that instead of exchanging rings, we could just put the ring on ourselves.
Is it possible to have a feminist wedding?
I have a Masters in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. In other words, I’m a professional feminist. I had been with my partner for ten years when he proposed, and while it somehow came as a shock, there was no doubt in my mind that I absolutely wanted to marry him. Like any crafty member of my generation would, I desperately started googling “feminist wedding,” a fruitless endeavor. So what was going on? My entire identity had been built around feminism, so why was it that I was contradicting my own beliefs?
Reconciling marriage as a feminist: Does everything about the wedding have to be a feminist battle?
I feel that each of the choices we make for our wedding need to be conscious choices. We need to weigh the comfort of tradition against the statement (overt or otherwise) that it may make. Not every feminist wedding is going to look the same — and certainly one can be a feminist and have a more “traditional” wedding. I don’t decide who is a feminist and who is not — I only get to determine how my feminism manifests itself.