For young people getting married in the years following the beginning of the pandemic, weddings are surprisingly even more of a party.
“You really can’t have a big party when there’s this deathly disease that everyone’s gonna pass to each other,” the future Mrs. Abby Bates explains.
More and more, younger couples are abandoning outdated ideas by embracing performance art and free creative expression.
Not Non-Traditional, It’s What I Want
Nowadays, it’s the couple’s choice whether the groom sees the bride in her dress before the wedding she walks down the aisle. These choices add to the excitement of the event. Jackson, Abby’s future husband, is aware that she won’t wear a veil, and he embraces the anticipation, finding joy in the tradition of being surprised by the dress.
Abby and Teegan are two young people who both plan on having weddings later this year, and they both happen to be children of divorced parents. They understand that any costs associated with a future divorce will be in addition to all wedding costs. Teegan doesn’t know much about his bride-to-be’s dress either, however, he does know that Heaven will be wearing a veil that day.
Planning Future Identities
Abby has scheduled her wedding for October. Fall is ideal for an outdoor wedding in North Carolina, as it symbolizes transformation. As wedding traditions become mere suggestions, the power of matrimonial autonomy becomes increasingly obvious.
Heaven will be taking Teegan’s last name, Macleod. Abby plans on keeping her maiden name and feels an outdated pressure to uphold many wedding traditions. Yet still, her dad will be walking her down the aisle. “I am sucking it up because I love my dad more than I hate that tradition.”
While the “rules” of the wedding may change/evolve from generation to generation, the “rules” for marriage though, appear to stay the same. Perhaps if folks would “uphold” the rules of marriage, there would less divorce.