Commit to Yourself

For awhile now, a close friend and I have bandied about the notion of throwing self-commitment parties if we choose not to marry. In other words, I would marry myself, she'd marry herself, and we'd have a double self-commitment ceremony. For awhile, the deadline for abandoning the prospect of marriage and committing to lifelong singlehood was 30, but now that 30 is not just a hypothetical state but a reality bearing toward us in the mirror, the minimum age has somehow been raised to 35.

Of course we're half joking. And we're half serious.

It seems like a gutsy thing to do, throwing a party in your own honor. But why should it? In the last blog, we talked about how the average wedding is more a homage to the self than to the love of another person. Given that fact, celebrating yourself in style almost makes more sense than sparing no expense for what should be one of the most selfless commitments of your life, the promise to place another human being's needs before your own.

Fans of Sex and the City may remember the episode entitled "A Woman's Right to Shoes" in which Carrie's designer stilettos are stolen at a baby shower when the yuppie mother insists that all footwear be removed at the door. When the mom-to-be refuses to compensate Carrie for the loss and accuses her of indulging in a self-centered, high-priced lifestyle, Carrie rightly counters that shelling out for a wedding or a baby is no more virtuous than forking it over for anything else that's won your heart, including shoes. She argues that singles are expected to bankroll couples' weddings, homes, and children but receive no financial help for their own dreams. In response, Carrie sends word to the self-righteous mama that she's marrying herself and has set up a gift registry for her Manolo Blahniks.

Although it's played off tongue in cheek, Carrie's turn of the tables is a respectable move which affirms the value of single people. Take a moment to think of all the ways that you, as a single, have funded the lives of your coupled friends. No doubt, you've given gifts to the couples you know for all of the following:

--Engagement party
--Bridal shower
--Bachelor or bachelorette party
--Wedding
--Housewarming
--Baby shower

Quite likely, you also give Christmas presents to your friend and his or her spouse as well as to each of their children, while you get just one present in return. The same probably goes for birthdays.

And if you've ever been in a bridal party, you've also born the cost of your formal attire, the bridal shower if you're a woman, the bachelor or bachelorette party, and other miscellaneous expenses along the way (i.e. your transportation to and from the wedding, your lodgings if necessary, your stylist and/or makeup artist, etc.). Then when your friend gets pregnant, you're responsible for throwing a shower for that, too.

In a time when almost everyone got married, it was assumed that in a few years your turn would come and your friends would return the favor. But the marriage rate has declined by 50% since 1970, and it's no longer a certainty that a single person will ever tie the knot or have children. I don't have any statistics on how much married couples take home in gifts over a lifetime, but I'm sure it's thousands of dollars.

I know some people will argue that the spoils of a wedding or baby shower are tempered by the costs of the wedding and the baby, but how the money is spent isn't the issue. The role of the married parent and its attendant expenditures is a lifestyle choice. So is the choice of a single person to start a business or go back to school or travel...or even buy a pair of quality shoes. The choices of a single person aren't less ethically valid than those of a married person, but for some reason, society doesn't fund those choices.

Sometimes, singles are even labeled "self-centered" even though they're ultimately spending money the same way married people do--on things that make them happy. If those things are cars and clothes and gizmos for themselves instead of for a spouse or child, what of it? Married people attain these same things through the rounadabout method of requesting them from their spouses for birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, Mother's Day, Father's Day, and Valentine's Day. Single people cut right to the chase and buy them outright. So what's the difference?

Carrie Bradshaw had the right idea about "marrying herself." While the prospect of reciting vows to love, honor, and cherish yourself might sound silly, the principle is anything but. As singles, we should all be committed to our own growth and betterment. We should promise to take care of ourselves, to treat ourselves with dignity and respect, to stand up for and protect ourselves when necessary. We should vow to be honest with ourselves, to learn from our mistakes, and to push ourselves when the time calls for it. Most of all, we should commit to accept ourselves for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health. No matter who else makes or breaks these promises to you, you should always keep them to yourself.

And if you reach a point in life at which you know that you're not going to or don't want to be married...heck, throw a party! Go ahead. Rent out a huge facility, wear an elaborate gown, feast on catered delicacies, collect presents. Make it known that you're celebrating the person you've become and the person you're still becoming. Everybody needs a day to bask in the love of family and friends and be the sun of their universe. The act of committing yourself to someone else shouldn't be what makes you worthy of that.

But if you do get married a year later, just don't expect anyone to go out and get you another set of Lenox. ;)

How do you feel about the expenditures singles are expected to make without receiving anything in return? Have you had trouble affording the costs associated with special events for your married friends or family? Would you ever throw a party for yourself? Have you made a commitment, formal or informal, to yourself?


Fun Link of the Day

It's a Wedding, Not a Coronation

At my age, you think a lot about weddings. Every time you turn around, one of your friends is wearing a rock the size of Gibraltar, tearing out patches of hair over whether to go with the Baby Blue napkins or the Robin's Egg, and, finally, stuffing you into a dress you'll have to fork over several hundred dollars to never wear again. How could you not think about them?

Luckily, I haven't yet encountered a real-life bridezilla. My engaged friends have managed to keep their calm, reason, and wits about them and not exchange them with the rings. But even the most relaxed bride-to-be doesn't let a conversation go by without inserting something about "the wedding," which somewhere along the line becomes her second full-time job.

Let me clarify that I'm not blaming brides for their single-minded focus. If you have a full-time job, paid or unpaid, you have to be devoted to it. And if the fulfillment of your childhood dreams rides on this one day because it's the only day that will ever be "Your Day" and therefore must be "perfect," planning it had darn well better be a full-time job. And that's where the trouble lies.

If you were married in, say, 1850 and weren't a Vanderbilt, the ceremony was held in the town church, often after Sunday service. The couple got there on their own steam, usually in horse-drawn carriages. The bride wore her best dress or a dress handed down from her mother and maybe carried a fresh, handpicked bouquet of wildflowers. Although there wouldn't have been a bridal party if the bride wasn't wealthy, she might have had a flower girl, sans color-coordinated dress, sprinkle a few petals in the aisle. Someone with a fiddle handy would have played a simple hymn, though not the wedding march since it wasn't in fashion yet, and after the exchange of vows and a plain gold band, often a modest family heirloom, they might all have retired to someone's barn for some folk dancing and homemade plum cake before the happy couple drove away in a buggy festooned with cans and noisemakers and a "just married" sign. Their "honeymoon" was a trip back to their new residence to consummate the marriage. (See "Sources" for more on wedding traditions.) The whole affair cost nothing more than the price of ribbons for the bride's hair and ingredients for the cake.

In contrast, in 2005, the average cost of a wedding was nearly $30,000! And that's just the average. I regularly hear of weddings totalling fifty, sixty, even ninety thousand dollars. Today, if you told a bride she'd have to sew her own dress, forgo shower and wedding gifts (a bride in 1850 was expected to provide her own trousseau, accumulated over the years), and hold her reception in a barn, she'd burst into tears faster than Hillary Clinton at a primary. Yet, despite their lack of grandeur, the weddings of yesteryear were as highly anticipated and joyous then as they are in the 21st century.

That begs the question: Is all the modern wedding hullabaloo really necessary? And, if not, why are single women so bound and determined to eventually walk down the aisle to the tune of $30k shaken from their pockets?

I think the answer lies in the tag lines of the contemporary bride:

"This is my day!"

and

"I want to feel like a princess."

Our current generation was raised on fairy tales. And not the bloody Grimm translations. The sugary, gauzy, soft-edged kind. The Disney version. And at the end of every fairy tale, the leading lady married a prince and became--well, you know the deal--a princess. It's no wonder that American women have come to associate marriage with elevation to elite status and fulfillment of grandiose childhood fantasies. Tragically, this shifts the focus of a wedding from the public celebration of a couple (Their Day) to the public celebration of a woman (Her Day). (Note that you will never hear a groom refer to the wedding as "His Day" or exclaim that he feels like a prince!)

Every time I hear a bride whine, "It's my day," I want to scream, "No, it's not! It's not about you! It's about vowing your lifelong commitment to someone else." This day of all days, the day that you devote your life to another human being, should be a day to be selfless. But the modern bride's insistence on turning the wedding into a lavish parade in which she is the showpiece distorts and dilutes the meaning of the ceremony. When you consider that most women approach a wedding with this attitude, it's easy to understand why wedding expenses have ballooned like a war budget in recent years (though perhaps not inappropriately since many weddings will end in a battle of divorce attorneys). After all, if you're going to become a princess, you have to show everyone you can spend like royalty, and that may include a $5,000 couture dress, imported vintage Champagne, and a private fireworks display.

I have to wonder if these weddings-cum-coronations aren't hurting single people, especially single women. We all know single women who are more wrapped up in planning their future marriage ceremony than in finding someone to marry. Could it be that what these women really long for is a no-holds-barred day to celebrate themselves?

Everyone has a natural desire to be recognized once in awhile, to have their fifteen minutes of fame. It occurs to me that, other than the wedding ceremony, we don't have a universally acknowledged rite of passage to honor women (or men for that matter) for who they've become and what they've accomplished. Sure, we have prom and graduation, but those are group events shared with many other deserving people, and although some people have 18th or 21st birthday parties, they're usually not the formal affairs that weddings are.

I wish that our society would institute something akin to the South American quinceanera, the coming-of-age ball that is often compared to an American wedding minus the groom. The young lady's family throws a black tie event, and the birthday girl's escort presents her to the world in her sparkling finery. Then, she dances the night away with her friends, family, and hundreds of dollars worth of gifts. I don't know if a party on this order would make a difference to an American girl, but I have to think that it might take at least some of the edge off that longing to track down a husband just to have a "special day." As it is now, engaged women are so intent on glorifying themselves that it's no wonder weddings have less in common with the primitive bonding rites they represent than with the coronation of a queen.

What do you think? Are wedding celebrations today too focused on self-glorification and not enough on the meaning of commitment?


Sources
Early Victorian Wedding Dress
Georgia Girl's Wedding Traditions
The Wedding Cake...history, customs, and traditions
Weddings Then & Now
Wedding Traditions


Fun Link of the Day