In praise of weddings

on the communal implications of marriage

I’m typing this from a pub in the Scottish highlands where I’m grabbing a bite to eat before I head to a very happy occasion: a friend’s wedding! According to the popular wedding website the Knot, 42% of weddings in 2023 took place between September and November. And as a woman rounding the corner of my thirtieth year, my social calendar testifies to the verity of this statistic. I personally know of nine couples getting married this year, two on this very day (September 21st). These weddings represent a substantial proportion of my earthly acquaintances, and keeping track of these festivities is becoming a hefty administrative undertaking. But I do it, and joyfully, because I believe in weddings.

Once, upon returning from a wedding, a friend remarked to me “it takes a village to marry a couple” rolling his eyes affectionately. The couple, he said, had needed much encouragement, reassurance, even mediation along the way to help an insecure courtship grow into a comfortable love. But his affectionate eyeroll made me realize something: marriages are never simply the culmination of two individuals deciding they are compatible. The couple were inevitably helped by friends in small and large ways, friends who (over) analyzed text messages with them, choose outfits for a date, determined whether something is a red flag or personality quirk. Couples are formed by family, whose marriages—long, happy, fraught, stalwart — taught them what it was and was not to be a spouse. And their marriage, in turn, will impact their community for better or worse.

That a couple has a wedding at all is an indication, in some way, that a marriage is not solely an individual and personal undertaking, but implicates community. It is, at the very least, a joining of two families. But it is more than this. As author Wendell Berry puts it, the community “gathers around [the couple] because it understands how necessary, how joyful, and how fearful this joining is… at the very heart of community life, we find not something to sell as in the public market but this momentous giving.” It is because of this “momentous giving” of the couple to each other, the community to the couple that I’ve come to believe that even those weddings customs which can seem materialistic, embody a communal vision of marriage and life that is worth preserving.

A wedding is a couples first “official” act of hospitality. There is something wonderful about the way a wedding may display the distinctive character of each couple’s relationship, the qualities and strengths their union will bring to the world. Each couple is different, and so each wedding is different. Their choices reflect what they value together. The couple who cherishes hospitality lays a delectable meal. The couple who is the life of the party clears the floor for dance. The couple whose faith is important to them labors over the service booklet, the readings, and the music. Many of the best weddings I have been to were unconventional and cheaply catered, but there was a thoughtfulness in the way the couple comports themselves that communicated the particular character of their relationship and what it would offer to the world.

In the planning of the day, the sending out of invitations, the arrangement of the meal, the moments of solemnity and jollity, the couple show the hosts they are and will be in life. Do they think of the family member who has mobility issues— what will make them comfortable and not feel left out? Have they timed the day in such a way that people won’t be too tired, and will eat enough? Have they explained the religious elements of their wedding to those who may not share the faith? Do they take time to “make the rounds” at the reception and thank people for coming? In these moments, the couple exhibits the care and welcome their union will offer— to each other, to the children they may welcome, to their families and friends, to the lonely, the awkward, and the needy.

Of course, to pull a wedding off is quite an undertaking, and one which naturally puts some strain on the couple. But is there not something symbolic about this as well? In planning a wedding one is faced with most of the things which are most likely to cause stress in a marriage: money, family dynamics, and shared labor. It is certainly not the only or best way to do it, but to plan a wedding together is to show evidence of your capacity to work as a team. If one member of the couple has carried all the burden of planning, it communicates something about a lack of partnership or communication. It makes one wonder about a lack of mutual commitment to bear life’s burdens but also to be a source of support and welcome to others. The discomfort of this is palpable. 

I have come to wonder if it is precisely because of a breakdown in this unspoken communality that weddings are sometimes uncomfortable. The couple who arranges their day in a way that requires excessive expense on their guests forgo their roles as gracious hosts, exposing their guests to embarrassment and themselves to resentment. The guest who brings a plus one without asking or bellyaches that the couple have opted for a dry wedding forgets that they are a guest receiving the hospitality of the hosts, not children at a sleep over asking for mom and dad to buy more frozen pizzas.

But this brings us to the guests, for they too have their part to play. They reciprocate the hospitality of the couple by giving gifts. Traditionally, these gifts are given to help form the household of the couple: pots, pans, dishes, tablecloths. There is something profound in this: the material objects of the life the new couple are provided by their community. The community around them quite literally invests in this relationship, this household in ways that are implicated in the day-to-day use of the items the couple has chosen. In this investment of gifts and money, the community expresses their sense of the “value” of this relationship, but it is also pledge of hope and good will. That this home into which affection is poured will become a well of comfort and hospitality to the world beyond its wall. This marriage which is supported will become a support.

In weddings we see a commitment to the interweaving of two lives, a “momentous giving” as Berry puts it. In a world as lonely and isolated as our own, the momentous giving of a marriage, the choice to interweave your life with another person is a radical thing. But weddings also show that giving in marriage is so momentous that we need the help and support of others to be married. As the house is filled and warmed by the gifts given at a wedding, a marriage is made possible by the merging of families, and by the love and support of friends and community. And that love and investment of friends is not wasted because strong marriages, in turn, nourish community bonds. The dishes that are given will be laid on the table to welcome friends and family for meals together. The extra pair of sheets lay clean and ready for when a friend comes to visit, seeking company or comfort from life’s difficulties. Marriage has communal implications.

This was brought home to me quite vividly in a wedding I recently attended. After the elegant entry of the bride in cascading cream satin dress, and the initial vows, the priest turned to the congregation and asked:

“Will you, the families and friends of Eleanor and Alex,

support and uphold them in their marriage

now and in the years to come.”

This is a standard part of an Anglican marriage ceremony, and those who have attended them will be reminded of a baptism service, where, after the candidate for baptism makes their baptismal vows, the congregation renews their own baptismal vows. Except here it is not only the married people who vow to support the couple (as baptized people pray for the baptized), but the whole community of the church. It was moving to declare with a whole room full of people that I, we, would uphold and support these people, this marriage, that I was somehow involved or implicated in it.

This moment crystallized this conviction that had been wordlessly growing in me: that strong marriages can be a source of stability and joy not only for the couple, but for the members of the entire community their lives touch. And that weddings are, therefore, important because they embody this conviction. And so, though finding ways to support the nine couples I know getting married is a significant undertaking and sometimes a budgetary consideration, I try to find ways to “support and uphold” these marriages, these momentous givings over of the self to the other, because it is a brave thing worthy of celebration and support.