Reimagining marriage as a community ritual

Is it possible to reject the individualism at the heart of our modern notion of marriage? (Or a story about how my wedding ended up in the New York Times.)

Growing up, I’d always thought of marriage as the ultimate expression of romantic commitment. But once I started researching and writing about romantic love, I discovered that actually marriage is a lot more complicated than that.* For most of human history, people married for social or economic or political reasons—to make alliances or consolidate resources or join families. Marrying solely for love would’ve been laughably impractical for most of our ancestors.

But modern marriage means turning toward our spouses for nearly everything: we want a capable co-parent and satisfying sex life, someone who helps us become the best version of ourselves while never forgetting to clean the toilet. By putting such enormous expectations on marriage, we’ve managed to both overburden our romantic relationships and weaken the other meaningful relationships in our lives. There are so many ways to love one another—why should this one particular version of love get all the attention, all the status and celebration, all the legal, social, and financial support?

I remember feeling relieved to discover this new way of thinking about marriage: its meaning had never been fixed but instead shaped by the particular values of any given moment in history and culture. To be honest, I felt liberated. Because if marriage had really shape-shifted so much over the years, then maybe I was free to decide whether or not I wanted to get married and what romantic commitment could look like for me.

For a long time, not getting married felt like a good way to reclaim some of the power romantic idealism held over me—and a way to reject some of the more patriarchal baggage of the institution. As I wrote in the Atlantic** a few years ago, studies show that married people are more socially isolated than single folks, so not getting married also felt like a way to avoid the loneliness of marriage, to remember to turn toward the people around me as much as I turned toward my partner.

But then there was a pandemic and a really hard, scary pregnancy, and then a couple of years feeling trapped at home with two babies. People were gathering—I could see it in my Instagram feed!—but I was still cut off from the world. I hadn’t gotten married but I was lonely: parenting during a pandemic without extended family nearby was hard and exhausting.

I began to fantasize about having everyone I loved in a room together. I had this idea that Mark and I could throw a party and evoke the spirit of a wedding without actually having a wedding.

“We could call it ‘Not a Wedding’,” I said, floating the idea.

He frowned.

“But don’t you think if we’re going to do it, we should really do it,” he said, meaning the whole thing: the rings and the vows and the paperwork. “Don’t you think our lives would benefit from having more ritual in them?”

I thought about this for a while.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to get married, but I did feel, every day, that I was the luckiest person to have stumbled into this life and this family. We had gotten through some hard years together and that alone felt worth celebrating. So, a few months later, I bought a ring and I proposed to Mark. He was pretty surprised. And, luckily, he said yes. (Have I mentioned I really like that guy?)

As much as he was into the ritual of a wedding, Mark was not excited about planning one. And I get it. Weddings often feel like an elaborate expression of individualism, performed through the consumption of goods and services: the perfect dress, the most idyllic venue, the florists and favors and decor that most perfectly express the style and ethos of the two people getting married. It’s easy to get the sense that if you buy all the right things, you can effectively set yourself up for a lifetime of happiness (not to mention a lot of debt).

I wanted to know if it was possible to do things differently—at least a little bit. Could we create an event that was less a marker of status and more a collective expression of joy?

I wanted to celebrate our relationship, but also all the people we loved. We would not have survived those hard years without our friends and family. They fed us and sent boxes of baby supplies and bags of hand-me-downs. They helped us move and walked Roscoe and had us over for dinner and came to babysit. They taught us what it looks like to show up for the people you love. I wanted to let them know that we were overwhelmingly, impossibly grateful for that.

So we decided on a small ceremony in the forest, one party in Vancouver and another at my mom’s house (thanks, Mom!) in Florida, for family and friends on the east coast.

You can see why this forest is my place! (Photo by: Henry F)

While marriage has a lot of room for improvement as a political and social institution, I have to say: there’s a lot to be said for ritual—and for gathering, especially these days, which can so often feel dark and difficult. Being in a room full of people you love: can’t recommend it enough. Standing up in front of those people and telling them how much you love them: the absolute best.

Several people came up to me at the end of the night to say how good the vibes were. And isn’t that all you could really want from a party? That people feel welcome, that they have fun and connect with an old friend—or a new one. It thrills me, really, to know they felt something like what I felt, what I still feel now, a few weeks later: all that joy and love still carrying us along through our ordinary days.

I felt all the cliche things you're supposed to feel: seen and loved and celebrated. And I hope our guests felt that way too. That night, in the hotel, I kept thinking about how much I wanted to give everyone their own personal speech, telling them exactly what I loved and admired about them. Not a card or a text, but a public declaration. This is something we should be doing!

Wedding vibes, and a few of our beautiful guests (Photo by: Henry F)

If you want to read about all the little details of our wedding, you can do that here, in the New York Times. And if you’re wondering if it is weird to go from being so publicly and visibly critical of the institution of marriage to having your wedding covered in the Vows section of the New York Times, yes! It is very weird!

A few months ago, I mentioned that we were getting married on the Modern Love podcast, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when I got an email from the Vows section about a week before the ceremony, asking if they could cover our wedding. I still haven’t totally gotten used to the fact that strangers are interested in my personal life (and yes, I know, I’m one the writing about it so publicly), but the attention doesn’t make me squirm as much as it used to.

I actually loved chatting with Anna, the NYT reporter, a few days before the wedding. I got to listen to Mark talk about why he asked me out in the first place, a story I’d never actually heard before. And he got to hear me go on about all the reasons I love him. It was a sweet moment during what was otherwise a pretty hectic and overwhelming week. We joked that everyone should be interviewed about their love story by an enthusiastic and curious person right before their wedding. (Seriously, if you’re getting married you should do this! Get a friend to interview you, make a recording. This is a life hack from me to you.)

A nice thing about getting married while your children are three-and-a-half, a notoriously difficult age, is that you are forced to remember that you have chosen this person. And even though sometimes you want to walk out the door of your home and straight into the wilderness because no one can seem to get dressed and out out of the house without first getting peanut butter all over the couch and then someone has unrolled the entire roll of toilet paper into the toilet for the third time in as many days, you are in the midst of writing your vows and you remember that you actually do want to do this, this occasionally-maddening life with this person at your side.

A three year old, barely hanging in at the end of the night. (Photo by my sister)

And a nice thing about getting married now, in our forties, ten years into our relationship, is that whatever expectations come with a wedding don’t seem to apply any more. More than one of the speeches acknowledged that we are not exactly young lovers. But what a gift that is in this case! We were able to focus on the important stuff—friends, good food, mortality***—and not worry too much about the rest. We didn’t have a cake or flowers on the tables. My sister did my hair (honestly this should be her job, it looked incredible). I did my makeup. We had very minimal decor and our children wore their junior ranger vests to the ceremony. We already have everything we need, so we skipped the gifts and asked those who really wanted to give something to donate to organizations that feel important to us.

It wasn’t so radically different from any other wedding, to be clear, but it felt right to think of it as more of a community ritual than a personal one. And a big part of what made all of this possible was our friend Jen, professional wedding planner extraordinaire! (Hire her!)

At the Vancouver party, my friend Matthew read me a few lines from Braiding Sweetgrass that I’ve been thinking about ever since:

Ceremony focuses attention so that attention becomes intention. If you stand together and profess a thing before your community, it holds you accountable.

Ceremonies transcend the boundaries of the individual and resonate beyond the human realm. These acts of reverence are powerfully pragmatic. These are ceremonies that magnify life.

If it is true that we have some say over what marriage means, I am hoping that our decision to get married is an argument for magnifying life, for the value of celebrating love, in its myriad and glorious forms, especially in this time of crisis and upheaval. And maybe also it is a chance to keep building our community of care, in a way that is intentional and unapologetically earnest.

Thanks for letting me gush about it.

Yours,

Mandy

*If you want to know more about the history of marriage, this is the marriage bible.

**I guess all those strangers who wrote to say I was probably going to hell for being critical of the institution of marriage can sleep a little easier now.

***Our wonderful officiant Lani read this poem at our ceremony and said it made both her and her husband cry. More wedding should include poems about death!