We got to the part in the ceremony where the preacher asks for the rings... and a dog trotted down the aisle.  It took the bride a few moments to untie the jewelry from the mutt's collar.  

Our granddaughter Maple liked this part of the ceremony the most. The dog was a nice break in what was otherwise an incomprehensible event to her.  But mostly she liked that the dog was sporting a white tulle dress, almost identical to her own.  

(Most women who attend a wedding are appalled if anyone wears the same dress.  The exception, of course, are the bridesmaids, who are always appalled at what they have to wear, and are just glad they aren’t alone with such costumes.  But imagine how you’d feel if a dog attended a wedding, dressed in the same material, color, and style dress as you.  Maple, however, is only three.  She was ecstatic.)  

It was a lovely ceremony for a family friend, Yawen, and her new husband Mulin.  I had done a Zoom wedding for them during the depths of the pandemic, and this was a long-delayed opportunity to do it right with friends, food, flowers… and all the fuss and finery that define weddings in our culture. 

Sadly, their parents couldn’t attend, still stuck in China because of pandemic travel restrictions.  The ceremony was recorded on an iPhone and sent to them immediately afterward.  I did the English and Jie repeated everything in Chinese… for the parents and for the guests, who all spoke Chinese as their native language.  She and I were the oldest ones there, by a generation, and during the toasts the groom honored us for being “their parents” for the occasion.

Weddings are cultural events.  And they have changed considerably in my lifetime. When my mom and dad got married in the early 50s, their wedding was held in a small Methodist Church. Photos reveal my dour-faced grandfather serving as both the father-of-the-bride and the officiant.  Stories of that wedding tell of my grandmother making my mom’s wedding dress.  The organist played; a soloist warbled out the Lord’s Prayer.  A relative baked the wedding cake.  Non-alcoholic punch and mints accompanied the cake, all of it served in the church basement immediately afterward.  That was it.  

Had our family been more “ethnic,” the wedding might have taken longer and cost more.  As noted in the paragraph above:  weddings are cultural events.  And the stern “holiness culture” of my grandparents eschewed all worldly pleasures, including dancing, drinking, and sex.  The wedding ceremony was filled with ominous prayers of warning… the reception was highly frugal… and any joyful anticipation regarding the honeymoon was confined to stolen snickers.  

That was an improvement over weddings in the Middle Ages, however.  While the modern weddings resemble almost nothing of the “holiness weddings” of the post WWII era, many still retain vestiges of half a millennium earlier, some modern practices even having roots in antiquity.

Historically, weddings have their origin in celebrations of commerce, not love.  Weddings were transactional, not transformational.  They marked the moment that ownership of a female was transferred from her father to her husband.  “Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?”  We’re still not over the concept of a women’s body being the property of some man, but it was much worse in the olden days.

From early times, weddings emphasized fidelity.  But even in the Bible, monogamy (and one man/one woman) applied only to married women, not their husbands.  Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were all allowed multiple wives, concubines, and prostitutes.  It got even more blatant in the days of Kings David and Solomon.  After all, if a women started sleeping about, who would ever be able to sort out which man owned which kids?  Children too were property of the men.  And throughout history, one thing you never mess with is a guy’s stuff.  

The wedding clearly marked which man owned the woman.  And just in case the bride’s father tried to peddle her off to TWO husbands, the officiant had to ask the question, “If anyone here sees any reason these two should not be wed, let him speak now or forever hold his peace.”  

Did you ever wonder why the bride stands to the groom’s left?  In ancient/medieval times, it mattered whether you were at someone’s left or right.  Your most valuable friend stood at your right, those of lesser importance went to the left.  As the man stood before the officiant, the bride stood at his left hand, his male buddies to the right.  The husband, on the other hand, stood at his wife’s right, her old friends to the left.  The wife, but not the husband, promised to OBEY her new spouse till death do them part.

While laws and mores governing married couples varied according to location, most times and places obliterated the rights of the women.  Men usually controlled all the property, even that brought into the marriage by the wife. In the New Testament, a husband had the right to divorce his wife for something as small as botching a meal.  All he had to do was put it in writing:  “Leave; you are no longer my wife.”  Wives almost never had legal standing to sue for divorce, even if they were beaten or neglected.  Until the last 50 years, they didn’t even have a right to seek outside protection from a physically abusive husband.  There are still people who are baffled by the concept of “marital rape.”

The original wedding ceremonies were designed to alleviate the anxieties of the groom.  So much could go wrong.  There were not only competitive males and strong-willed females to worry about, but demons as well. Who knew when a demon would pop up and take over the wife’s personality!  Thus, weddings began to feature decoys: bridesmaids dressed up like the bride to confuse the demons.  These sacrificial maidens were sent into the church first, in hopes the demons would be distracted long enough for the “pure” bride to get down the aisle safely.  Another place where demons lurked was at the threshold of the groom’s home.  Guys got around that threat by picking up their new wives and carrying them through the doorway.  

In modern American culture, the overt emphasis of weddings has flipped.  It is now seen as “the bride’s day.”  Still, in some marriages, it is her last hurrah before turning off her mind and turning over her body to the head of her household.  If you think we’re beyond that, just read the minutes of Southern Baptist conventions from this past decade, proof we’re not out of the Middle Ages yet.  Of course, Southern Baptists haven’t been able to enforce male superiority much lately as so many of the leaders who drove them to that position have been busy fending off sex lawsuits from the parishioners they overpowered.

Aware of the historical roots of wedding practices, I’ve done what I could to strip the ceremonies I do of their embarrassments.  I refuse to ask “who giveth this woman?”  I’ve dropped the word “obey” from the vows, and don’t ever open the floor for some sorehead to object to the wedding.  I’ve even tried to elevate the dignity of the individuals by letting them write their own vows.  

But that doesn’t always work out. One woman took advantage of my leniency and decided to make up her vows on the spot.  Unfortunately, she was quite inebriated by the time the wedding began, and her vow rambled on for 15 minutes.  I couldn’t make out everything she was saying, but all three of her former husbands got thrown under the bus during that wedding.  Moral of that story:  don’t drink and vow at the same time.  

As I watched Yawen and Mulin through their wedding and their reception, I had no fears that their ceremony set them on a wrongheaded path.  As Chinese-Americans, they can draw from the best of both cultures… and a plethora of religions.  As individualists, they are capable of rejecting those cultural relics they ought to reject. 

The only thing I’m a little worried about is their poor dog... all gussied up in a wedding dress. Even an egalitarian, modern couple like Yawen and Mulin still can’t seem to pull off a wedding without leaving someone looking like the loser!