The Anti-Wedding

My sister and bridesmaid sent me a link to the Washington Post's Wedding Week coverage, and there's some good stuff there. Money tips, music tips, a video slideshow of a baker making a wedding cake. The best thing I've seen so far, though, is a piece called The Anti-Wedding.

It chronicles the two authors' quest to plan the ultimate anti-wedding. They envision dead leaves in the bouquet and dirty city pigeons instead of doves being released at the end of the ceremony. The wedding they ultimately plan has no resemblance at all to your average Wedding Industrial Complex affair, and it actually sounds kind of fun -- a death and taxes scaveger hunt? Cool!

This was my favorite part (the writing is just so good):

"One couple catches our attention with a quirky coincidence: Her name is Jaqi Ross. His name is Chris Rossi. Ross and Rossi live together in . . . Rosslyn. These two, both 34, are open to just about anything, such as getting married in a morgue, Jaqi suggests, or on their living room couch. There will be no lace anywhere near this wedding. Also, she hates flowers.

We are convinced that this is our couple. And then we are rewarded with a glorious bonus: It turns out that Chris is a pathologist, and Jaqi works for the IRS. This will be the union of life's only two certainties . . . death and taxes. A themed anti-wedding."

Death and taxes. Classic!

What the writers got wrong, though, is their sense that they are the only ones who want an anti-wedding. Based on the bazillion wedding websites I read (none of them being The Knot), there are lots of brides out there planning nontraditional weddings. Some look more nontraditional than others, for sure, but there are plenty of brides trying to make a statement and have a unique, non-Wedding Industrial Complex wedding.

For me, it's about practicality and frugality. Do I want something that looks like a traditional wedding gown? Yes. But it has to be at my price, and no lure of a designer's name is going to change my mind. I was even contemplating getting a Chinese knock-off -- and contemplating it quite seriously -- for a while. But I'm not hiring a florist. Flowers are so beautiful in and of themselves, so I'm just going to get a bunch of them a couple days before the wedding and plop them in some containers for the reception. Pay someone to calligraph envelopes in my wedding colors? No, thanks. Do my own calligraphy because I have passable handwriting, and since I'm doing it myself, it may as well be done with a purple pen? Sure!

I have other examples, but you get the point.

Maybe I'm just surrounding myself with inspiration from non-Wedding Industrial Complex sources, so my viewpoint is skewed, but I really think there are a lot of anti-wedding brides (and grooms) out there. Maybe this article will inspire a larger audience to think outside of the box as well.