The Wedding Watchers

Don't ask Sarah and I for a lift to a wedding. Well, you can. And we'll probably say yes. But trust me, you don't want to be travelling in the same vehicle as the two of us when coming home from a wedding. The travel home is the chance to debrief about the day. You see, we're wedding watchers. We're wedding analysers. We're wedding deconstructionists. We havn't always been this way, picking over and discussing the most minute details of each wedding we attend. It's only since we got married ourselves. After having to make those hundreds and hundreds of large and small decisions, we have found ourselves critiquing those same decisions of others. And we love it.

Are you a wedding watcher?

Sarah and I analyse the invitations, the service books, the bible reading choices, the flowers, the dresses, the song choices, the food, the vows, the speeches, the prayers, the little flower things in the guys suit pockets; everything!

Some notable highlights of our wedding watching include seeing the combination of a Jewish/Catholic wedding (no New Testament reading there!), great exit songs for the bride and groom ('Get Down Tonight' and 'Bust a Move') and unique congregational singing (the bride and groom introduced why they chose each song, and then led the singing).

The worst vows we have ever heard was at a non-Christian family wedding. The promises finished with the disclaimer "as long as our love shall last". Of course they didn't mean it that way, it just highlighted for us that the couple didn't really understand the whole point of the wedding and the centrality of the giving of your word.

A few months ago, the Sydney Morning Herald ran an article outlining the rising popularity of civil ceremonies which now outnumber church weddings by almost double. This percentage has increased since civil ceremonies first outnumbered church weddings in 2002. Coupled with this phenomenon is a rise in the number of couples getting hitched at the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages.

I'm certain these trends are concerning to many churches (particularly those who make money off it). It is definitely a lost gospel opportunity, with most churches worth their salt insisting on some sort of pre-marriage evangelistic course. Yet at a very base level, the idea of going to the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages to fill out the paperwork isn't an entirely unhealthy view of marriage. That is, part of the problem with wedding watchers, is that so many of the aspects of our analysis are about the fluff, the bits that don't really matter. Our wedding ceremonies are so laden with tradition - why is it a big deal what flowers you have, or what song you exit to? So much of what we discuss is about the wedding rather than the marriage. A view of marriage which strips back the padding and reduces it to signing the contract is actually a right view of marriage.

I wish to qualify that statement by saying there is benefit in many aspects of the way we do weddings. These include the giving away of the bride, the promises being publicly proclaimed, the visual representation of making these promises before God, and the congregation agreeing to support the marriage. Yet ultimately these aspects only add to the essence of the ceremony; the giving of your word to your marriage partner. It's a contract.

Unfortunately, the same article mentioned above suggests the reason for the increase in Registry marriages is due to the number of second and third marriages who want to keep things simple and costs down. Which I guess just shows they don't get it, after all.