It's My "Party" and I Won't Have It If I Don't Want To

To quote Cher from Clueless, “I don’t want to be a traitor to my generation and all…” but I don’t get weddings. I don’t. Marriage? I guess I can understand that. It’s not something I need, but I get it. I’m totally okay with people wanting to spend their life together, and wanting a way to signal that commitment.

You may be asking right now, “well, isn’t that what a wedding is, you giant, hypocritical ignoramus?”

Friends, in my opinion, it really, REALLY, is not. Hold the phone and read more before you start yelling at me.

Let’s start with the history of weddings. You probably just went through a few, because, ya know, SUMMER WEDDINGS!! Do you know why summer weddings are so popular? June is the month associated with Juno, the Roman goddess of marriage and childbearing. Weddings in her month were considered especially fortuitous and fertile. Considering how many layers the wedding party’s attire typically consists of, I find summer weddings a curiously sweaty decision, but that’s neither here nor there. I’m also not a big fan of Juno (the goddess, not the movie), but that’s because I neither like ancient Romans nor women who let their man cheat all over the place.  

Did you read pay attention to that last sentence? The ancient Roman goddess of marriage was most well known for getting to be “that wife” that continuously watched her husband cheat on her.  That’s actually pretty common in ancient mythology because the thing is, old-time marriage sucked. Women got the shit end of the stick. If they didn’t get married they were a burden to their parents. If they did get married, they were the property of their spouse and basically had to go along with whatever the man wanted. In most societies they had no legal rights. In many cases, they were trapped in the marriage with no end in sight unless the guy died.

Here in the United States, marriage today isn’t that bad. For starters, no one is forced to get married, it’s a choice. Legally, both parties are equal. Either party can dissolve the marriage. Yay for progress!

But did you know that almost all of our common wedding traditions stem from this history of marriage being sucktastic for women? Here are just a few, A FEW, examples:

·         The whole reason the bride’s family gets the fun job of paying for everything? Because way back when, women were such a HUGE inconvenience to life that a family literally PAID OFF THE GUY to marry their daughter. This was called a dowry, because that sounds nicer than something like “FUCKING TAKE THIS BITCH FROM US bribe money.”

·         Why is there a bridal party? Because even further back in time, the way you got a wife was to go kidnap her. For realz. So a guy would round up his buddies (the groomsmen) to go attack the family with the hottie daughter and steal her to be his treasured babymaker.

·         The tender moment when the father gives away the bride? More property-tradition in action! It reenacts the exchange of property, that the bride no longer “belongs” to her father, and now is the glowing goods of the husband.

I swear friends, I’m not trying to be all super-feminist here, but seriously? You want me to be excited for these things?

And that is probably the main reason I don’t get weddings. Marriage is fine and dandy and has progressed, but somehow, not only have weddings stayed steeped in really stupid traditions, but they are sold to little girls as THE THING WE WANT MOST* (until we start craving babies, that is). It is the BIGGEST DAY OF OUR LIVES! It is the day that THE BRIDE COMES FIRST! ALL HAIL THE BRIDE!

…but why?

If you are getting married and you treat your wedding as what it is – a celebration of two people committing to each other, that’s great! I am totes on board!

But instead, it’s treated as this massive achievement by the bride. Not the groom, it’s looked on for him as an ending. The end of fun, the end of freedom, etc. But for the bride? Huge achievement! She locked that dude down! Woot woot!

Wwhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?  

There are many things about weddings that frankly, I just don’t like, and that is my opinion and very likely different from yours. I think though that the main issue I have with weddings is that they are the perfect example of the utter impossibility of being a woman. Sure, the institution of marriage may be better for us these days, but weddings still suck out the bride’s soul.

We treat them as this amazing achievement (as I already said and you may have guessed I’m not really thrilled about that fact either) for the bride, but we’re not there celebrating her. Oh no, we’re there to judge. That’s why she needs to look her best, why which china is used actually matters, and why the baker damn well better not f*** up the cake or shit is going to get real. Because the bride knows as she’s planning this “party” that for the rest of her life, people will remember and judge her based on how she looks, how she acts, and whether or not she played to their preferred traditions. They will complain if she doesn’t serve the drinks they like, or have their favorite dessert, or *gasp* if she bans children. No one will care that it’s her wedding. Oh, they’ll smile at her and say she looks nice, but you better believe the minute the ceremony is over everyone is gathering and comparing what they thought about it (i.e. complaining. There is a shocking amount of complaining at weddings).   

It’s not a celebration of marriage. It’s Day 1 of us judging this woman as a wife. And the best part for her? EVERYBODY gets to get in on the judgment. It’s not like Day 1 of judging her as a worker, which is limited to people at her job. Or Day 1 of judging her as a friend, which is limited to her social group. You don’t need to be married to weigh in on whether you thought the wedding was a flop or a hit. Hell, you don’t even need to have gone to the wedding to feel entitled to tell her that the dress is outdated and throwing rice is so passé. YEAH, BECAUSE SHE CAN CHANGE THAT NOW.

All in all, I’m surprised more women don’t turn into brizezillas and/or maim someone during the course of the wedding.

I’m sure I’ve ruffled a few feathers here and if I’ve been to your wedding, I swear it was lovely. No offense is meant. All I’m really saying is let’s be real and acknowledge that weddings are a ton of work, a ton of stress, and a matter of preference, and ya’ll need to stop trying to shove this idea down my throat that having a perfect wedding is the goal of my existence.

The Cake (And Everything Online) Is A Lie

A pretty common saying is “don’t judge a book by its cover,” yet we seem to all forget that particular wisdom tidbit when it comes to the internet. This can range from trusting a Wikipedia entry to believing that chick from high school is really as perfect and happy as she seems to be on Facebook. I’m not going to go all moral-high-ground ranty on you, but rather share a silly example of yet another thing not to always trust online – recipe gifs.

There is a subreddit devoted entirely to these things, and they’re popping up on my newsfeeds more often than not. It just so happened that one for a cherry recipe showed up right after I bought a bunch of cherries. The video, which you can see here, made it look super fast and easy to throw together. Since my boyfriend is a huge fan of cherry pie it seemed like fate. I hurried to the kitchen, eager to begin my gif recipe journey.

I had watched the video a few times, but had also grabbed the written instructions as that’s how I roll. I gathered my ingredients and my baking wine and turned to the first step with glee. Here is where things quickly fell to pieces.

Let’s back up for a second. Ya’ll know I bake. I do. A lot. Despite my tendency to never follow the directions exactly, everything normally turns out delicious. What I do not do though is bake pies or too many fruity desserts. I don’t really have a reason for this. I mean I’m not a huge fruit fan so that could be part of it, or it could be that I prefer time savers like jarred/canned ingredients and everyone always stresses how fruit desserts are better when they’re fresh fruit. I dunno. The point is that I’ve only ever made one or two pies in my life, so I am in no way a pie or fruit expert.

This became very obvious very quickly, as the first thing I needed to do was pit my cherries. The video showed a hack involving a bottle and a chopstick. I had both of these things. I washed and de-stemmed my cherries and got ready to pop out some pits real quick.

I’m not going to say this hack is a lie, because it technically works to get the pit out of the cherry. But the easy and clean way they present it in the video? FALSE!

I screamed a little when the first cherry pit exploded in a gush of juice. It was horrifically reminiscent of a certain Game of Thrones scene involving the Mountain. Yes, the pit was out, but my cherry was also rather deformed instead of the perfect looking one in the video. I thought maybe I was doing it wrong, so I tried a few more. Same result. I googled cherry pit removal tips and found several entries about the fail process I was already trying, and then another one involving a frosting tip. After several large gulps to harden my resolve, I switched to that method.

Eventually the cherry pits were removed. Almost all my cherries were basically torn in half, and my kitchen looked like a murder scene. There was cherry juice on the counter, on my wine bottle, and ALL over me as well.

I was a little discouraged that the first step had proven to be more difficult than the video indicated, but I continued on. The rest came together easily enough, and I popped my creation into the oven. I think it was the smell as it finished up that first alerted me that something was off from my expectations. While the recipe was called “pie” it obviously lacked a crust, and the description had called it a cross with a cake. In my mind, this translated as actually being a cake. In my boyfriend’s mind, this translated into being like a cheesecake. The actual end product was neither of these things.

Did it look pretty? Well, yeah. After an hourish of hot, sweaty, and mildly terrifying efforts it was nice to see it turn out looking good. As for the taste… NOT my cup of tea. It was neither cake nor pie but almost more like a flan, which I do not enjoy. I took it into work and thankfully my coworkers liked it so it wasn’t a complete waste.

Moral of the story? Do NOT always believe what you see online!

#TheCakeIsALie #NoReallyItWasThisTime #DontTossWordsLikeCakeOrPieAroundIfItDoesntTasteLikeFreakingCakeOrPie