Marriage 2.0

I'm sitting here looking at the tossed around remnants of a tuxedo. Last night I was standing at the front of a church watching my best friend get married. For the past two weeks I have watched the pressure and drama build up as we tried to get everything set up. As I have watched all of this true reality build around me, I have learned a lot of things. I have learned from this experience that I don't want to put that much pressure on myself, or any other person for that matter. I watched my best friend cry Friday afternoon because they couldn't find enough chairs to put out at the reception. It's a definite social commentary when you have to put that much effort into something that is so simple.

When you think about the 'exactness' of what a wedding is, and how beautiful the act of getting married is, we almost make the act of getting married quite jaded. I think that we as a society have taken the ceremony away from what it actually means. Marriage (if you believe in the Judeo-Christian God and the book in which he is described in) is the oldest institution in our history. God joined Adam and Eve after their creation. It is described as a holy and pure thing that we have tainted by making it into something that it isn't.

Marriage has delved away from the Godly institution that it originally was, and has gone nose deep into the hierarchical realm of "showing off." We look at it as a status symbol. A woman looks down at her left ring finger only to find that her diamond did not cost as much as her best friend's thus causing frustration in a happy relationship. I know that this does not happen all of the time, but I'm sure that it happens every now and then. Women watch videos of other people's weddings to find out what aspects that they loved, and what aspects that they want to improve on.

Nick's new wife had to have a violinist play at her wedding because she heard someone talk about it and knew how fantastic everyone would think it was. I know that most little girls sit around dreaming about their wedding days and when it comes to fruition they cannot stand something going a little bit wrong. But I just think that we as a society are putting too much pressure upon ourselves to do something that is a simple yet beautiful act of love between two people.

I know that I couldn't imagine having a wedding at a justice of the peace's office even though I would be just as married as anyone else. When you think of a marriage in this day and age, you think of the giant ceremony. You don't think of a quiet ceremony where everything comes together perfectly because we put too much pressure on what really is an American tradition of showing off.