Wedding Sells

We love love. All the world loves a lover. Love makes the world go round and all the rest. But if love and marriage really do fit together like horse and carriage, then Can't Buy Me Love strikes a big false note, because you certainly can buy a nice wedding.
You might want to pause for a moment to contemplate the vast amounts of money that actually circulate in the wedding industry, from the photographer to the limo company to the clothes retailer to the florist to the owners or managers of any kind of kooky, beautiful, opulent or even infamous venue that has got its licence since the liberalising of the law in the 1990s and is now looking forward to another hectic summer of Friday-Saturday-Sunday wall to wall wedding bookings.
Anyone who works in the business of wedding-production undoubtedly feels that they earn their livings by providing the customer with what he or she wants, and you shouldn't knock that; no one's forcing you to tie the knot and bankrupt yourselves. But given that the average wedding is likely to set you back a cool £15000 for even a scaled down version of the white-frock-little-church-champagne-vintage-Rolls-smoked salmon assemblage of cliche's, you might like to consider whether any of it is really what you want. Or whether it's some you can actually aspire to in the first place. Cliche's do surround weddings, such as there being more to marriage than just the wedding day.. doh! But the major, often-overlooked, obvious truth about weddings and marriage is this. Marriage isn't open to everyone. It's restricted to the heterosexual and monogamous.
Of course, the London lesbian or gay couple has the option of the Partner's Register, but that still doesn't confer the same status or the same rights as those automatically awarded to Mr and Mrs, and the actual signing is about as moving and ritualistic an occasion as putting your name down for a spot of liposuction. However, there's nothing to stop you inviting friends and family, and even a sympathetic vicar or rabbi if you're so inclined, round to somewhere nicer for a ceremony of your own choice and devising once the official bit is done and dusted.
In fact, given that any non-Christian religious ceremony is not recognised as having legal validity in the UK without the quick preliminary run to the register office, a move toward the European method of marrying begins to seem more and more sensible. Already there have been several celebrity weddings where the "Wedding" was more paparazzi palaver than actual formal commitment: remember Zoe Ball stumbling out of the registrar's, fag in mouth, the day before the official event? The splitting of "marriage" from "wedding ceremony" can only be a positive thing for anyone who wants to celebrate their love and their lovers with a public declaration of their shared feelings.
If legal marriage is, for whatever reason, not an option, the advice of a good lawyer can be sought for things like putting the relevant names on deeds of the shared house, making or remaking wills, transferring pension options or adopting shared children. With a really helpful lawyer, you might be able to arrange to sign all the relevant bits of paper on the same day and then go out for a nice dinner together before the scheduled ceremony you've been planning. Even if you are one-man-with-one-woman and can marry in the normal fashion, the rituals you choose and the people you choose to invite need not be a mixture of outdated stereotype, duty-driven invites to relatives you hate and months of rowing about what colour bridesmaids' frocks will suit them.
A Glaswegian couple who were both ardent fetish clubbers chose to have a fully fetish wedding. They did get "legally" married in the register office in full rubber regalia by an official who cheerfully accepted their desire to wed in "fancy dress". Then, that night, a second ceremony was held at their local fetish club, where the self-penned vows they made emphasized the SM nature of their relationship, and the bridegroom's choice of wedding ring, rather than fitting his finger, was a Prince Albert penis piercing, performed on the spot in front of the slightly startled guests.
As well as being satisfactorily personal to the happy pair, this wedding was economical to stage: the rubber outfits were made by a friend, a luscious chocolate cake baked by the bride and the promoter of the club was delighted to have the ceremony as an added attraction to his existing night.
Another type of lovers' pledge growing in popularity is the handfasting: a joining of the participants for a year and a day in accordance with pagan traditions. Even if you are not a pagan yourself and don't know anyone who is, the Pagan Federation (contact www.liferites.org) will be happy to help you find someone willing and able to perform a suitable ceremony for you. One such handfasting took place in Hastings during the Jack In The Green festival and was somewhat testing to the stamina of the guests as it was conducted at dawn on a clifftop high above the town and the sea. The vows were spoken as the sun rose on a perfect May morning, beer and mead were shared out and then everyone descended to a friendly local pub for a celebratory full English breakfast.
Though there will still be those who find any kind of alternative commitment ceremony to be damaging to the "holy institution of marriage", one of the best ways to promote tolerance and joy as we move forward into a multicultural, pansexual 21st century is to throw a party and celebrate the good things in life. So if you love someone and want the world to know it, then come on out and shout about it.

This piece remains unpublished in print but if you want to know more about unusual marriage and commitment ceremonies, check out *link*Uncommon Commitments*link*, available from the House of Decadence bookshop.
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