- Hello everybody.
Today, we are going to be talking
about some wedding traditions,
and whether we should to bring 'em,
or leave 'em.
And I don't really mean we,
I mean me, because this is going
to be entirely subjective.
If you want to get married,
if you do ever get married,
if you have gotten married,
there's a whole array of choices to make,
and they're entirely yours.
Well, at least in theory,
the choices should be entirely made
(chuckling) by the people
who are getting married.
Not always the case.
I mentioned that this was a silly video
that I wanted to do, so here we are.
I asked on Instagram
just to send me
different wedding traditions there are.
And I'm just gonna go through them,
talk about each one,
talk about what we did for our wedding,
whether we were like, yes, that thing is staying,
or we were like, absolutely not.
Some of these traditions,
I was well aware of.
Other ones, I knew about,
but had completely forgotten existed.
So here we go.
We're gonna start with one
of my favourite ones that somebody submitted,
which was marrying a man.
And yeah, I hadn't thought about it before,
but yeah, marrying a man (chuckling)
is very traditional.
And I did that,
so bring it, I guess, for me, personally.
I'm not gonna bother saying for me personally
after every single one of these,
but you understand, this is about my preference.
Before we get
into the rest of the traditions,
I just wanted to say on the marrying a man note,
that a whole bunch of these traditions
are super hetero normative.
So much of them are to do with,
this is what the bride does,
and this is what the groom does,
and bridesmaids and groomsmen.
What are gender neutral terms
for those roles?
Anyway, I don't know!
The traditions that people submitted
are obviously super hetero cis normative,
but hopefully, we can start
making new traditions in weddings,
that are more inclusive, and less rigid,
and weird, and gross, and pointless.
So those are my thoughts,
and now onto bringing and leaving
a bunch of heteronormative weddings traditions.
The garter came up a lot.
A lot of people talking about wearing a garter,
but then, a lot of people talking
about something that I guess
I vaguely knew existed,
but I have never seen at a wedding,
which is the groom then trying
to take the bride's garter off her leg,
with his mouth, with his teeth,
in front of everybody.
A lot of you seemed really horrified
by this tradition, and I can see why.
Leave it.
I didn't wear a garter.
My sister did get me like a cheap garter,
cheap veil situation for the hen do.
And I enjoyed wearing that
as like a fancy dress costume, but no,
not interested on the wedding day,
or to actually take it seriously, I guess.
And on that note, veil.
Didn't have a veil.
I was not interested in having a veil
until my sister got me the fancy dress veil
for the hen party, and then suddenly I was like,
(gasping) I want a veil.
But, not really.
Just for fancy dress.
A lot of people submitted this one.
Something old, something new,
something borrowed, something blue.
And until I saw those submissions coming in,
I'd completely forgotten about that.
I think my only reference to that,
in terms of a wedding, is from Friends.
I can't remember what bit in Friends,
is it Monica and Chandler doing a thing,
getting the married?
I can't remember.
But yeah, no, had completely forgotten
that tradition even existed.
No idea where it comes from.
No idea what it means.
So no, we didn't do that.
Engagement rings.
We kind of half did this tradition,
and I've spoken about this before,
so I'll be brief.
I engaged to Dan.
I gave him a keyring as an engagement ring,
and then several months later,
Dan proposed back, 'cause I requested it,
and he did give me an engagement ring,
but it was a ring that I already owned,
and I have owned for the last 10 years,
because it was from my granny.
So we didn't buy any new rings.
Getting married in a church or a place of worship.
No, we didn't do this.
We got married
in our local council's registry office.
It was great.
It was actually a really beautiful building.
So not mad about it.
White wedding dress.
Well, I made a whole video about that.
I did not have a white wedding dress,
I had a yellow wedding dress.
But it did have some
like white ivory elements on it,
so still kinda bridal.
Wedding favours.
So this is gifts for your guests.
And until I started seeing this coming
in on Instagram,
I had also forgotten that this was a thing.
Is it more of an American thing?
Because I don't think I've attended a wedding
where I've got a gift afterwards.
So maybe it is more American, who knows?
But no, we did not get our guests any gifts.
They had the pleasure
of attending a wedding in 2020.
A lot of our guests told us it's the most fun,
and the best day that they've had
in the entirety of this year.
So, you're welcome, friends.
White tiered wedding cake,
and cutting it together,
and smushing it in each other's mouths.
All of that stuff.
So no, leave it.
But not because I don't like the tradition,
Dan doesn't like cake.
So instead, me and my mum baked
seven batches of brownies,
over 100 brownies,
and we still did a tiered thing.
The brownies were on like some tiers,
and we had raspberries, and strawberries,
and icing sugar.
There wasn't an official cutting the cake bit.
The brownies were just there,
and people could help themselves.
Wedding bands, and exchanging rings.
Yes, we did this.
We bought the most simple gold wedding bands
that we could find.
And yeah, we did the little exchanging
of the rings at the ceremony.
Wedding flowers.
Yes, I did have wedding flowers.
But this was actually a last minute decision.
I didn't think I wanted a bouquet,
and then I realised that I hate
not knowing what to do with my hands in photos.
So I was like,
if I have something to hold,
then that'll be less of an issue.
And then, when I was looking for somewhere
to get my bouquet from,
I also saw that they did
table flower arrangements,
and got some of them,
just to kind of spruce up the dinner a bit more.
We got dried flowers as well,
so they will last forever.
And I did a whole video
on my lifestyle channel of attempting
to do some crafting,
with the dried flowers from our wedding.
You can watch that to see how that went.
Fancy car to take you
to the ceremony slash reception.
No, we didn't have a fancy car,
we walked everywhere.
Everybody walked.
And I managed to stay in my heels all day,
Save the dates slash written invitations.
No, we did not do this.
And this was very much a conscious decision,
because, couldn't be bothered,
expensive, couldn't be bothered,
couldn't be bothered. (chuckling)
Instead, I made digital invites in Canva,
I used a template, and emailed them,
and texted them,
and Facebook messaged these invites to everyone.
And then, it was all irrelevant anyway,
because we had to change a lot of stuff,
and uninvite lots of people,
because of COVID.
So glad we didn't spend all of that money
on save the dates.
This one came up a lot.
Throwing the bouquet.
No, didn't do this,
but not because I'm not really against
the tradition of the bride throwing the bouquet
to all of the unmarried women,
and seeing who's gonna get married first.
Like that kind of thing,
I just think is kind of funny.
It's lols, it's weird.
Weird, patriarchal history,
like most things to do with weddings,
but I kind of think it's funny.
But the reason why I didn't do it
was because of the dried flowers,
and I didn't want the bouquet to get ruined,
and crushed and crumbled.
If I'd had fresh flowers,
so I knew that they weren't gonna keep,
I would've chucked it.
I would have thrown it.
Not seeing each other the night before.
No, we didn't do this.
We just stayed at home,
slept in the same bed, got ready together.
That's it. (chuckling)
Didn't do that one.
Walked to the venue together.
This was a bit of a fuck the tradition of that,
but also, mostly practical.
We both just wanted to sleep
in our bed that night.
Having bridesmaids and groomsmen,
and them being paired.
So, no, we didn't have bridesmaids.
We didn't have groomsmen.
We kind of like had our people who were like,
if I did have to say anyone,
like my sister was probably my maid of honour,
but that's just because I've got one sister,
and it's easier to pick the one sister,
rather than pick the maid of honour,
or pick bridesmaids out of your friends.
Like, I can't be dealing
with the politics of that.
And yeah, no, not paired.
And then also, because there's that tradition
of the couple getting married
to pay for their bridesmaids
and groomsmen outfits, and no. (laughing)
Wear your own clothes.
So yeah, we didn't have like bridesmaids outfits,
or groomsmen outfits at all.
Sit down meal, plus speeches.
So yes, we had both of these things.
However, pre COVID,
we weren't actually gonna have a sit down meal.
It was just gonna be a big party,
and then there was gonna be food.
But with the restrictions that were in place
when we got married,
it was a 30 people sit down dinner reception.
So we actually ended up doing
a sit down dinner, even though that wasn't
the original plan.
And speeches, yes, there were speeches.
The tradition is,
I don't know what order it is,
but it's like father of the bride,
groom, and best man.
And I think a lot of people, especially my mum,
really wanted me to speak, 'cause they're like,
why's it always the men that speak?
Like, the women should speak.
And I just personally didn't wanna do a speech.
No idea what I would say,
makes me feel really uncomfortable.
Dan is the same.
Neither of us were interested
in doing our own speeches.
But in the end, my mum said a few words,
my dad said a few words,
and Dan's dad said a few words.
And then everyone was just like,
speech speech speech, to me and Dan,
and I just stood up and was like,
thank you all for coming. (laughing)
And Dan stood up and said some nicer words,
but it was very, very brief and unplanned.
Makes me feel uncomfortable.
My mum's speech set on fire
during my dad's speech, which was hilarious.
She was just casually leaning,
and listening to what my dad was saying,
and her piece of paper
that had her speech on it caught fire
on one of the candles.
It was great.
First dance.
Now, no, we didn't do this.
It kind of made us both feel a bit uncomfortable,
the idea of doing it.
I love dancing, Dan hates it.
But if we had done a first dance,
we constantly joked,
like from the beginning of our relationship,
that it would be to the song Sexual, by Naked.
But then, like a couple of weeks
before the wedding,
Dan was very drunk one evening,
and just turned to me and was just like,
(gasping) our first dance should be
Think About Things,
and we'll learn the dance routine
from the music video.
And I was just like, I'm in.
That didn't happen,
but we still like to dance along to it
when we listen to it at home. So that's cute.
Father of the bride publishing engagement
in local newspaper.
No, leave it.
Does anyone still do that?
This one I thought was an interesting tradition
that I hadn't considered as a tradition,
and that is alcohol and drinking.
And I was like, yeah,
actually, we associate weddings
with being quite boozy, and ours was boozy.
And Dan and I also made a point
of we wanted to have an open bar,
we didn't want our guests to pay for drinks.
So yeah, that was a priority for us,
in terms of where we spent our money.
No save the dates, no bridesmaid dresses,
but we will pay for your alcohol.
Yeah, but that's interesting.
That is just where our priorities lay.
One side of the room for bride's guests,
and one side of the room for groom's guests.
No.
I actually can't remember where our family
sat in the room, but because of COVID,
we were only allowed,
I think we had like eight people.
We had our parents and our sisters,
basically, in the room with us,
and everyone's chairs had to be
really, really far apart.
And people would just sat wherever.
The next two are also connected.
Saying I do, I will,
and then also the to honour and obey.
And I think this is really interesting
because we basically discovered
that all of the fluff in movies and in TV shows
they say in their vows,
that's not the legally binding stuff.
Like, you don't have to say any of that.
But then also because of COVID,
we weren't allowed any personalization
to the ceremony.
Which, it was fine,
because we weren't planning on doing
any personalization at all.
But that meant no personal vows,
also meant no readings,
no poems, no music, or anything like that.
It was just like the bare bones.
What you have to say and do
in order to legally be married.
To honour and obey, not in there.
You do not have to say that
to legally be married.
Thank fuck.
And then the I do and I will.
Oh my God, I can't even remember. Did we say that?
It was like, I Hannah, blah, blah, blah,
take Dan, I think.
I've forgotten.
But there's basically two things
that you have to declare.
One, that you are in a position
where you can legally marry that person.
There are no other reasons,
no other things going on
that mean that you can't get married,
and that could be that you're already married,
or that they're your brother or sister,
can't do that.
And then the other one
is that I want to marry you,
I will marry you, I take you,
or whatever the words are.
So those are the only two things
that you actually have to say.
The ceremony was short. (chuckling)
Waiting until marriage.
Well, you know how I feel about that.
Leave it.
Carrying the bride over the threshold.
Yes, we did do this. (laughing)
Mostly because everyone was pressuring us to,
but it was fun.
So I'm glad that they did.
Dan was already in the flat,
Dan got home before me,
and I'm like walking behind him.
And my mum is like, wait, no,
you have to be carried over the threshold.
And so I get to our front door,
and I'm yelling at Dan being like, Dan,
I can't come in,
you have to carry me. (laughing)
And then he came back and carried me over.
And actually, that was fun.
Registering for gifts.
No.
This one annoys me,
because we'd moved into this flat together
two years previously,
and spent so much money furnishing it,
I just wish that we could have
like sent out letters to everyone
who would have been invited to our wedding,
just to say hi, we're not getting married,
we love each other very much,
but we're moving in together,
can you please help
us pay for everything? (laughing)
But no, that's not socially acceptable.
So by the time the wedding came around,
and also, we had already saved money
for the honeymoon, so we could afford it,
even though we then couldn't actually go on it,
'cause it got cancelled, 'cause COVID.
So we were like, what do we need,
what do we want?
Nothing. So in the end, we just asked
for our wedding guests to donate
to a charity that we picked,
because we didn't need anything,
or want anything.
And finally, the tradition
that we've all been waiting for,
sex on the wedding night.
And no, (laughing) didn't happen.
We were both knackered.
So, so tired.
No, (laughing) didn't happen.
Which is fine.
In a recent podcast episode that I did
with Dr. Karen Gurney,
we were talking about desire,
and she was saying how desire
doesn't perform well under pressure,
and things like a wedding night
can be like this huge cultural, societal pressure
of like, oh, you must have sex.
And then it doesn't really work,
because you're not in the mood,
because of all of the pressure that is on you.
So we were just like, sack that, if we're not in the mood,
we're not gonna bother doing it
just because we feel like we should.
Obviously, if you're in the mood for it,
and you wanna, go ham,
have sex on your wedding night,
but don't feel like you have to.
All right, those are a whole bunch
of different wedding traditions,
bringing them, leaving them.
Do let me know in the comments
which ones you're bringing,
which ones you're leaving.
And yeah, maybe you're leaving
the entire notion and tradition
of marriage as a whole.
And that's absolutely fine.
I do find it really interesting
how weddings and marriage
is this massive thing in society,
and yet, we can still personalise it,
and we can still really make it our own.
And I just wanna put it out there,
there is no wrong or right way
to get married,
if that's what you want to do.
Thanks for watching, do like this video,
if you enjoyed it, and I will see you
in my next one, bye!