This is part of Say Yes to the Mess, a pop-up Slate series on the unsettled state of the American wedding in 2023.
A few years back, before my now-fiancé and I got engaged, I told him that I didn’t want an engagement ring. It had been something I had lightly joked about for years, but as we got closer and closer to that conversation being more of a real thing, I knew I would need to be clear about it. I told him that I was serious about not wanting a ring—and he joked back that if I really felt that way, I should be the one to propose to him.
There were practical reasons why I didn’t want one. I just don’t wear jewelry, almost ever, and certainly not daily. But there were also abstract reasons. The idea of engagement rings is the opposite of what I want my marriage to be. No less than the American Gem Society notes that “anthropologists believe this tradition originated from a Roman custom in which wives wore rings attached to small keys, indicating their husbands’ ownership.” Sure, the tradition has since “evolved,” as the wedding publications tend to put it—really, it has been rebranded—but the upshot still strikes me as sad. Waiting for “the ring” was just not something I felt like I could personally do.
So I have no ring. And I did propose to my partner. I will admit, I was excited—perhaps even slightly more thrilled by my subtle subversion of norms than I was about the prospect of being engaged. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a wedding girl: I have never dreamed about what my dress would look like, I did not have my heart set on a location, etc. And so when I first started telling people about my engagement, I was primed to accompany it with a tiny side of resistance, explaining how I had opted to take a different path.
A year and a half later, let me tell you, I am so tired of hearing myself tell this story I could cry. I still don’t particularly want an engagement ring, I just cannot tolerate another glance toward my hand from an acquaintance if I mention my fiancé or my wedding. (For this reason, I am often still calling him my “partner,” which is annoying, and even weirder when it later comes out that we are engaged but I am not calling him my fiancé.) I also cannot tolerate the subtle pulling back of the left hand of the woman I end up casually insulting while explaining that engagement rings are an unnecessary sign of the patriarchy that we must overthrow.
Listen, I get it—as one half of a straight couple, I’m really going for it complaining about the trials and tribulations of “bucking tradition.” Furthermore, I understand that conversations about weddings and marriage, particularly earnest ones, fall into one of the worst categories of small-talk topics that exist. Much like having children, it is a situation that When It Is Happening to You, feels absolutely like the most monumental and earth-shattering thing in the universe, when in reality it is incredibly common, to the point of being very mundane. Even further still, I’m someone who truly believes that if we are to change the terrible heritage of this or any other institution, it does sometimes have to start with a personal decision (a woman not only keeping her own name but giving that name to her children, for an example).
So I see the clear problems with what I am about to say. But fine, I will admit it: After a year and a half of dealing with it, I have come around to the hard-earned conclusion that if you are going to buck the trend on anything wedding-related, make sure you care enough to talk about it for the rest of your life—or at the very least, for the length of your engagement. Because you will have to talk about it again, and again, and again, and even if it is personal, it will sound like judgment or soapboxing or just pretension. It will make an already exhausting process that much more exhausting.
And that brings me to another point. Before I met my partner—ugh, fine, OK, my fiancé—I was pretty convinced that I would lobby for some kind of elopement situation. The idea of being the center of attention freaked me out. A marriage is about a singular relationship, and also merely a change in status to that singular relationship. But the many weddings that I’ve attended as a guest remind me why my fiancé always wanted to have a more traditional one: They’re about creating and celebrating the community that exists around the couple. And really, is there anything better than one side of cousins hanging out with your other side of cousins? Collecting our list of friends and thinking about so-and-so meeting so-and-so has been just purely joyous.
So, yes, I have another thing to admit: I am enjoying planning my wedding. Doing a bachelorette (probably?); figuring out how to throw a massive, complicated party with the person I am hoping to spend the rest of my life with; having a bridal shower (fine, Mom); reconnecting with friends and loved ones; and celebrating my family as I create a new familial unit? Honestly—it’s mostly been a blast. (Mostly. I refuse to dictate as much as a color palette for my “bridal party,” much to my sister’s chagrin.) The wedding-industrial complex is surely, in so many ways, out of control and absurd and pricey and unnecessary. But in so many other ways, I have learned that even for a hater like me, planning a wedding, and even giving in to some of the traditional things, doesn’t have to be so bad.
One of the reasons why getting married has gained such an air of exhaustion, for both the couple and the expected participants, is the sprawl. No longer is a single wedding day sufficient—we tag on engagement parties, and bridal showers, and bachelor/bachelorette parties, and then weekends in which there are multiple events to celebrate the couple. If you feel a little bit weird about making your life choice the center of 100+ people’s lives for one weekend, obviously extending that to multiple weekends feels weird too. The money! The time!
On the other hand, I think there is a case to be made that even despite the wedding-industrial complex of it all, the heart of the events are actually relationships. And while sure, you can go overboard on the Pinterest plans, the goal of many of these events is to spend time together. It is a little inherently lame, never mind absurd, to celebrate your “last single weekend.” But it is actually really nice to gather a group of friends who have been meaningful parts of your life at various times to let them get to know one another and celebrate you. As a friend of mine who recently had a very low-key bachelorette in New York recently found, it was a great excuse to invite a childhood friend into the city to spend time with her grown-up friends. Far from being the last time she’ll do that, it felt like the start of something new. If you take away the sashes and the penis pasta (which you certainly can do, but you can also just have those funny things!), it’s more about spending time together than anything else. As noted, I just relented to my mom throwing a bridal shower for me (family only!), and you know what? It will be lovely to spend an afternoon with my aunts, letting them give me kitchenware and probably recipes. I like to cook!
In a similar vein, one of the things I was most worried about going into all of this is captured well by the engagement ring story: how to live my values and still create something that was generally legible as a wedding. Honestly, I have been surprised at how watered-down a lot of the other choices felt. Do I think wearing white is silly, given its allusion to virginity? Certainly. Am I wearing white? I am, but it is going to involve pants. I don’t want my dad to be the only one to walk me down the aisle, but I think that’s actually very solvable by just adding in my mom? I have been grown and raised and living on my own for a decade and a half, but they’re my parents, and I have come around to it feeling nice. I am having a wedding party (very casually!), but no coordinated taffeta dresses. Because again, it’s not the stuff that makes the wedding. It’s the relationship that matters.
Despite the sprawl, despite the fact that there is so much you could spend money on, despite the markups, and despite the pressure, I have found that I am looking forward to my wedding in a way I didn’t think possible. Because it is not about the party that you are putting on, it is about the people who are going to be at your party. The traditions may have started in a world in which marriage was a much different endeavor, and then gotten spun up in a horrific mix of showboating and the things we do for Instagram. But the heart of so many of these ideas is really about spending time with people who love you and loving them back, and I can’t think of anything that I’d rather spend my free time—and even money—on than that.
Also—we’re getting wedding rings.
