Mom.. Calm down, I’m not getting married…
Yet..
Yesterday I was reading me some Single Thought as I am prone to do on a Thursday. This article is written in part by Erin Ann McBride you might know her from other great postings as the Blog War of 2005 (otherwise known as the “most comments I’ve ever gotten on a blog entry”). Looking at her blog she even referenced me me in a blog post! Reading the blog and the Single Thought column together helps fill in the gaps if you want to know where some of the articles come from.
Where was I?
Oh yes. I was reading the Single Thought article for this week and those two mentioned the following
But something funny happens on the way to the altar in our culture. We don’t start dating until we are 16, and don’t seriously date until we are 18, and yet thousands among our ranks will be married by the time they are 19 years old. The same girls that are incapable of picking a major are somehow capable of knowing that they have met the perfect man with whom to spend the rest of their lives, buy the groceries with, pay the bills with, argue over landscaping with, and plain pick out house with.
Ohh, that’s something I’ve been saying for a LONG TIME now. Alas, I’ve been told “Sometimes you just know.” Alas, I don’t believe this one BIT! I think in our culture, we get twitterpated, and decide, based on those feelings of twitterpation, that this person is the person whom you are destined to spend eternity with. From about 70% of the couples I’ve seen they are in such a rush to go from courtship to marriage that they don’t even try to learn who the person they are with is.
Later on they talk about Single Men at weddings.
The next funny thing that our beloved Diva noticed was the lack of single men in the room.
….
Outside LDS culture, it is well known that a wedding is a great place to meet other singles. Oddly enough, it is quite possible to attend an LDS reception and be the only singleton in the room. We thought about this anomaly and think we have figured it out. Outside of the LDS world, you expect to find all of the single friends of the bride and groom at the reception, but inside the LDS world (particularly outside of Utah) you don’t expect to see their friends at all. The friends generally live scattered all over the country, and choose not to attend the weddings of their friends. And after all, who would fly across the country to attend a boring LDS wedding?
My awnser to this is two fold.
1) I *abhore* going to weddings. Is it because I don’t like the groom? No. Is it because I don’t like the bride? No.
It’s because there is so much pressure as a Single Mormon Male to be married. Weddings then serve a three fold purpose.
a) you are reminded you don’t have a wife
b) you are quizzed as to why you aren’t dating all these girls
c) the married couple are busy trying to get you married to their friends.
I’ve got much more enjoyable things I’d rather do. Such as gazing at my navel and watching paint dry. Perhaps even getting my foot stuck in a bear trap.
2) The LDS weddings are boring because the culture (especially in Utah) is one of being cheap and chintzy. The entire Cheap mindset goes beyond the weddings, but it’s noticable in the weddings. My little brother Brian’s wedding (photos) was a pull out all the stops event. There was a limo, there was a DJ dance floor, there was a catered dinner.
There is such a difference between the “Lets go get some SAMS Club meatballs. Make a line, and collect as much schwag as we can” mentality and the “Lets have a DJ, rent out a building, have a big celibration and honor the married couple” mentality. This also leads into the entire subject that I get *far* more wedding invites from my “I barely know you” mormon friends than my non-member friends. It just seems that Mormon Wedding parties are so much geared for getting as much stuff as possible, with as little possible provided to the guests. I’ll rant about this at some other time.
Needless to say, I’m going to be much more inclined to attend a event where it feels like a celebration. I think it’s human nature to react with the same enthusiasm that others are.
In other news, the whiny hard drive is getting replaced this weekend. I found a Hard Drive at Circuit City that will do nicely. Whiny drive, your days are numbered.
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