Weddingbee boards

I don't have any pet peeves, but I totally understand  your point...we are really focusing on making this day about "us."  Whenever I say "my" wedding I feel bad because if he doesn't feel like it's "his" too, then we're starting out on the wrong foot.  But I'm sure the princesses of the world also hope for their husband to be happy too, they just may hope with a tiara on their head : ).

I would definitely be on the side of liberal feminist--fortunately, so is my fiance!

I do enjoy "doing gender" on occasion (especially if it relates to shoes!!) so there are a decent number of things that I enjoy about the wedding planning process.  However, when I went into it, I was really going at it in terms of what I/we like and what would be important for us--rather than filling in the blanks of the traditional wedding ceremony--so I think that has made things much easier than it would have been if I had gone into things feeling as though I HAD to do things a certain way. (Easier for ME at least--for my mother.....not so much!)  

I will also say that the community on WB is also much MUCH friendlier than the folks over at theknot and much more open to doing things differently, so I feel much less out of place here than I did over there with people always posting about how you just CAN'T do this, and SHAN'T do that and how everything that was a little bit out of the norm was "tacky" for some totally arbitrary or unarticulated reason.

@LittlestBirds--I am doing the absolute same w/ my FI taking my name as his middle and me taking his so that we will all have the same "family name" without the (future) kids having to go through the whole hyphenation thing.

@ Monitajb - Love the birdcage veils.  I don't even think of it as a "veil" or serving any particular purpose except to produce awesomeness.

@MissHelen - I love the "With our blessing, she gives herself"  That is very nice, and I think impactful without being over the top.  My mother will be officiating and my uncle will be walking me down the aisle, so we will probably just skip that part, but if we had it, I would totally steal your line!

I forgot to add--about the name thing--that when I told my friends that my FI would be taking my name, they LAUGHED!  And these are definitely women (all with advanced degrees, mind you!) that I would not have thought would respond that way.  So it's really surprising how much people expect you to conform & how much they don't really care about voicing opinions about something being wrong b/c its "different" (even if they can't articulate a good reason as to WHY its wrong).

There's a bunch of traditional things that we're not doing. I'm not taking fiance's last name, though this one is less about my feminism and more about the fact that in the culture where I'm from, no one ever changes their last name upon marriage (Edited to add -- However, I think that even if I had been raised in the US culture of women taking their husband's last name, I wouldn't do it because frankly, I just love my name the way it is. I have a perfectly fine name already, I don't need a new one!). Fiance didn't ask my parents for permission to marry me, and I'm glad he didn't. Both my parents are walking me down the aisle but I am not being "given away". The officiant will ask both sets of parents for their blessing of our union, not in a religious sense (our wedding is entirely non-religious) but more in a support kind of way. At first I wasn't sure if I'd wear a veil, but then I saw one in a bridal store that I liked so I bought it. It's teeny tiny, coming down to probably just below my shoulders, and it most certainly does not cover my face. We also won't be introduced as Mr & Mrs. And there will be no throwing of the bouquet/garter, eek. I'm not even going to wear a garter!

I changed my name to signify a challenge and because the SO was insistent. So he gets to follow me around and fill out all my paperwork!

I really enjoy the drop veil but just for looks

My SO asked my dad for his blessing with my blessing because dad is old school.

But the words "she comes of her own accord with the blessings of her mother and me" will be said at the wedding. :)

lol. That was suppose to be change.

But a Freudian slip I guess. All my friends are liberal feminist. Taking his name was taken as "what are you doing?" so I did it. To compromise with my SO and to show some that I don't lose my identity with changing my name. I am still a liberal. Still a feminist. I hate that he doesn't have to change his name. So he can do all the dirty work. :)

@jduck84 -- Oh, I remember that. Some people were acting as if she's not really a feminist if she's getting married, and others were saying her husband is an emasculated p***y for marrying a "man-hating feminazi", ugh.

@eloping - I told you he was a liberal feminist!  

I really, really love my name & it's really cute (I've actually had someone that worked in the financial aid department at my school that they were looking forward to meeting me b/c my name!) so in changing it, two things were really important to me: 1) That it not just be me changing my name, like I was becoming part of him, but us putting our names TOGETHER to show us becoming one new family, and 2) Everyone in our family having the same last name (I had a different last name from all the rest of my family & I really hated it).  So I thought this was a good way to do all of the above.

In terms of "liberal feminism" I consider myself a true LIBERAL feminist b/c I don't believe in reifying gender identities or believing that there is any real way to be a "woman."  A woman in a long white dress, cathedral length veil, with parents giving her away can be equally a feminist as the woman who gets married in vegas in cowboy boots--as long as she is doing what SHE wants to do and not feeling as though she is conforming to others' expectations of how she needs to "do" her gender (either through conformance or non-conformance).  

I also have a problem with traditional feminism b/c it tends to be quite exclusionary of different racial/ethnic/religious experiences of women and how "freedom" for some women can actually be a symbol of long-term oppression for another (with regards to work for instance)....but that's a MUCH different post!!!