catapult magazine

Weddings and funerals.

I’ve been to a couple of each lately, and I can’t help looking back and thinking of how much personality they lacked. It seems like there are so many more things to celebrate, mourn, or just express than are found in our 21st century American renditions of them. At a good friend’s funeral recently, I couldn’t help but get the same feeling as I get from going to compulsory church when I’m visiting my parents: if we all get together and follow certain forms and sing X amount of songs and hear X minutes of sermonizing, we will have done our duty to the deceased; we can all go home and try to stay afloat in our own personal shitholes of grief. I’ve heard that in Jewish culture the friends and family spend a WEEK together remembering the dead loved one. Why don’t we do that? Why do we try to move on to comforting each other before we’ve had a chance to cry?

At James’ funeral I felt that everything was so sanitized that I could not cry. By far the most therapeutic times for me were those spent before and after the funeral crying in the arms of others who loved him. Not knowing how to feel. Doing random things that reminded us of him.

Then there are weddings.

Most of the weddings I’ve been to have been extremely drab. The way I see it, a wedding is two people saying, “Hey, larger society, we are going to be exclusively committed to each other and we think you should know. So come celebrate with us.” (Yeah, that’s right. That’s how they say it.) So why do most of them seem more like a Christmas pageant fundraiser with refreshments? Like a funeral, a wedding is always confined to a day (an afternoon!) in our culture. There’s usually a lame program with an emcee and people holding scripts for their “little skit about married life.” Everything is so formulaic. I, for one, have no clue why the bride always comes in last or why they always stand in that formation up on the podium, etc. I refuse to believe that little girls (or boys, I guess) who dream of their weddings dream of litanies and ham buns with baby carrots and ranch dip.

I think that we would be doing ourselves a favor by making both ceremonies more like a big fat party.

So what am I missing, all of you married folks?

Sorry this turned out to be so long.

I agree that weddings for one should be a big party too. It’s too bad it can’t always be like that. The one thing that I’d like to remind you of is that a wedding involves a lot of people and doing whatever you want is not always the best way to do things. There are always the feelings of the different families and friends to consider. It often turns out to be a mixture of what you want, what your parents/relatives/friends want, and a little tradition. Although I think most traditions in weddings are silly (we happily broke the rules whenever we wanted to) but if it’s important enough to someone we love, I think it’s ok to let them have it as long as it’s reasonable and inoffensive.

I like your post. Good topic. Not sure what I think about the funerals, I definitely know what you mean, though. A lot of times, with Christians, I feel like a funeral should be a celebration – usually that’s more the case if it’s not a surprise – after a battle with disease. When it’s harder is when it’s a surprise – you’re still trying to make sense of it all and I don’t think you even fully understand what’s happened for several months. Sometimes, I’ll find myself crying months later.

As far as weddings – I think there should be a big party -BUT I think you missed the biggest part of the wedding – that the husband and wife are taking vows before God, not just letting their friends know they are gonna live together til they die.

Marriage is a holy thing (set apart) because it mirrors the relationship of Christ and the Church. That is huge. I think there is alot that is spiritual and sacred about marriage that as Christians we get alot more than the world around us having a big party.

So the ceremony – traditions differ in each culture. I guess it has to do with how each person treats tradition. I personally think all the symbolism is cool – just had some scottish friends step over the sword in their ceremony, and think it’s cool every time I see a jewish couple break the glass.

I used to agree with Adam when it came to funerals. I remember when a friend from highschool died. She was so unique, vibrant, and alive… and I felt that the funeral lacked any reminder of her personality. It made me angry.

Then I lost the most important person in my world. And I didn’t want to think about a funeral. I didn’t want to hear the word ‘funeral’, I didn’t want to attend a funeral. I did not want to believe he was gone. And when your whole head is spinning and you can’t even think about the next minute, let alone the next day, you can’t plan a party and you don’t want to. Death is an awful terrible separation. Yes, as Christians we believe in the hope of seeing that person again, but in the meantime death is a taste of hell—and it is so fresh in those moments surrounding a funeral.

So you do what you can. You try to dress them in clothes that had significance to them. You bring pictures, you write a note on the casket, you hear songs that remind you of them. All of these things are done with tremendous heartache by a family that wishes that none of them had to be done.

So I think it is good for friends to gather outside the funeral, and for memorial services to be held at schools (as James’ will be in September). But I believe that often pain is too fresh for the family (at least when it is unexpected or a young life) for the funeral to be anything more than it is—awful and unreal. But that’s just my experience and opinion

You make a good point, Lo, that people aren’t exactly in a state of mind to plan out some immaculate, idyllic funeral. You can’t consult everyone (or anyone, for that matter) to see what they’d prefer to see there. You throw up your best, weakened, efforts. Understand that here I’m not trying to fault the people who are setting them up, I’m saying that as a culture we don’t know how to have the right kind of funerals.

Awful and unreal are the words you used to describe it, and I couldn’t agree more. I think it should be awful and unreal. And I think what we’re doing with funerals is preventing us from experiencing that awfulness and unreal-ness (um . . ) of what death really is—a taste of hell. The very setup of a “funeral service” makes crying seem out of place. We all sit, passively, while a preacher or singers tell us how to feel. I don’t think the family should be put under such pressure to “put together a funeral service.” I’d love to see something more organic. I think it would be great if people who loved the person would congregate in an area, maybe a town, maybe a church, for at least a day or two, giving the family space when they need it, care when they need it, and support for one another as well. And whatever ways people find to remind them of the person, let them do so spontaneously, or at least let a service be planned as PART of the reunion and not the entirety of it.

My main beef with funerals is the way they quantify the grief into two hours, four if you count the reviewal. As if the community should only come together for two hours collectively to remember an entire life!

Dave—I’m all about the weird traditions, but I disagree that taking vows before God is at the center of the wedding. I don’t think God needs you to say it in front of people to please him. Just like I don’t think Profession of Faith should be like some sort of promise to God. You say it in front of people for their benefit and for your own. I suppose that would all fall under the umbrella of obedience to God, if you want to look at it that way. Just like the other sacraments are a sign to us, marriage is for us. I think the idea that we have to fulfill God’s requirements by saying stuff aloud is where Roman Catholicism goes wrong. And whoever said a party isn’t spiritual and sacred?

Hot DOG! I’m a sophomore member now! No more getting beaten up and stuffed into lockers!

ok-i have to admit that i am in the process of planning a wedding for next summer. it is really tempting to get sucked into the hoopla of the thing. it also takes time and committment from both the bride AND the groom to make it more than a cookie-cutter wedding. i have been to several wedding this summer and a few more coming up, and all i can say is blahhh. if that is a wedding, then count me out. i am ready to elope right now. for those of you who complain about the traditional wedding as we have come to know, how do you suggest we get out of the rut?

nada – this may not be entirely relevant to the conversation, but here are a few suggestions as to how to make your wedding different than the average Sheboogie wedding, working within the traditional wedding set-up. Just some tips based on my own wedding experiences in Sheboygan (both as a guest and a bride). There are others here who’d probably be able to tell you how to REALLY shake things up. I’m more traditional.

1. Good invitations. Nothing with a theme. Nothing cutesy. Simple and elegant. The invitation is every guest’s first impression of your wedding. If I get a tacky invite in the mail, I’m already imagining how bad the food’s going to be.
2. Quality, not quantity – in every area, from number of guests to the length of your reception.
3. Eliminate Canon in D and Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring from your ceremony play list. Research your music and avoid those wedding CDs and books.
4. Skip the unity candle.
5. Skip the “giving flowers to the parents” bit, if they still do that in Sheboygan (they used to).
6. Don’t invite as many people as possible to your reception, then cram them in Laack’s Hall (or other such no-atmosphere venue) and make them eat off paper plates, with plastic cutlery on paper tablecloths. That’s typical Sheboygan. Invite fewer people and spend the same amount of money at a nicer place.
7. Invite your close friends and family to join you and your new spouse for a next-day brunch. You will have more time to say good-bye and “thank you for coming” to those who traveled to see you.
8. Table numbers – my husband and I went around Wisconsin to kitschy tourists spots and took pictures of eachother in front of various sights while holding numbers up. We then stuck them in frames and used them as our table numbers. Our guests LOVED them and stole most of them as souvenirs of our wedding. We had a blast doing it, too. I rarely see that done in your area.
9. Write your own vows.
10. Get married by someone who knows you (we imported our pastor from Madison when we got married in Cedar Grove), so whatever they say will be more meaningful for everyone involved.
11. Skip the rent-a-tux and have the guys dress in black (or gray) suits – not necessarily matching in cut and style, just color. They can use the suits later for jobs, job interviews, funerals, etc. They’ll hate spending the money, though, if they don’t have them already. Coordinate them by buying them matching dress shirts in a color that goes with everything else, along with matching neckties.

Alright, this domestic nerd will stop there.

Adam
As far as a party not being spiritual or sacred. . .don’t you go to Dordt?. . .

In regard to the sacraments, I think you got it right, they are for us – but they are done before God. Still think you can’t underestimate the importance of that.

As far as the length of time that funerals and weddings go on for, I think you are trying to formalize what in alot of cases already exists. With funerals the close friends do mourn for several days and sometimes weeks, they spend time together, call each other regularly to console, call each other when they remember a funny story involving the lost friend or family member. With weddings, usually the wedding party is together for several days prior to the wedding (sometimes from out of town) getting things ready (which I always think can be alot of fun with the anticipation) and then there are other activities of bachelor and bachelorette parties, rehearsal dinners, the ceremony itself, the reception, and mrsanniep’s great idea of the “afterglow” brunch with the closest friends and family.

If you want to formalize these things, doesn’t it become the formula-driven pattern that none of us like?

Hey, all. I’m back! What’d I miss?

In this time that I’ve been away, I’ve gotten married. We were extremely pleased with how the day went. In our planning we’d be trying to avoid the corporate wedding business “cookie-cutter” model as much as possible and I think it went extremely well!

We did a lot of it ourselves, to try and make it our own instead of choosing it from a catalog (eg. invitations, programs, website for rsvps…) and then had a huge amount of help from our community because we decided to prepare the foods instead of hiring a caterer (which was a little stressful at times—but not for at least two days before the wedding, when the community took over preparations). we went with salads and cold foods. we did hire someone from janel’s school and some of her students to serve on the day of. that went off really well. i got my suit at a thrift shop ($30) and had the groomsmen wearing pants with a shirt and a tie. Friends went to a local flower farm and picked all the flowers and arranged them for us. A friend did our photography. A friend coordinated things. A bunch of friends did the music for the ceremony (violins, cellos, piano, singing, guitar, bongos). Friends read our scripture passages (we used both passages that our parents had used at their weddings). Our mothers did the unity candles with us. our fathers (and the minister and another friend) served communion. at the end of the ceremony, all our family members came up and laid hands on us as we prayed—janel’s grandfather said the prayer.

So many friends helped out—which made the day more special because every little detail had love invested in it. it was great!

We had a pretty simple wedding. It seemed to me at the time, and it still does, that the more money you spend on a wedding, the more ditance gets created between the bride and groom and the guests and even between the marrying couple themselves.

Best advice I can give — have a hand-made pinyata at the reception.

I agree with much of what mrsanniep says, athough I might add that it isn’t that Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring or the unity candle are bad, just that they become empty when there is no thought behind them (for example, blowing out the family candles once the unity candle is lit — what is that all about?) We didn’t have either of those things at our wedding, but if they are things which hold significant meaning — I’d say go for it.

We didn’t have a center aisle either. And I wore a suit rather than a tuxedo. Yet we’re still married fifteen years later. Amazing.