Weddings are a problematic and endlessly fascinating subject to me. In theory, they're a celebration of two people's love for each other and what's more beautiful than that? In practice though, they can be difficult, to say the least. So much in our culture is already about narcissism, the amplification and celebration of the self, and weddings seem to have become one more venue in which to worship the towering edifice of the ego. Wedding fashions is often the place where the bride and grooms' ideas about themselves and their guests are made apparent: will the bride subject the bridesmaids to hideous dresses? What ridiculous theme will the wedding have? Well, throw queer identity into a pretty heteronormative mix and you've got an even more sticky situation.
[JUMP]
My friend, we'll call her Jen, was invited to her friends Keith and Kelly's wedding this summer. Jen was originally good friends with Keith, but had always gotten along well with Kelly. Jen is a butch lesbian and her gender presentation tends towards the masculine. Keith and Kelly asked her to be a bridesmaid and wear a very specific kind of dress in the wedding party. Jen responded that she would be honored to be in the wedding party as a bridesmaid but that she didn't feel totally comfortable wearing a dress. The following is an excerpt from an e-mail Keith sent Jen in response to her request to wear the same thing as Keith's groomsmen in the wedding party:
"I know you probably think this is us just wanting it to be easy, as the not-giving-us-much-credit seems to be an overriding theme here. Believe it or not, we've given considerable thought to your role and the ceremonial sensitivities surrounding it. We were in no way attempting to shovel a gender definition down your throat by asking you to wear a dress. We were asking you to think about us rather than yourself in this circumstance, as the couple is generally the focus of such ceremonies. After Kelly got her dress a while back and began seriously thinking about what the bridesmaids would be wearing a couple months ago--this was after I'd already chosen the basics of my groomsmen's outfits--she realized that our earlier idea, brainstormed during our initial naivety, wasn't going to work out with the gown's aesthetic. The fabrics idea from before as well as any modern-style outfits just wouldn't cut the mustard with the gown's bucolic, 19th Century look. During this time, Kelly and several of the bridesmaids were throwing around ideas for dresses. At one point, it seemed to me like the dresses weren't taking into account your situation, and we had a big argument while we were outlet shopping for socks. We discussed it at length several other times and were trying to figure something out. Neither of us felt that you wearing the groomsmen's outfit would work out; so I decided to go out on a limb, maybe test the tensile strength of our relationship, and ask you to wear a dress."
Several e-mails were exchanged and the whole thing culminated with Keith and Kelly asking Jen to withdraw from the wedding party because of her discomfort with the idea of wearing a dress. Then Jen finally decided that she wouln't attend the wedding at all. It's one thing to have a preference for the aesthetic of your wedding and try to organize it around a cohesive theme, but to basically force a friend to make their gender identity conform to the theme of your weddings just crosses the line. The funny part is that while Keith insists that Jen wearing a dress is an issue of the wedding having an overall nineteenth century look, Keith's bridesmen on the other side of the aisle are slated to wear grey skinny jeans and Vans because obviously a half-nineteenth century/half-hipster theme is so harmonious and pleasing to the eyes. What's worse is that in Keith's e-mail there's a subtle implication that Jen is being selfish by not wearing a dress, that she's not thinking enough about the bride and groom's feelings and the tone they want to set for the party. I say that if they really wanted to compromise, there would have been a perfect nineteenth century get-up for Jen to wear: a foppish dandy costume.
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