Who couldn’t help but notice the royal nuptials of William and Catherine this past weekend? It was a grand event that perhaps helped us forget about our own lives, if only for a few hours. It let some of us live vicariously as we watched the fairytale unfold around a story of love and hope, perhaps shedding a tear or two (buckets).
People get married every day (or not). Isn’t every bride walking down that aisle, living her own fairytale of sorts? She has kissed her frog, made him a prince and dressed him up for the altar. For better, for worse, till death do they part (but usually not or not before they kill each other!).
What is it about weddings that makes us all soggy-eyed and emotional? Is it the splendor, the hope, the chance to live the dream that we are primed for as little girls? And why don’t men grow up dreaming of getting married? Are we, as women, products of a socialization belonging to the culture of western womanhood? Or did the patriarchy invent marriage as a way to keep women busy prepping for life in the frog pond, hopping from one lily pad to the next in search of the elusive frog prince?
I think that we ultimately look to weddings as a source of inspiration, hopeful that those little tadpoles resulting from it are coming into a better place.