I recently read Charlie Becker’s essay Love Letter to Weddings, which inspired this essay. The essay captures similar feelings I have about why I love attending weddings. While I did not fund my own wedding (I was a college kid when I got married), the choices a bride and groom make together reflect their taste and personality. The essay made me remember that joy can be expressed and manifest differently, depending on cultural context.
Society thinks that love culminates in an event, a spectacular wedding day with cloud machines, fireworks, and a white horse. There’s an image that dominates based on how often we see the image — a woman in a white dress, a man in a tux. Or in the South Asian context, a bride in a red bejeweled sari, next to a man in a sherwani and a turban. Whatever image we have is primed by our social context.
Sometimes the image fails to convey the full context.
Here’s a photo of the bride, Sanaa, August 2023
It’s been an honor and a blessing to be able to be part of…
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