I attended a wedding this weekend that was low-cost, simple, and do-it-yourself.  In our contemporary wedding culture of extravegance piled onto extravagence, this is often looked down upon and scorned by people wanting to be treated like royalty for a day.

I stubbornly and unceasingly have questioned this "high-brow" mentality, and the response I hear most often is that a wedding is supposed to be a transaction of sorts, a high-stakes barter where expensive gifts are exchanged for the cost of an expensive catered meal, mediocre wedding cake, and chocolate fondue fountain.  The cost of the wedding per person is supposed to be reflected in the market value of the gift, which must always come from the registry.

This mentality robs a wedding of its theme and purpose: a complex metaphor of community.  When two become one, that is community.  When people gather together in a church to commemorate an event through liturgy, that is community.  When people gather at a common table with common food (and a common cake), that is community.  When gifts are given to a new home, that is community.

Gifting is the most distorted of all aspects in the modern wedding ceremony.  Wedding gifts are supposed to establish a home, but as the home has disintegrated the gifts have begun to reflect the inbalance of home living.  Cooking and housekeeping items are decreasing from registries as TVs, DVD players, stereos, camcorders, computers, vacations, cars and other gadgets are beginning to creep onto them. These things have no real value in setting up a home to be a community centered around the keeping of a house and providing ways to give back to the community through hospitality and stewardship.

The new arbiter of weddings is the bridezilla---the ferocious, bratty, and stubborn bride who forces her hand upon every detail of a ceremony.  But I think the community and culture at large has bred these beastly brides with their demanding expectations for a wedding to be a lavish event.  Weddings aren't lavish events, they are celebrations of community. 

Not much has changed since Christ had to "save" a wedding by creating wine.  The community expected the hosts to provide instead of seeing a need in the community and then filling it.  Two thousand years later, it is about time for us to begin to see weddings, as well as other community events, as a way to pitch in and meet needs instead of being lazy and demanding that lavishness come to us.