Here come 'the weddings'
Saturday marked a new milestone in my young life as I attended the first of ‘the weddings’. By this I mean I went to my first wedding for someone who is the same age as me. Being 21, I guess this was kind of inevitable (as unlike when you become 18, and you still are sort of an adult; you don’t really know what to do with the power) as now you really do enter the domain of adulthood in a meaningful way.
After all, they say that you go through stages of events on the way through adulthood. Basically, it starts with people turning 18, then there’s the 21sts, then weddings, then christenings (although I know this can work the other way round as I have seen someone do recently) and then last, but in no way least, comes the funerals.
This is not the first I have heard of ‘the weddings’ of people my age, as I know one or two people who have been to the weddings of people I went to school with. However, this was my first personal foray. I suppose it was made all the stranger as it was for a family friend, who I have known from infancy, but apart from the realisation that everyone my age is now dashing off into the magical rainbow land of adulthood - and the much maligned ‘real world’- it was very similar to most other weddings I’ve been to. There was a copious amount of drink, speeches here there and everywhere, drunken relatives wobbling about on the dance floor - and as it was in Gloucestershire, old locals singing stuff in an incomprehensible accent; also there was cider; nice cider at that.
The weirdest aspect of the day was being introduced, by a similarly aged friend, to their “husband.” Sure, we are used to seeing committed relationships, where people act as if they were married, but for some reason marriage seems like such a huge step. I don’t see why this needs to be the case as married life could be almost entirely the same as life in a live-in relationship, but maybe it’s the legal clout behind it that makes it seems so much more, well, adult.
I suppose one massive difference to a normal relationship is the fact you get rings. Sadly though, they aren’t magic rings, unless you like to refer to the commitment they represent metaphorically as magic. But no, the magic doesn’t grant wishes or control people’s minds; needless to say it’s not the ONE RING to rule them all, well yet anyway…
Now the question remains as to who’s going to be next. I know a few people who could feasibly propose to each other within the next few years, so it could become an interesting guessing game. All I know is there’s probably going to be more on the horizon, which if Saturday was anything to go by, isn’t a bad thing.
After all, they say that you go through stages of events on the way through adulthood. Basically, it starts with people turning 18, then there’s the 21sts, then weddings, then christenings (although I know this can work the other way round as I have seen someone do recently) and then last, but in no way least, comes the funerals.
This is not the first I have heard of ‘the weddings’ of people my age, as I know one or two people who have been to the weddings of people I went to school with. However, this was my first personal foray. I suppose it was made all the stranger as it was for a family friend, who I have known from infancy, but apart from the realisation that everyone my age is now dashing off into the magical rainbow land of adulthood - and the much maligned ‘real world’- it was very similar to most other weddings I’ve been to. There was a copious amount of drink, speeches here there and everywhere, drunken relatives wobbling about on the dance floor - and as it was in Gloucestershire, old locals singing stuff in an incomprehensible accent; also there was cider; nice cider at that.
The weirdest aspect of the day was being introduced, by a similarly aged friend, to their “husband.” Sure, we are used to seeing committed relationships, where people act as if they were married, but for some reason marriage seems like such a huge step. I don’t see why this needs to be the case as married life could be almost entirely the same as life in a live-in relationship, but maybe it’s the legal clout behind it that makes it seems so much more, well, adult.
I suppose one massive difference to a normal relationship is the fact you get rings. Sadly though, they aren’t magic rings, unless you like to refer to the commitment they represent metaphorically as magic. But no, the magic doesn’t grant wishes or control people’s minds; needless to say it’s not the ONE RING to rule them all, well yet anyway…
Now the question remains as to who’s going to be next. I know a few people who could feasibly propose to each other within the next few years, so it could become an interesting guessing game. All I know is there’s probably going to be more on the horizon, which if Saturday was anything to go by, isn’t a bad thing.
Comments