Are Women Rushing Into Marriage?

From the time I was a very little girl, I liked to dress up as a bride. Wearing doilies on my head and a white shawl around my shoulders, I remember proudly prancing up and down the hallways of our apartment building. "Well, what are you supposed to be?" An older woman, my mom's friend in a nearby apartment, asked me one night.

With a huge grin, I answered - though why she couldn't already tell, I'll never know: "I'm a bride."

"Where's the groom?" She asked.

"Groom? What's a groom?"

"That's who you're marrying! You can't be a bride unless you have a groom."

And that, my single friends, is just about the crux of it. You can't be a bride unless you have a groom. Little girls spend a ridiculous amount of time planning their weddings. The dresses, the flowers, the colors, most women have their weddings planned to the smallest detail before they have their very first boyfriend. So why didn't anybody think to mention this "groom" business to me sooner?

There's something special about a woman's wedding day. All eyes are upon her, everyone full of admiring glances. There's a whole huge ceremony and a big party. And everyone knows, without exception, that it's all about the bride. The groom and his men just stand there, dressed in whatever the bride has told them to be dressed in, and no one pays much attention to the groom, anyway. It's all about the bride. Only…you can't be a bride unless you have a groom.

Unfortunately. And I'm not so sure that marriage is a great idea, for everyone. Sometimes, it might be better just to stay single, keep things natural. After all, what is marriage but a piece of paper anyway? No, I'm not sure I like the idea of marriage itself. But getting married, that's a whole new story. What I want isn't a marriage…it's a wedding.

And we sort of get tricked into it, don't we? We know all about the wedding, the wedding, the wedding. I was marrying Barbie off four times a week to Ken. We learn everything about having weddings, traditions, styles, colors…but we never learn much about marriage. One could almost think that the wedding is all there is. You have a ceremony, have a party, go on a fun vacation, and then it's all happily ever after…right?

Wrong. As it turns out, marriage is very complicated and a great deal of work - from what I understand. And here's the thing: after you have your wedding with him, he's going to always be around. He'll leave his dirty socks on the floor. He'll forget to call and make you more angry than you've ever been before. He'll argue with you, maybe call you names. There will be times when things are so ugly, you wonder how the two of you got together in the first place.

Your wedding lasts only one day. In most cases, your marriage will last a lot longer. Marriage is big and it's permanent, for all intents and purposes. It will change your life for ever, and bind you to another human being. So what's a girl to do?

Maybe the reason the divorce rate is so high is that young women aren't rushing into marriage - they're rushing into wedding. Every woman wants to have that one magical day, to be in the spotlight, to have the wedding of her dreams. Maybe some of them just aren't so picky about who's standing there next to them. The day, after all, isn't about the groom - but about the bride.

I say we break with convention. Weddings - without grooms! Some traditions have to be changed, obviously, and we might want to do something else with those vows, but it's completely doable. Let's get all our single girls together and start planning our single-person weddings. Why should we be excluded just because we're smart enough to avoid the mess that is marriage? Let's be able to tell the next generation - yes, you can be a bride without having to deal with a groom!

Wouldn't that be the perfect society.