custom, part five

Bill Hulseman
12 min readAug 15, 2022

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St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Rockefeller Center, New York City, August 2022. Photo by the author.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral is legendary not only because of its impressive, Gothic revival structure and liturgical opulence but also because of what it represented to the generations of Irish immigrants and their descendants in New York City who faced ethnic and religious discrimination in the US during the 19th century. Despite the various forms of hardship, social exclusion, and disenfranchisement that immigrants face, some Irish communities thrived and found their kin in positions of authority. From the early days of its construction through its completion, consecration, and status among the grandest monuments of the city, St. Patrick’s embodied survival and success bolstered and proved that Irish Americans had a home, a sanctuary, and surging cultural, economic, and political power.

My friend Anne’s wedding in 2013 was, for me, a quintessential New York experience. Her ceremony was in the Lady Chapel of St Patrick’s, the smaller sanctuary behind the main altar that hosts daily masses and private ceremonies while the main nave remains a mix of pious worshippers and gawking tourists. When I saw the name of the officiant on the program, I gasped and turned to my friend Christine to ask, “That James Martin?” Martin, a friend of her family, also happens to be a rarity in the postmodern world: a celebrity priest. He’s a prominent editor and author who is very popular on the (Catholic) speaking circuit, always seeking to explore and reflect on the intersection of social justice, communication, and joy in spirituality. In the years after the wedding, he’d expand his focus on building a bridge between LGBTQ folx and the Catholic Church and be painted as a glimmer of hope by some and a danger to the Church by others. To say that I geeked out at the intersection of glorious architecture, Irish American history, and a celebrity priest is an understatement.

The reception was at a restaurant a few blocks away that Anne’s family had owned for decades but sold a few years before. In that restaurant, her grandfather had created a kind of safe space for Irish folx who didn’t feel (or just weren’t) welcome in other establishments. Even though the new owners shifted the menu to Asian-fusion, a departure from its Irish American roots, returning there felt like a homecoming for Anne’s family and a step into Irish American history for the rest of us. A glorious cathedral, an historic and sentimental restaurant, a celebrity priest…but my favorite part of the whole day was the walk from the cathedral to the restaurant.

As the ceremony concluded, we were invited to follow the newlyweds out of the church. As we exited the Lady Chapel, tourists and pious worshippers alike took notice of the gleaming couple and looked up from their rosaries and cameras to take in the train of family and friends following them. When we neared the enormous doors, I could hear the loud wheeze of bagpipes — a kilted piper waited on the sidewalk to lead the bride and groom and the rest of us to the reception, piping the whole way. Cars on Fifth slowed, I assumed, to gawk at the spectacle, but various folx rolled their windows down to shout congratulations, good wishes, and compliments for the dashing newlyweds. More than once, I heard a joyful “mazal tov” as people on the sidewalk stopped, stepped aside, and took in Anne’s lovely lace gown. We passed storefronts whose security guards joined in the adulations and restaurant backdoors where cooks and servers, escaping the heat of kitchens, applauded and shouted good wishes. Nobody mocked our little parade. Nobody leered or jeered or did anything unseemly. They were all strangers in a crowded city whose routes were being delayed by a wedding procession on a hot Saturday afternoon, but, it seemed to me, everyone instinctively recognized that something important was happening, something worth stopping for.

But all those strangers along Fifth Avenue weren’t just passively recognizing a change in someone else’s lives — they all stopped to absorb how this impacted them. What, if any, of their own hopes and dreams, of their own identities and relationships were reflected in our procession? Did seeing us bolster their own joy or reinforce a sense of exclusion? What message were we sending to the world about this couple, about the world they navigated together, about what happiness and joy and love should look like? What moved some strangers to smile with familiarity or to shout out, and what made others look away and hold their tongues? For several years, I treasured the memory of this procession as a uniquely and intensely “only in New York” experience, but as I came to recognize the impact of a wedding (and of any ritual, really) far beyond the couple getting married, I understood the public procession from St. Patrick’s to the reception as evidence that a wedding effects a change in the community formed around a marrying couple and even in the world beyond them, an effect with social, relational, political, ethical, spiritual, and economic consequences. Because of this, wedding-adjacent practices start looking a lot less like fluffy pomp and circumstance and a lot more interesting, both as an insight into who we are and as an opportunity to shape the impact.

Besides the obvious changes that come with a wedding (a legally recognized shift in the social, material, and economic lives of two people and expanded family ties and friendships) when I think about the effects of a wedding — what’s changed, transformed, crystallized, accomplished… — I also think about a change in perception, a change in how we understand others and ourselves, in how we frame and navigate the world. The perceptions of people who participate in or witness a ceremony are changed in the ritual itself, but wedding customs like public proposals, pronouncements, and processions tell the rest of the world about what’s happening. A restaurant staff conspires with a hopeful romantic to hide an engagement ring and present it at the right moment. A flash mob surprises an unsuspecting partner in a Home Depot with choreography to enhance the moment. The New York Times weddings section publishing the details of couples’ lives and festivities. Processions down Fifth Avenue. The flurry of celebratory posts by newlyweds and their guests on social media in the days after a wedding. These are all seals — tangible, physical and ritualized practices that crystallize a shift in public perception, that enable everyone to recognize that something changed. Because two people shifted their lives and identities, we all have a chance to think about and transform how and how well we know ourselves and each other.

Sealing a shift in the body politic: Proposals, Pronouncements & Processions

Over the past month, I’ve been exploring practices included in George Monger’s encyclopedic Wedding Customs of the World. My goal is to consider what the historical origins, development, and contemporary uses of particular customs tell us not just about their original contexts and about the assumptions about identity and social relationships that they perpetuate. So far, I’ve looked at different ways communities are involved in weddings, the nearly ubiquitous white wedding dress, and the roles of various accessories and jewelry, and last week I turned to practices that ritually, tangibly, and holistically seal a couple’s marriage and a shift in the network of family and friends around them. This week, I’m focusing on proposals, pronouncements, and processions, practices that crystallize a shift in the broader community. These seals take on a much grander, more performative form, in part to match the uniqueness of weddings among other civil rituals and in part to demonstrate the impact of a single wedding on the cultural fabric.

Proposals
Stephanie Coontz exhaustively describes its evolution in Marriage, A History, but once upon a time, a proposal was a private matter between two families, spurring a period of betrothal for the couple to acquire the material goods required to set up a household and for everyone around them to prepare for a change in status and identities of to-be-weds. As marriage became more about the individuals getting married, related ceremonies and festivities, including the proposal, became more public, more demonstrable events. The image most folx in America conjure when thinking of a proposal includes a man dropping to one knee to “pop the question” and present a diamond ring, but most folx don’t know that the whole scenario is a modern invention. Cele C. Otnes and Elizabeth Peck detail this history, too, in Cinderella Dreams: The Allure of the Lavish Wedding and poignantly note that “The tradition of the man ‘on bended knee’ seems to be merely a dramatic flourish in stereopticon pictures and silent films. None of the great suitors in nineteenth-century literature — Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre, or Laurie in Little Women — actually fell to their knees.” So the standard image of the proposal actually emerges from the 20th century confluence of various streams of normative sexism, including dominant pop culture projections of gender and romance, with a marketing campaign by Big Diamond. Otnes and Peck also suggest several reasons for the increasing theatricality of the proposal in the last forty years. The proposal, they note, is no longer the beginning of a relationship and the initial prompt to start collecting home goods — it’s the end of the courting phase (Kahneman’s “peak-end” rule applies again!). There’s also a “crude economic calculus” — the lavishness of the wedding, which has expanded in recent generations, is reflected in the lavishness of all wedding-related activities, so…the bigger the wedding, the bigger the proposal.

As the public and theatrical proposal retains and even builds in popularity, it’s interesting and important to consider what values are being retained along the way. The proposal itself finds its roots in economic negotiations in which women lacked autonomy and seemed to be passed from male (father) to male (suitor) like any of the objects in her dowry. The very notion of a proposal, an ask, implies an uneven power dynamic: even in a same-sex relationship, one is the asker, one the asked, and in every retelling of the event, that role is a key part of understanding and perpetuating gender-based power dynamics in relationships. One solution to this is to eradicate the proposal as a necessary, ritualized step in announcing an impending wedding. When my husband and I made the decision to marry, we avoided any grand gestures and, instead, sustained a dialogue. Neither of us was surprised by any question — it was a mature, adult decision that we made together. That said, the dialogue concluded with a final decision to marry on a moonlit beach in Hawai’i, so we didn’t escape the clutches of romance altogether.

Another solution is the duplication of roles, something that I’ve seen frequently among same-sex couples but that is also happening more frequently in different-sex couples. We recently attended a beautiful wedding of friends (who happen to be cisgender and straight) who proposed to each other. After they decided to marry, each planned a special moment, complete with a ring, a special location, and carefully crafted words. Duplication of roles didn’t dilute their proposal experience — by sidestepping gender inequities, duplication reframed the proposal not as a contractual betrothal like the olden days or as the end of the courtship phase, the trend that Otnes and Peck identified. Duplication reframed the proposal as another of those peak moments that Kahneman describes, as an intentionally constructed interaction where they revealed deeper layers of themselves and shaped the communication and interactions that characterize their relationship.

Pronouncements
The pronouncement is of little concern for most people, but the public declaration of commitment (vows) and the public recognition of that commitment by the state (the pronouncement) are the two actions that make a wedding a wedding, that differentiate it from other rituals and, even differentiating it from other types of commitment ceremonies, make it legally binding. Cultural and religious traditions often add a layer of theological texture (for example, some Christian officiants will include “What God has joined together, let no one put asunder”), but the typical formula that officiants use to make it legally binding has three parts: invocation of authority, confirmation, and articulation of a couple’s newly minted social status. Yeah. There’s a lot packed into that tiny little phrase. Let’s break it down.

By the power vested in me…

The invocation of authority is a reminder for everyone witnessing a wedding that while anyone can effect a marriage, a relationship characterized by mutual commitment, only the state can effect a Marriage (note the capital M), a legally recognized and binding relationship.

I now pronounce you…

And in a wedding, only the officiant wields the power to recognize that change. Oh, suddenly the officiant has a powerful role! This is why, until recently, very few citizens could assume the role of officiant. power was reserved for people who already held a certain amount of legal authority — justices of the peace, judges, and, in the US (but not everywhere), ordained religious clergy. Today, some US states will issue a one-day certification for couples who want to invite a friend who doesn’t wield such legal authority to play the part, but even that adaptation is largely moot in the era of online ordination, which is recognized in most but not all states. Still, each state has its own often complicated regulations for registering officiants, largely to ensure the integrity of the process, and I’ve found that the more complicated the process the less trust the state demonstrates.

Now the fun part: the final words of the pronouncement, the words that seal the deal, the words that propel a couple into the world with new identities that their friends and family and the state all recognize…

Man and wife.

Interesting, eh? The stereotypical phrase isn’t just heteronormative — it’s also wildly disproportionate. One member of a marriage retains a previous status (“man”), but the other is transformed from “woman” to “wife.” More equitably minded officiants and couples adopt “husband and wife,” and, likewise, when Moira Rose concluded the wedding of David and Patrick on Schitt’s Creek, she pronounced them “husband and husband.” Despite its intended equity, I’m still aware of the historical baggage that comes with the monikers “husband” and “wife.” For different-sex couples who value complementarity, parity, and equity, they inject thousands of years of patriarchy into the relationship; for same-sex couples they introduce categories that just don’t apply.

For me, the function of the pronouncement, of a wedding in general, is to proclaim a new union, a new social unit. This doesn’t necessitate the reframing of each individual — instead, it calls for reframing the couple and emphasizing their new, shared state. Because of this, I prefer to keep it simple, ungendered, and focused on what’s shared: married. By the power vested in me, I pronounce them married.

Processions
Public wedding processions have faded from American weddings. Sure, there are caravans of automobiles to transport a wedding party from home to venue to photo shoot to reception to after party, but processions that both preceded and followed ceremonies had a very specific purpose: to invite the good wishes from the general public, and that alone reinforces a wedding’s role in sealing a shift in the general public. What kind of shift, of course, depends on what kind of procession introduces a marriage to the world. Millions around the world followed Lady Diana’s motorcade through the streets of London to St. Paul’s Cathedral, and millions watched again as Prince and Princess Charles emerged. It wasn’t just a marriage being witnessed — it was the revelation of the next stage of a centuries-old monarchy.

As Monger describes, the public celebration of a wedding is nearly ubiquitous, and each culture and subculture has its way to mark the occasion. Cars honk their horns in New York City. Folx in England would “fire the anvil,” a boisterous yet wickedly dangerous practice, along the procession’s route. In pre-Taliban Afghanistan, rifles would be fired into the air. Before any party starts, it’s already a noisy affair. “These practices,” Monger writes, “are designed to bring the fact of the wedding to the attention of the whole community, although, in some instances, they may be a part of a belief in warding off evil spirits and malevolent influences with loud noises.” Less (but still playfully) malevolent forces like pranks are often part of the procession. In various parts of Europe and North America, the path to a wedding was traditionally blocked — by everything from children demanding a ransom to felled trees — and it’s still a common practice today to decorate the car that takes a married couple away from their ceremony.

Processions to a ceremony serve as a kind of meta-symbol of what’s happening with the wedding. Two crowds of people accompany the to-be-weds, but after the ceremony, they travel as a single column behind or around the couple. The message couldn’t be clearer: the entire community is changed because of a single wedding — and everyone should pay attention. While processions like my friend’s up Fifth Avenue are less frequent, I don’t think they’ve totally disappeared. Somewhere along the line, the collective, unconscious “we” accommodated the increasing impracticality of processions by filling the feeds of social media with explosive, ebullient, and expressive photos and messages that do the same as fired anvils and rifles. They overwhelm the senses of even uninterested passers-by. They grab our attention. They let us know that something changed and that, even for the fleeting moment our eye catches it on our feeds, we’re all impacted.

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