We Want Weddings, It’s Marriage We Don’t Care For

I’ve heard the phrase, “Marriage is just a piece of paper”, uttered by my peers more times than I care to count. And still, every year like clockwork, my timeline floods full of brides and beaus, relationship goals and bae reveals, as the annual wedding seasons screech to a stop. Despite our overall reluctance and casual dismissal of the idea of marriage all together, we cannot get enough of weddings themselves. We want the picture perfect proposal, complete with semi-candid photographs and cheerful innocent bystanders. We want the elaborate bridesmaid invitations, choreographed bachelor/bachelorette dance challenges, and blog-worthy bridal party entrances. Many of us have been dreaming of the day of our wedding since we were still young, planning to the most minuet detail. Too bad few of us are that excited about what happens after.

It’s almost as if we’ve completely disassociated the two — weddings and marriage, that is — with friends speaking of marriage and weddings like the two don’t go hand in hand. Already having a gown and color scheme in mind, but not the slightest clue how to choose a guy worthy of seeing either one. It was after hearing an acquaintance casually comment about her future husband only needing to show up to the ceremony for the photo ops that I slowly began to accept that we may have had some unhealthy views of matrimony altogether. We…