Two of the best advice columnists around are Miss Manners and Carolyn Hax. Miss Manners focuses on etiquette, Ms. Hax on relationships. Readers submitted questions to each with seemingly difference questions.
A Miss Manners reader grumbled about a couple living together who have had children out of wedlock, asking the question in the headline above: “Why should you expect a big wedding?”
By contrast, a Miss Hax reader grumbled about her fiancé, who wants a big wedding while she wants a very small, simple affair. Here’s the rub: he wants her to do all the work. And the wedding may never happen if she doesn’t do all the work and give him a big to-do. And she feels a sense of urgency to get married.
The first question to ask:
Perhaps the first question should actually be: what is the purpose of a marriage? The question has religious and secular implications, but there is certainly overlap. Marriage offers a level of commitment not available in cohabitation. Its aim is the mutual good of the spouses and a loving, secure family for the children.
Carolyn Hax says that
“true companionship and love are what separate a real marriage from a business deal, or a mere division of labor.”
She says marriage is built on mutual love, trust, honor, respect, and desire from both partners, and these are each choices that need to be made by both partners.
Miss Manners found the question about ‘big’ weddings ironic for cohabitating couples “when the events no longer mark important changes in their lives.”
In other words, for many couples, marriage doesn’t change anything in their daily life. They are already living together, may already have kids, and she might not even change her name.
But that may be the whole point, says Miss Manners:
“Perhaps it is exactly because there are not such changes in their everyday lives that a major occasion is required to celebrate and to make public the fact that there actually is a difference between being married and not.”
The closing zinger
She ends with a pointed zinger at the writer:
“What Miss Manners fails to understand is why anyone would begrudge them that.”
On the other hand, Ms. Hax advises the woman who wants a small wedding not to give in to the demands of the fiancé who insists on a large affair, but doesn’t want to lift a finger to make it happen. She says:
“Calmly, with love, refuse to let your urgency be exploited. Tell him the truth. A partner who intends to marry you, who is good for you, who loves you the way you are and want to be loved, wouldn’t want anything else.”
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