Child Free Weddings Are Wrong and You Shouldn't Go

It’s wedding season.

What IS a wedding?

How should a wedding BE?

I’ll tell you what a wedding represents to me: it’s a COMMUNITY celebration of a couple. The couple invests in the community with food, music, powerpoint slide shows and in turn the community invests in the couple, with support, advice, and maybe an upscale coffee grinder from the registry.

It’s a party you throw for the people you love, who you (hope) will love you and your future spouse. There is a reason why even in the poorest countries weddings can be huge multi-day affairs. STUDIES 👏HAVE 👏SHOWN that in countries where the state is weak, jobs are precarious, and credit is hard to access, weddings serve as an opportunity to strengthen social ties with other families, opening to door to a type of social insurance (work, childcare, favors, loans, etc).

But in our hyper-individualist, consumer-driven culture a wedding is often a vainglorious demonstration of a couple’s class aspirations. A way to cosplay being a few rungs up social ladder, even just for a day. Think about it: a very rich woman would have tailored gowns; a servant stylist to do her hair, nails, make-up; a multi-course meal prepared by servants caterers in a kitchen she would never need to set foot in. She would be flanked with other (rich) women in gowns; everyone in attendance would abide by a strict social etiquette. All the guests would leave their offspring at home with their servants. Her own children would be tended to by her servants governess nanny, babysitter and she would clean up nothing.

I am literally describing every episode of Downton Abbey to you.

The part of this ceremony I find the most decadent and deranged is the decision to ban children even BABIES from a wedding. Maybe you were invited to one before you had children and you didn’t really notice but if you do have kids, especially small ones, and you get an invite that looks like this, then you should be insulted.