In my course to become a Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant®, I was required to observe a wedding. I chose an outdoor one for a heterosexual couple officiated by a local colleague, Kathy Blume. (Side note: while she’s not a celebrant, she has a mighty fine way with her craft as a wedding officiant!)
Having not attended a wedding in several years, and never before with the critical eye I now bring!, my attention was hooked immediately by the pageantry of the processional.
The seven groomsmen entered all in a linear procession, in fine attire, not unlike a military line, but a little more casual and loose.
The twelve bridesmaids, by contrast, entered in a much more formal manner, all barely navigating a wide, warped wooden staircase in ankle-legth gowns and stillettos. This preceded their walk across the grass and down the aisle. Guests chuckled upon hearing the venue coordinator loudly coaching each bridesmaid to wait to begin walking and then to walk extra slowly so as to keep a generous distance between herself and the others.
I did a quick google search on “why slow bridesmaid walk” in case there was a ready response to my wondering. The top hits, however, included tips for how to walk slowly, and what brides and bridesmaids are thinking when they walk, but nothing on the origins of this tradition.
So I’ll posit that one purpose is to sanction the ogling of gussied-up gals. Really! The guests have plenty of time to look each poor young woman up and down before turning their eyes to the next one. Perhaps it’s got some origins in cotillions or coming-out parties, where upper-class women, upon reaching a certain age, were deemed ready to present to society (read: eligible bachelors). They are the “bride’s maids,” after all.
Maybe it’s also meant to plump up the drama preceding the bride’s entrance, which itself is accompanied by an un-prompted rising, of all the guests, to their feet, in her honor, as if she were, momentarily, royalty.
Implied feminist criticism aside (patriarchal values and ideals ooze from the processional alone!), all of this contrived way of moving, made even more awkward by the prescribed costumes, is a form of pageantry. As such, it says (however imperfectly to observers) that we are stepping out of normal space and time to do something special. We will walk in a special way; we will wear special clothes; we will endeavor to achieve some high degree of beauty in our appearance and precision in our movements to set this time, and this occasion, apart from all others. And the slowed pace says, “Look, watch, contemplate, prepare. This is happening and it is real.”
The question I’m left with, though, is: What might non-patriarchal, gender-inclusive-and-affirming wedding processional pageantry look like? I welcome your thoughts!