#140-Planning Weddings

Okay, so as a resident sympathizer for women's causes, I have trouble stereotyping the female gender within the apostolic realm as a whole. So I will add this sidenote: The following is true for 85% of the female gender within our historic movement. If you are not one of the 85% please feel free to laugh at those who this is addressed to. 


Also in an informal survey of 4 apostolic young men within the house that I am sitting in at this moment, one of them defined two specific plans for their wedding (small and in a tropical setting) meaning that if this terribly thought out survey was demonstrative of the men in our movement, 25% of the males enjoy planning their wedding.


But essentially, unmarried apostolic ladies love thinking about, talking about, reading about, and watching tv shows about weddings. For proof ask teenage girls in your church what plans they have for their wedding and your ear will be talked off about various styles of wedding dresses, best season for a wedding, and the colors that theme their wedding. 


While this topic demands a much deeper investigatory process by more skilled sociologists than I, I will still attempt to engage my thinking apparatus to bestow on you faithful readers what I think are some serviceable explanations for the topic at hand:


#1-Apostolics girls in general are not allowed the same freedoms in their surroundings as secular girls. Meaning: There are restrictions to the amount of fun apostolic girls can have. Their world (for better or worse) becomes entertaining in and only in sleepovers, youth ralleys, bowling alleys, and mall. There is also a massive acceptance of Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, The Notebook, and It's a Wonderful Life within our movement. The theme to all these motion pictures is that the climax of life comes in a romance that goes on happily ever after under the Godly approved institution of marriage. 


It can then be inferred that in a young apostolic female's mind two things are occurring growing up: Life is not as fun as a Christian single teenage girl (while they may enjoy their life, it can be repetitive and monotonous). And secondly, that according to the movies, this mundane life comes to a close through romance where our hearts burst open to another human beings own reciprocal eros love. Therefore, it is in the wedding that their life of boredom ends, and their life of "happily ever after" begins. This explains why weddings are so important to apostolic girls but it is insufficient in it's explanation of why so much planning goes on with the weddings (even years in advance).


-#2-Girls want to have babies. Their wedding is their celebration for it then to be socially acceptable to be "with child."


-#3-The girls are in competition with each other. Just like the fact that girls do not dress up to impress guys, but rather to show off to other girls (as to cause feelings of jealousy and hatred), girls also enter into a kind of arms race with not only wedding rings, but also in the wedding itself. The wedding would then be a  signal to all other females that their wedding displays that the bride is about to enter a monogamous relationship complete with childbearing with an alpha-male (or so the bride would like to think so).  While this theory is the most boring, to me it seems to be the most sufficient in it's explanations.


Conclusion: I wrote the article for one reason...Weddings are so big, girls are willing to fork over thousands of dollars to go to an unaccredited bible college whose course material could probably be learned through a few books and a few talks with their own pastor  in order to find a mate (most likely a pastor). Of course no girl claims this to be true, and nor am I saying this is the case in all instances, but I will say that it does happen and several girls have admitted to it, and that if I ever decided to go to a bible college it would be for the sole reason to find a wife.


To further the above reason, a dear friend of mind described a class at her bible college...in this class the final project was for the student to PLAN THEIR OWN WEDDING complete with a budgeted outline with a where, when, and what will be worn at the wedding! Is there no better of a symbolic event than this which displays our movement's infatuation with the ceremony of inaugurating a marriage?