Every Wedding is a Story

To put it in general terms, it is only natural for humans to assess a situation based on their natural and physical surroundings, relationships between those in the situation, and the context of why they are together, what they are doing, and what happens in the event of the situation.  After all, we are a self aware and self centered species; how we see ourselves is greatly tied to how we perceive these situations and relationships. “The narrative perspective focuses on the innate nature of human beings to understand and interpret the world around us through storytelling.” (pg 37, RPPC) In our self-awareness, and attachment to this perspective, we are dependent on stories - setting, characters, order or events, time, etc - to connect us to each other in the only ways we as humans can understand: how things happen, why they do, and what does that have to do with us?

I am getting married in less than 2 months. The story goes: a girl and a boy met while they were in a band together. They fell in love, got engaged, moved in, got a dog, got a joint bank account, and have the honeymoon all planned out. The conflict is, as it usually is, the wedding. How big will it be? Who’s invited? What kind of food, music, decorations, color schemes, dress, tux, shoes, hair, will they have? They decided to get married in at a Court House, and have a small dinner with the immediate family - mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers. No one else.  However, as family members got wind of the small ceremony, it grew in size, and now they are having a wedding (active event). So the questions still remain...how big, who, what, where? At least we already know why they are getting married. Yes, love. (stative event).

Although it is a short version of the real story, it is cohesive because it is believable, and ultimately probable. The main issue of the story is the wedding, and the wedding is dependent on the reasons for having one - here, it is for family members to participate in the celebration. Therefore, it is good moral to have a wedding because of the values in family.

While the wedding is centered around two people getting married, it also stands to bring two families together, adding to the historical importance of family. The marriage between two people create and add to the historical and moral significance of human interaction. It can even be argued that it is a part of our innate need for a life partner, and for human procreation.

What this implies, as we have seen by the result of the conflict in the narrative, is that it is an accepted and predictable to have a wedding. While there can be exceptions to the case (where we tried to be an exception), it serves to show that having a wedding is appropriate behavior, even necessary, to getting married. In an effort to tie two families together through marriage, the wedding enforces family ideals and makes the marriage real (although it still would have been, wedding or not).