Wedding Invitations

The Honor of Your Presence is Requested to Celebrate Inequality

In and of itself, the wedding invitation does not need to be any more sexist than one for a birthday party. Here are the details, and please RSVP if you can make it. But the traditional invitation comes from the woman’s parents’ perspective (since they are traditionally responsible for footing the bill), and they politely ask friends and relatives to join with them in celebrating the marriage of their daughter to a man. This directly harkens back to a time when it was a huge relief to have a daughter married off – she might even be sent with a dowry to sweeten the deal for the groom. Even as today people wait longer to get married and often are living away from home and/or with their future spouse, “invitations are rarely sent from the bride and groom independently” (Geller 134).

Regardless of whether or not the parents are present in the wording of today’s invitation, there are a myriad of ways to create one. Invitations range from traditional ones on special paper to the most unique ones that hardly resemble an invitation at all (CDs, DVDs, etc.). But underneath the physical appearance is a deeper meaning, for a wedding invitation does more than simply announce the event. Jaclyn Geller argues that it is a “document of profound cultural significance” because it “provides the first glimpse of its authors in the act of self-presentation as a couple” (131). As guests, we see how the couple present themselves and gain a clue as to how they work together. Suddenly we learn about middle names and titles, and requests for the honor of our presence and the favor of a reply “as if we were distant acquaintances or members of the aristocracy” (Geller 131).   

Ultimately, the wedding invitation is designed to “announce the altered status of a relationship, joyously proclaiming the intention of two individuals to merge into a social unit, a ‘couple’” (Geller 134). Like the generations before them, the couple will now enter into the bonds of marriage. Geller critiques such an announcement because it basically amounts to a “sentimentalized transfer of property” (137). In a patriarchal society, it is the woman who makes the greater sacrifice in entering such a relationship. She is responsible for “shifting her primary loyalty and financial dependence from one male agent to another and assuming his surname as the logical extension of this process” (Geller 137). If, as most women do, she changes her name, the invitation becomes the last remnant of her old identity with her birth name. From thenceforth, she will be associated with her husband’s name, family, and household. She will make this extraordinary shift of identity while he will not.

Another issue is how to address invitations to the guests. Tradition dictates that the Smith family will receive an invitation addressed to Mr. & Mrs. John Smith. It becomes increasingly complicated with divorced people, blended families, nontraditional families, etc. to the point of turning into an etiquette nightmare. This issue is actually better addressed as a problem with titles and naming, rather than the invitations themselves. Issues with addressing invitations are really a symptom of sexist naming conventions that always place the male first and often erase women entirely.  

How many brides pay attention to or care about the layers of meaning beneath their wedding invitations though? Like most wedding propaganda, wedding manuals “phobically avoid the question of meaning within language, claiming that titles and name changes form a set of neutral apolitical customs—unanchored social mores” (Geller 139). If we simply avoid thinking about the power of language and what messages we are sending, the invitation can remain just that: an invitation. It is certainly easier to regurgitate the standard invitation than to think about where it originated from, what the language means, and how guests might respond to it and how it was addressed. In fact, even a uniquely-designed invitation often betrays “its female author’s confused attempt to embrace a sexist tradition while maintaining her own treasured self-image as a politically correct feminist” (Geller 139). Women often feel conflicted about breaking with tradition, even if they disagree with it. And so the wedding invitation remains an area that has yet to contain a standard version for feminists who want to celebrate a wedding without a loss of equality.

Source

Geller, Jaclyn. Here Comes the Bride: Women, Weddings, and the Marriage Mystique. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2001.