Yesterday I attended Wedding Ideas magazine's
Wedding Awards (thanks, team Giraffe!) and I'm all aglow with visions of white dresses (and white chocolate fountains) dancing in my head.
The thing is, if you take 50 friends out to dinner, it's going to cost you, even if your Aunt Mary and the local WI put on the buffet. What do these wedding-phobes suggest – a five-guest limit? (Talk about squabbling with the future in-laws over the invites.) Or should bride and groom just scarper off to the local register office and text friends and family once the deed's done? You'd certainly save a bundle, not to mention the carbon savings, but is that really the aisle we want to head down?
After all, do you think the party poopers would stop at weddings? They'd quickly move on to the carbon-guzzling birthday parties, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, anniversary dinners, baby showers and all those wasteful holidays: Christmas, Chanukah, and Eid ul-Fitr for a start (all that feasting, tsk tsk). Would the fun-loathers (green or otherwise) be satisfied once we could greet each day with no more anticipation, enthusiasm or emotion than the next? Sure it'd be a tad grey, a bit mundane, but definitely more planet-friendly.
Alas, party bans never work. In the 1640s Oliver Cromwell
and the Puritans ixnayed Christmas. Cancel the frenzied fun, put the mince pies on ice, take down that holly and don't even think about presents. The ban was, of course, thwarted behind Ollie's back – get real, would you rather party with the Puritans at a Bah Humbug-themed bash or join in the neighbours' raucous (if hidden) merrymaking?
The fact is, humans like to make merry, and anyone who tries to stop them will fail. The Christmas ban was revoked in 1660, and everyone brought the dancing, drinking and singing back into the open. We have an innate need to share life's important events, to mark occasions that happen once a year – or once in a lifetime.
Plus, a wedding ban would mean no more wedding TV or films. OK, we could all probably survive without License to Wed, but many of us would miss the Muriels and Four Weddings of the future.
By all means focus on the big picture and keep things in check: just as you don't have to buy every new gadget for
your four-year-old's Christmas stocking you needn't spend twice your salary on your wedding. Keep an eye on the carbon cost too: don't fly to Milan for
dress fittings a la Liz Hurley (estimated carbon footprint of her nuptials: over 200,000kg). But celebrate the big day? I say
go for it. Even if that means simply inviting everyone down to the pub (where they buy their own drinks). Your friends just want to raise a glass to your happiness.
