March 9, 2023

"While these couples had wedding parties that ignored gender norms, some may decide to not have wedding parties at all...."

"David Green, 36, and Ryan Schwartz, 37, did not have wedding parties for their summer camp-themed wedding because they felt they 'create unnecessary exclusion and hierarchies in an event that is all about community,' said Mr. Schwartz.... Both Jewish, the two instead engaged in a tradition called a tisch, or a gathering of close friends and family before the wedding ceremony, on June 18 in Portland, Ore. Mr. Schwartz’s crew congregated in the living room; Mr. Green’s in the backyard. Eventually their two crews came together, and the couple received a 'high energy send-off' before they took an Uber to their wedding venue, said Mr. Green.... For Stephanie Ramones, 33... said she and her fiancĂ© have many nonbinary friends and have felt most comfortable dropping wedding parties entirely. 'Creating an inclusive space and a space where people feel seen and cared for,' said Ms. Ramones...."

That use of the word "crew" made it hard to understand what Green and Schwartz were doing. Would a traditional tisch have males and females in different rooms? I'm just guessing. Okay, I'll look it up.

I found this
A traditional wedding begins with a hassan's tisch (a groom's table). The groom attempts to speak words of Torah while his friends interrupt with songs and jokes. Liquor flows freely. The ketubah (wedding contract) is usually signed at this time. During the groom’s tisch, the bride usually holds a kabbalat panim, a reception, in which she sits in a large throne-like chair and receives her guests. Today, many brides hold their own tisches where they too teach or hear friends recite words of Torah. Some couples hold a joint tisch.

So, if you want to innovate by doing something other than dividing the group into male and female, how do you do it? If only family were invited to the wedding, it would be easy to make 2 groups, but it doesn't sound as through the game of interrupting the about-to-be-married person would be the same. Once you add other guests — friends — how do you assign them to one group or the other? The NYT article glosses over this problem by using the word "crew." Who gets which friends and how good are they at interrupting you while you try to say words from the Torah?

51 comments:

Dave Begley said...

Portland. Enough said.

n.n said...

couplets

Owen said...

It’s important to fill the cultural bandwidth with precious reporting like this. There are literally hundreds of millions of us waiting with bated breath to be told how to become less deplorable toward these cutting-edge social pioneers.

RideSpaceMountain said...

"That use of the word "crew" made it hard to understand what Green and Schwartz were doing."

Not if you understand what marriage in gay culture means, which is very very little regarding fidelity. Yeah, I'm sure their "crews" got along just fine.

n.n said...

Social norms designed to normalize a favorable juxtaposition of the sexes.

sean said...

Eugene Volokh had a non-binary wedding, with the both the bride and groom attended by friends of both sexes. So it's hardly a novelty, but it is weird and philosophically incoherent. How can a heterosexual couple get married and claim to be free of gender norms?

Leland said...

The thing about inclusion and diversity is in order to demonstrate how inclusive you are, first you must discuss how different you are from everyone else including (because you are inclusive) friends and family.

For those of us that are not so DEI woke, they are just friends and family, and my parents generation would often have friends so close we knew them as aunt and uncles, because they were treated like family.

tim maguire said...

Seems perfectly reasonable to me. A lot of traditions are being abandoned as unnecessary expenses and mostly grew out of the very outdated reality that marriage was a business arrangement between two families. While I don't get into the hippie-dippy "it creates outsiders and we want every to be an insider" gloss, the simplicity can make the day far more pleasant and affordable. Young couples have better things to spend their time and money on.

Kate said...

Two men getting married is already a slide from gender norms. A bride having her own tisch is a slide from gender norms. At a certain point sliding from gender norms will be impossible because no slides will be left. And then exclusivity will become the new power move.

Sebastian said...

"in favor of more inclusivity"

And forget about those deplorable traditionalists who still think there are two sexes with different but complementary natures. They'd spoil any tisch. Include them out.

West TX Intermediate Crude said...

My wedding with Mrs. Crude was "All-'Gender'" also.
We had men there. We had women there.
That all the "genders."
The rest are dress-up.

Aggie said...

I am so thrilled for David and Ryan and their important contribution to weddings, that I didn't read the article and will have forgotten about them completely by the time I end this sentence and get to your next blog entry.

tommyesq said...

Who cares.

Lurker21 said...

How many gay weddings actually do have gender-segregated bridesmaids and groomsmen?

Wouldn't it look a little silly to have one partner backed up by a team wholly from the other gender?

One could easily suppose that "gender norms" have been ignored for a while now.

Once you let the biggest "gender norm" go, why keep the others?

hombre said...

If I read this right without going behind the pay wall, it is overweights, Portlandia, secular Jewish liberalism and gay marriage in a single package. It just doesn't get any more NYT than that.

The Vault Dweller said...

Probably had to pay overtime to get that Ketubah drafted.

Shouting Thomas said...

God, this is laughably stupid!

But, what room do we veteran hippies have to criticize?

We were every bit as laughably stupid back in the day.

Life will kick these doofus kids in the ass as many times as necessary to cure them. No help needed from me.

mikeski said...

"[...]summer camp-themed wedding[...]"

LOL.

"[...]unnecessary exclusion and hierarchies in an event that is all about community[...]"

Buzzwords - check.

"[...]wedding ceremony, on June 18 in Portland, Ore."

Natch.

"A traditional wedding begins with[...]"

A traditional wedding begins with a bride and a groom.

gahrie said...

If you're already ditching the bride, what's the big deal about getting rid of the bridesmaids?

AlbertAnonymous said...

Who the F cares?

Shouting Thomas said...

The use of bullshit HR terminology… like inclusion… is revealing.

We’re living in the age of the closeted hetero. These kids are shaping their sexuality for resume purposes.

They learned in college that profs and admins would give them perks for mutilating their sexual lives for a career.

Cowardly, conformist corporate drones in the making, pretending to rebellion.

Dude1394 said...

And soon if you do NOT have a gender fluid wedding you will have to wear the star of the homophobe.

These people can never leave anyone alone.

gilbar said...

it IS a little ODD, isn't it?
that people that aren't having a real wedding, wouldn't feel comfortable, having a real wedding?

typingtalker said...

Wanna get married? Fine.

1. Sign a contract where each party has the same rights and responsibilities.
2. Have a party (optional).
3. Take a trip (optional).

Either party can void the contract at any time for any reason.

Greg the Class Traitor said...

Hi, I'm a freak, and I'm going to have a freak party for a Wedding.

That's nice. Just don't demand that people who don't want to be associated with your freak party have to be associated with it.

You deserve no freedom, if you won't allow others the same freedom you want.

See 303 Creative, which should be 9-0 that "Colorado can FOAD. Of course you can refuse to create websites for events you dont' agree with"

But since the left are all fascist pigs, it won't be 9-0

n.n said...

Civil unions for all consenting adults. Stop exercising liberal license to indulge political congruence ("="). And the albinophobic symbolism and rhetoric, black and brown excluded, is socially progressive.

Portland. Enough said.

Tolerance will not be tolerated.

madAsHell said...

Portland. Enough said.

Ten years ago, it was a vibrant thriving city along the Williamette river with views of Mt. Hood.

Today, I worry about the safety of my in-laws.

Daniel12 said...

Love this! There's so much built up stress and expectations and unnecessary crap in the wedding industry. Nice to see people loosening up, being creative, and focusing on love and laughter and joy. That's the real point of all the wedding ritual, by the way. There's so much focus on the form that we can forget the function, which is bringing family, friends, and community together to witness, celebrate, and support the bond between two people. Interesting to see people using that ritual in creative ways to really deliver that function.

alanc709 said...

Hope the happy couple didn't register for wedding gifts at Walmart, because the Portland stores are going away. Leftwing idiots that shed norms have driven business out of the city area by refusing to combat crime. All in the name of inclusivity.

iowan2 said...

.. said she and her fiancé have many nonbinary friends...

Maybe its in the water?

To have "many" of such a small slice of the population stretches statistical truths. Or we just admit this whole thing is a nothing but social contagion. Like bell bottom pants, wearing masks for SARS viruses, and collagen injections. The latest marker for 'hip and with it'.

People have been doing their own thing for weddings...well, always.

PM said...

One picture is worth a thousand pounds.

Temp Blog said...

I noted the advanced ages of the two hosts, advanced at least if this is their first go-round on "nuptial" bliss. Guess they're not planning on having kids.

Laurel said...

gilbar nailed it.







Daniel12 is out in left field, literally and figuratively.

Two-eyed Jack said...

There are three pillars of marriage, the legal, the social, and the religious. Once one abandons the traditional framework for each, people try to reinvent them in some way. Here the religious element is turned into the merely ceremonial and the ceremony itself is cobbled together from bits and pieces from the traditions that people over time have hit upon to supplement the religious. The aim, I would say, is to make the couple think of themselves as married without all the spiritual baggage (or reserves of commitment) that the older traditions afford.

stlcdr said...

"... in an event that is all about community..."

And there's the issue. gay people want to make it 'about the community'. aka. our personal life is your problem. They - the Gay/LGB whatever 'community' - cannot see that what they want to do is none of our business. We ain't interested.

Indeed, unless someone is doing some genuine charitable work, everything anyone does is for their own benefit.

Jersey Fled said...

"David Green, 36, and Ryan Schwartz, 37, did not have wedding parties for their summer camp-themed wedding because they felt they 'create unnecessary exclusion and hierarchies in an event that is all about community"

Dear God, are there people who actually think like that?

Tina Trent said...

What's even funnier is the NYTimes article on "sustainable weddings."

The bride wore her own shoes, and they used local flowers.

Other tips include basing the amount of food servings on the RSVPs (who doesn't do that?) and renting plates from catering companies so they could be re-used (who doesn't do that?).

And, oh yeah, the bride had to admit that planning her wedding of 100 in a remote part of Australia did create a ginormous carbon footprint involving airfare travel, but she did plant three trees and wore her own shoes!

What can't "sustainability," or The Times, do!

And aren't throuples therefore unsustainable? More cake, food, families, travel...

Owen said...

Daniel12 @ 10:35: Upon reading this unctuous dithyramb I experienced instant and irresistible emesis. Remarkable work!

Matt said...

"Inclusive"? Did they have any fascists or Nazis at their wedding? Or did they just include the people the were always going to include?

Tom T. said...

"All I want is to live my life, and to have other people change their traditions for me."

FullMoon said...

I would like to take this opportunity to remind you guys that we Californicators voted overwhelmingly against legalization of gay marriage. The Los Angeles Times published a list of all the people who contributed to passing of the bill, successfully creating hate and creating early cancellation craze.

It was somehow overturned by a homosexual judge, who immediately retired.

Of course, you people in other stated didn't have the guts to even get a bill to vote on.
Not to mention our more votes for Trump than any other state.

SAD.

Leland said...

Laughing at Tina Trent's comment at 11:39am

Temujin said...

This is one fucked up generation.

M said...

Homosexual marriage is not allowed in Judaism so they are just play acting regardless. They are tearing down all the old traditions because they hurt their feels. Just more proof homosexuals are bad for society and humanity in general.

Jamie said...

focusing on love and laughter and joy.

I guess, for the party. But not for marriage. And a whole lot of people conflate the wedding with the marriage.

My husband and I, who had been dating for three years and living together for two before we were married, were in a truck-on-motorcycle accident on our honeymoon that, if not for my husband's quick reflexes, could and probably would have been fatal. We were in a foreign, non-English-speaking country and needed thankfully only minor medical care, but medical care nevertheless.

Our history together meant that we had little to learn about one another in terms of traditional honeymoon stuff. But we were legally bound together now, and if one of us has died or, perhaps worse, been permanently disabled in this accident, the other would have had no choice but to deal with it. We spent a lot of time thinking and talking about these matters that week.

(We weren't in any condition to do more than think and talk for the next several days.)

It was a literal crash course in what it is to marry someone. And it's in no way about love (in the passive romantic sense), laughter, or joy. These things are only happy byproducts of a marriage.

Earnest Prole said...

I am in favor of people partying however they damn well please.

ALP said...

Is there no end to the ways couples getting married can yammer on and on and on about it?

MadisonMan said...

The important question, that I hope was addressed in the article: Was there an open bar?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

I was just listening to NPR's Fresh Air interview of writer Thomas Mallon when he reflected on gay marriage becoming a replica of heterosexual marriage. He imagined that gay marriage would somehow be something different.

Somethings maybe be un-remake-able. I came up against a word that doesn't exist, just like an alternative to marriage.

Say man and wife! man and wife!

n.n said...

Or did they just include the people the were always going to include?

Political congruence ("=") is a Pro-Choice ethical religious construct, thus the conflation of couples and couplets, social distancing of trans/homosexuals from others (e.g. trans/neos) in the spectrum, the albinophobic symbols and rhetoric, and appropriation of judgments and labels from other cultures and species.

Richard Dolan said...

When it’s your wedding, you get to do it however you want. Some people even hike up a mountain, find a rock and exchange rings without anyone else being around. One size definitely doesn’t fit all.