Why do so many of us still dream of the perfect wedding? Tom Rasmussen, bestselling author of Diary of a Drag Queen, examines what the institution really means today – and celebrates the joy of being together (any way you like)
I’m in the pub on a Thursday and I’m complaining, again, about Yet Another Person Getting Married. My friend and I do the familiar dance, rattling through our arsenal of stock opinions about why marriage is trash. Intellectually. Emotionally. Imaginatively. Sexually. Historically. Everythingally. We laugh, we talk about “the normals”, we joke about wedding fairs and anodyne idiots who spend thousands on their weddings, but are too strapped to give to the local food bank. Then we finish our £5.80 guest pale ale and leave, smug intellectual folk who’ve got one over on Big Society and the thwarted plans it had for us. But as I wave goodbye, my sense of satisfaction wanes.
Because I’ve been lying. The truth is, I’m desperate to get married. The truth is, all I want, really, is to slot into that statistic – to be another second in the ticking clock of weddings. I’ve always wanted it: I made a stunning, plump bride on the playground in primary school; I planned my offensively gay wedding to the letter throughout my teens; I wept over men who left me at university as the potential for marriage leaked out of my life; and I spent four years on what I told a friend was my Wedding Diet. We laughed, but I was deadly serious.
