Culture Clash

In between strolling around Toulouse with our friends and eating dinner at their apartment (followed by bowling), B and I stopped by our home to change shoes and get our car. I thought I'd quickly call an American friend since the weekend is the only time I can reach her.

I'd asked her to check out a florist back in San Diego, and at the beginning of the conversation I told her that I'd changed my mind and we are only going to have a ceremony in France and then a second reception in San Diego. She wanted to know why I'd changed my mind, so I started explaining the reasons, and we ended up fighting for about 20 minutes. She reproached me for having said several times since August that we wanted the wedding to be about us, where, as she saw it, that's very narcassistic and wrong because a wedding is also about the guests and you have to think of them. Her example was of a couple only serving fish when half the guests can't eat it, with the excuse that it was their party and they liked fish.

She then angrily asked me a number of times if our wedding "wasn't very important" as I had said, why were we inviting people? Why were we doing anything at all? I responded that we felt it was like a birthday: you don't change overnight, but you invite people to celebrate with you none the less. Her answer was that birthdays were just an excuse to throw a party, and I unfortunately was not quick enough on my feet to reply "Well, so are weddings."

I was also lectured on how being married IS very different from how we are now. We will be legally bound to each other (because we aren't now??? um, Pacs?).

There were a number of other criticisms, and I did my best to defend my point of view (ie, the wedding is no more of a milestone than our Pacs or setting up house together; they're all just steps in the same direction). Over and over in 10 different ways she accused me of being narcissistic, hypocritical, and inconsiderate of our guests. She also mentioned that she might not be able to come to our San Diego reception because her family decided last week that they would spend Thanksgiving in Los Vegas.

In the end, I felt like my friend was just picking at pieces and not expressing what she was really upset about. I can only guess at it, but from what she accused me of, I assume she's upset that I'm having my wedding in France and not the US, that I'm building my life in France, not 15 minutes from my parents' place like she has (which is handy for keeping in touch with friends), and that I'm not gaping in awe in front of the institution of marriage.

I think the fact that I've so easily dismissed the "typical" or traditional elements of preparing a wedding, which are clearly important to her, make her feel threatened. That I can be so flippant about marriage scares her.

We never tried to force our ideas or way of living on anyone else. We didn't want to give anyone lots of extra work to organize our wedding. And in the end, people have created the work for themselves and accused me of being sacreligious.


“We are strange beings, we seem to go free, but we go in chains - chains of training, custom, convention, association, environment - in a word, Circumstance - and against these bonds the strongest of us struggle in vain”
--Mark Twain