I went to a lot of weddings when I was little, and in many of them, I was a flower girl. I loved getting dressed up and playing a major (I thought) role in a big event. Based on that, one might have thought that I would have rushed out at the first opportunity to play the major role in that drama, and so, perhaps, it is surprising that I see no wedding for me in my visible future.
It's not that I don't want a wedding. Who could complain about having a big party celebrating their love? But I'm not sure I want the marriage that follows the wedding. I suppose I may, someday, find someone who convinces me that I do, but they'd have to be a pretty smooth talker.
Mostly, I imagine myself getting married, if at all, for utterly pragmatic reasons: a friend needs insurance coverage (or I do), or a gay friend's foreign partner needs a way to get into and stay in the US. If the government is going to stick its nose where it doesn't belong, I might as well work the system.
Nonetheless, I imagine what my wedding would be like, if I had one. Would I want a big, foofy dress, violins, roses? Or would I rather hike into the Winds and have a small ceremony under the wide sky and sharp towers, listening to the wind whisper through the pines? Perhaps I'd like to have a barefoot ceremony on the beach? Or throw up a tent in the back yard and have a few friends for a casual brunch, interrupted briefly for a short exchange of vows?
As long as I don't do it, I can dream as big as I want, or as small, without running into my pesky personal problems with the economic underpinnings of property exchange as the fundamental basis of state-sanctioned marriage. I don't have to worry about how I feel about creating an exclusive bond with a partner with whom I don't necessarily plan to be monogamous. I don't have to think about the benefits I gain from straight(-looking) privilege (though I greatly look forward to getting to take this one off my list in a decade or two.)
Weddings, for me, are the harmless fantasy fodder, unburdened with the mess of real life. Interestingly, I've observed that that's true for a lot of people who actually have weddings, too.
