- Winston Sill Is the traditional wedding becoming a thing of the past? Photographs courtesy of Petals and Promises, wedding planners. Outlook models Roger and Sharlene Lawrence-Bryce.
Avia Ustanny, Frelance Writer
THE BONES of her face are showing and her hips are becoming angular question marks under her favourite cotton dresses. The days melt away and, as she picks at food like a bird, so fat disappears from her already slim body in a way which is not attractive.
The physical changes, so marked in this 33-year-old, are not due to illness but to the stress of what must become the perfect wedding. It will not be the largest, but still everything must be the way "everyone" expects it to be. All who are important to her will be there.
Our disappearing damsel is part of a young professional couple who must fund the event themselves. Still they feel that much is expected of them and will try to deliver a wedding to be remembered.
'Not so', say other couples who have made their way up the aisle in recent years and others who will be doing so soon.
"It's my wedding," they say in protest, reflecting a growing unwillingness to kill the fatted calf for those who think that they must join them in the once in a lifetime celebration.
They are refusing to bow to the pressure of community expectations. Wedding planners and others who work in the business of providing wedding services say that just about two in five weddings remain the large community affairs which were once traditional in Jamaica.
Increasingly, the wedding is now a private ceremony, with only the closest of friends and relatives invited. Some couples get married in total seclusion, and at a later date invite a chosen few to a reception.
Is it all about money? No, say the social historians, who note that the change reflects the increasing separation of the family from the community at large and its own extended roots.
It's about a greater need for privacy and also a rebellion against the dictatorship of social traditions, which frequently force couples into creating a spectacle which they can ill afford.
As usual, the results are mixed. This week, we go with social historian and author Peggy Rankine, on a journey back to the wedding of yesteryear. The thoughtful may be forced to ask the question have we lost something valuable, as we slam the door on the village-style wedding and its traditions?
It's my wedding
SHE IS not planning to wed in either her father's or mother's hometown. The familiar faces on the streets where she grew up are not likely to be present at her wedding, either.
"I want to get married at Mona chapel, for my wedding," says Angela Roberts, a graduate of the university on this location. There will also be none of the traditional curried goat and 'power water' dishes at her do. "Afterwards, I will have a tent spread on the chapel grounds and serve fruit salads and juices." Won't guests be dissapointed? "It's my wedding," she replies.
Angela is also aching to toss away a lot of the expected wedding paraphernalia and traditions. "I will toss the bouquet but I do not really want to. I do not see the sense of walking with flowers in my hand. I do not want a garter belt either. I am throwing out the traditions. I think they are stupid."
The big thing for Angela, she says, is money. "I think it is absolutely obscene, coming out of years of thrift and frugality to spend so much money on a wedding. It is nobody's wedding but mine. I insist on being comfortable." Still, she will not totally ignore the community. She admits, "The only reasons I won't have a simplier thing is to honour the people in the community church, family and other areas where we have been supported." Again she says, "I'm not being selfish. It's my wedding."
Like Angela, more newly-weds are starting to re-interpret the wedding custom, customising it to their own needs. Some are requesting that no children be present. Others say plainly that though all are welcome to witness the vows taken in church, the celebratory reception to follow is a closed affair.
Author of "What a Wedd'n," Peggy Rankine, our local expert on old time weddings, comments that there is somthing in these new attitudes to be lamented. "Because the entire village was involved, when married life got really rocky, there was always support for the couple and balanced support too."
The man would be given as much counselling or reviling as the woman. Because the wedding had involved the giving of the village "stamp of approval", the entire community had a vested interest in seeing that that it was successful. "There were so many people expecting the thing to work, that it worked," Mrs. Rankine insists. "Openness had its place and people (the couple) did not think they (the villagers) were interfering.
Mrs. Rankine comments that the characterisation of the community-style wedding as an "inquest", by some, is far from the truth of what it really was.
Names changed on request
