Recently in Betrothed! Category

I haven't watched all of the cable programs devoted to rubbing the public's nose in the fact that not everybody can afford a quarter-of-a-million-dollar wedding. At least, I hope I haven't. I have enjoyed/endured several on various channels devoted to different-yet-the-same demographics (women's lifestyle, other women's lifestyle), however, and at first glance, they seem to be covering The Big Day from admirably disparate perspectives.

There's the one about weddings you'll never have, but may envy from your position among the huddled masses.

Theres the one about weddings of people just like you, provided you've managed to make something of yourself.

There's the one about how the weeks leading up to a wedding apparently turn the woman to be married into a Japanese freakshow allegory for nuclear-age vigilance.

There's the one that seems to imply, more often than not, that Canadians can't budget properly.

As a guy who's spent the last decade and a half writing about pop culture in general and music in specific, I'm intimately acquainted with the concept of The List. I've written innumerable year-end lists of albums and songs and movies and characteristics of people who might like certain albums and songs and movies. They're all by and large meaningless, a bunch of stuff that I both like and consider substantial on one level or another, and I hate doing it. Unamerican as it is, I loathe competition. I like what I like and in some areas I possess the expertise to argue why some pop-culture products are more deserving of attention or accolades than others. I don't feel the need to rank shit, or to see the creative people that I respect and have enriched my life pitted against one another, or given a rank.

Now, I've gotta do that to people I know.

Your assumption, men, is that the engagement doesn't fundamentally change the day-to-day ins and outs of your relationship.

It's a big step, undeniably; not the first step toward marriage, really, but the first step away from non-marriage. Still and all, it's not like you're getting married tomorrow. That's what engagements are for, right? You're going to be married before too long, sure, but now you've got this time to digest this major change in your life, and get ready to not help a whole lot in planning the greatest day of her life. You made all the jokes about how you're just gonna show up on the wedding day and say "I do," and a part of you still believes it's actually gonna kind of go like that.

Oh, you poor, deluded bastards.

Yes, I guess I did.

I got engaged.

I was always one of those guys who figured he'd never get married. Actually, I thought every guy was one of those guys who figured he'd never get married. As I get older, I encounter more and more men willing to admit that they always wanted to get married, or always figured they'd get married whether they really wanted to or not.