Queer Advice 72: Reverse Yentl
"My partner and I decided that next year we’re going to have a ceremony of love and commitment—like a wedding but in a “we’re not like other girls” way."
Welcome to Queer Advice, a feature where I answer love and relationship questions from anonymous internet users. Today’s question is from someone planning a queer Jewish wedding and struggling to integrate their mom’s vision for a fancy, 300-person event. In the comments, I would love to hear about queer weddings, past and present, maybe it was your wedding, maybe it was a friend’s or ex-girlfriend’s. What traditions did you change and update? How did you contend with families-of-origin and their expectations? Anything queer wedding-related, I want to hear it.
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My partner and I decided that next year we’re going to have a ceremony of love and commitment—like a wedding but in a “we’re not like other girls” way. The intention is to find an occasion celebrate in what increasingly feels like a time of darkness, to gather friends and loved ones for some rituals that might offer some joy and enchantment, and to bring together our dispersed community of friends. We’re both pretty integrated into our families of origin, but because we are not into the traditional wedding with tent, wedding planner, bridesmaids font, weird catering, etc. we decided to split the event into two smaller ceremonies, one with friends (plus parents and sibs) and one with cousins, aunts and uncles, etc. This was a tough call especially because we want to invite our families of origin (or at least some of them) into our queer world, but the cost started going up and it became too big to handle. Planning two events for like 60 people 6 months apart seemed easier than one event for 120. (Perhaps folly?)
[Re the queer world: I have in the last few years started transitioning, and my parents have recently been made aware of the extent of it. My parents are supportive-ish but I haven’t yet come out to the rest of my family tho I suspect they know what’s up. It would be cool to have everyone be together to welcome them into our world in an inviting way, but for the logistics thing!]
Okay so here’s the dilemma: we decided to have the family ceremony at my mom and dad’s house. Our vision was like: nice dinner, back yard, some Jewish ceremonial stuff, maybe dancing. But my mom is very embedded in this bourgeois world of extravagant weddings—she goes to a lot of her friends’ kids’ 300-person weddings—and wants to spend a lot of money on the family event and also invite her friends. Also there are lots of seemingly arbitrary restrictions on the event based on her idea of propriety. For example we suggested our favorite Indian restaurant as caterer and that was vetoed because it would be too unfamiliar/alienating to our white Jewish families (?!). We in turn vetoed the idea that her friends should be at the family event.
As we get into more and more of the details of planning the family event, it’s become clear that we need to either push back hard to make it closer to what we envisioned—which is admittedly vague because we have put our radical queer visioning into the friends event!— or just give up. I guess the question is: how might we approach this from a place of (queer) joy rather than (familial) resentment? Might there be a fulfilling way to collaborate, rather than merely struggle for power, with my mom, who I ultimately love? Do weddings mean anything outside of the bourgeois, heterosexual economy of signification? Should we do the hora?
Reverse Yentl, 30
A few years ago, my friend Alex celebrated her 30th birthday by marrying herself in a Jewish “solo wedding” that included circling, a ketubah, and breaking the glass. Guests were randomly assigned to be bridesmaids at the door to show how any relationship can gain special significance through ritual. She served all her favorite foods and snacks at the reception and dinner. I went to another Jewish wedding where the bride and groom were fat, so they did their chair dance on swivel chairs. I’m not Jewish and almost everything I know about Judaism comes from my queer friends, but I feel comfortable saying that Jewish weddings are for the gays. There are so many rituals and traditions to queer and make new again. The chuppah is basically a fort that can be made out of flowers. So gay!!
You and your partner are still in the imagining phase, while your mom has a fully actualized run-of-show. It also sounds like her input comes with financial support, which is very mom and adds a certain power dynamic to the mix. The first thing you and your partner have to do is decide: do you want to collaborate on the family ceremony with your mom? Is it even possible to do a group project with her, or is she going to just do all the work and put your name on it? There’s a strand of practical wedding wisdom that’s like, “It’s YOUR day, fuck everyone,” but I don’t think that’s a very realistic or desirable way to approach a wedding, especially when you have warm feelings towards your family and want them to feel included. It also sounds like you’re approaching the friends ceremony as 100% your day, while the family ceremony is more of a collaboration with your powerful mom.
The only way to avoid resentment is to develop a clear vision of what you want, which is difficult when you’re an easygoing person by nature and can see a lot of possibilities for the ceremony. It might help if you and your partner made a list of 5 to 10 things that are absolutely non-negotiable and integral to your vision—so maybe Indian food and a family-only guest list are non-negotiable, but you’re willing to move to a more formal venue (just a wild guess that your mom is not thrilled about the prospect of a backyard wedding). My girlfriend editor told me about a negotiation tactic called BATNA (Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement) which is when you make a plan of what is acceptable--though not your first choice--to keep in your back pocket at the negotiating table. Like, you have the ideal situation that you’re ultimately arguing for, but you also have an alternative plan with built-in mom concessions. Ultimately, you need to come in with a strong, detailed vision of what you actually want, and negotiate from there. This feels counter to the idea of “centering joy” that you mentioned, but I think that joy can be centered in the conversation between you and your partner, whereas your mom seems to require a more hard-nosed approach.
I haven’t attended many weddings in my life because my OG family is small and most of my friends are poor and/or sluts. Since the pandemic, I’ve heard of many couples doing multiple celebrations, including a couple who did a courthouse wedding and then a casual barbecue in the warmer months. I also heard about a couple who threw separate parties in each other’s hometowns because their families are big and many members are not able to travel, plus one with friends in the city where they live. I see how planning two separate ceremonies might seem like folly, but it also takes the pressure off one single day or trying to create “the perfect“ event. If I were getting married, I would want to split it up because I am a hobgoblin with a 4-hour social battery and would not survive one day of heavy social interaction, let alone an entire weekend.
So all that to say that I’m really happy you have and your partner are throwing a party series to celebrate your love, and also that your families love you and want to be there. Everything is going to fall into place, l promise. And yes, you should obviously do the hora! You should also do a screening of Yentl and then all of your exes should jump out of a cake.
I have opinions! And they come from my experience with my queer wedding. In retrospect, I wish I would have just 100% paid for the wedding my spouse and I wanted and rejected all help from my parents/mother including money. I had really wanted to make the middle ground work because I also love my mom, but she is powerful in a similar way to the mom described. It ended up almost breaking our relationship. She genuinely believes (to this day) that a wedding is a family event. I disagree and believe a wedding is purely and only a celebration of the couple/person/people that it centers around. In my experience, unless you want to fight weekly about holding reasonable boundaries, just have the biggest boundary of all. If I'm wrong and the middle ground works for you then I'll literally eat my shorts.
this is 100% a brag: i went to my ex’s queer jewish wedding last month & sat next to the rabbi who interrupted biden to call for a ceasefire 🥰