Weddings

I grew up hating weddings. Not the concept of marriage and that commitment, that would come later. But the ritual and affair itself. I'm beginning to unravel why.

Mormon weddings are boring AF. If you've been to one, you've been to them all, despite what Utah Mormons (who know they're all homogenous, so they extra go out of their way to prove otherwise) think. First of all, the ceremony and reception are two very separate and distinct events. The ceremony has no personalization or individualization whatsoever. Copy and paste. Copy and paste. Most people don't even know what they're pasting and committing to until it happens to them. Yep, I said what I said. It happens to them. Nothing about the Mormon wedding ceremony is informed or consent. You walk into the mystery room and if you don't like what's said, what are you gonna do? Walk out in your wedding clothes (also not what you think) in front of only your immediate family and a few intimate friends?

But we're going to start with the reception. Why? That's what I experienced first. Why? Because the marriage ceremony happens in the temple, which is only for qualified Mormons and only has MAYBE seating capacity for 40 in the sealing room. Getting to that shortly. Outside of Utah, they are always in the church indoor basketball court because it's free. It's a fucking indoor gym with mechanical basketball hoops to lower or raise if the situation calls for it. It really doesn't matter how much you decorate this place for an occasion, it's still a fucking basketball court and everyone knows it. People sit around the round tables that seat 8 (those are stored under the stage that's attached to the gym, yay for being multi-functional and frugal) and eat some light snacks and talk. There's no activity or engagement or anything. And there's no alcohol. At some point they interrupt conversation for the cake cutting and for people to gawk to find out if it's going to be clean or messy. The garter throwing, while rare at Mormon receptions, still makes me cringe. Fucking ew. And then it just ends.

So as soon as I turned 12 and was old enough to babysit, I had a new game plan. Every time someone in my ward (dictated geographical area for a congregation, much like a voting district) was getting married and the whole congregation would be invited to the reception, I'd start calling parents and soliciting babysitting gigs. It was a mutually beneficial relationship where everyone thrived and the bride generally would comment to me that she didn't see me there. I'd reply that yes, I don't have anything against you, but that was intentional. Good for you, ya got hitched.

Now to the ceremony itself. Let's conceptualize this: you can invite 40 people total to your wedding ceremony. Divide that by 2 and it's 20 each. Consider that Mormons really did used to more commonly have 5-7 kids (it's fallen out of fashion because it's fucking expensive to be American and people are just starting to wake up to that). So as a bride, you can only invite 20 people to your wedding. Your parents and siblings have just taken 8 of that. Grandparents? I've got four of those, two at the time it was relevant for this. Aunts and uncles? I'm only gonna count six of each in my headcount because the 3 each on my dad's side are all at best negligible, either due to emotional distance, assholery distance, or physical distance. Cousins? I've got 50 first cousins. Let's say I'm close with 5. Is there even room to invite a close friend or two? Only the Mormon god knows.

My Mormon wedding ceremony came a year after I got married. That's because I had sex before I got married (with my fiance) and had to repent. We can break down that trauma of repenting and admitting sin to making love with the one you love later. For now, I'm gonna focus on the Mormon wedding topic and not squirrel off. I feel like the Mormon wedding is best explained with pictures, but I'll do my best with words. Imagine that dream wedding dress, that dream wedding look. Your hair and nails done just right, regal, dignified, fairytale-like. Footnotes should detail that my dream wedding was the elopement Anastasia pulled on her grandmama in that Don Bluth film from 1997 and I'm still a little bitter that no one let me have it.

So there you are, decked out in the Mormon garb: temple dress with non-descript gown to the floor (but modest, not showy or fashionable) with neckline to, well, two fingers below your collarbone; double-layered veil over your head to cover the back of your head in solid fabric, but sheer fabric to cover the face when the moment calls for it; robes of the priesthood (worn over Puritan the dress) pulled over the right shoulder because that's the highest order; green leaf waist apron to hide your nakedness before God because we're pretending to represent Adam and Eve; a waist sash tied over all that just because (it really serves no purpose, physical or metaphorical...I think Joseph just made this one up for the hell of it); and then your knee-high stockings and slippers. Yup, that's it. 

Your husband-to-be is basically wearing the same thing, but with a Chef Boyardee hat instead of veil that has a cable running from cap to shoulder epaulet.

We walked into the sealing room. Oh, god. I already have to backtrack. So normal weddings are for like...ya know...what's happening now. The Mormon religion was created after all the other religions, so as such, it's never good enough to be just as good, there has to be a reason to one-up what already exists. That's just how psychology works. The Mormon one-up is that when you get married, you don't just get married for now, "til death do us part", whatever. You get married for now PLUS an added bonus of eternity. Like seriously, picture Squints' ancestor saying "FOR-EV-ER" on loop. Jesus fuck. Not just your spouse, but your parents who did this and everyone before them. This scared me shitless in my life. And Mormons are scared of Stephen King.

Right. So there I am, thusly garbed in the most undesirable, unsexy clothing ever imagined by a human, walking into my sealing ceremony (which is the same as a marriage ceremony, but typically occurs in whatever obscure time period after you've gotten married and whatever bishop you have at the time decides you've been ostracized long enough for your sexual sin). And I kneel at the cushioned altar (cushioned for knees and albows and forearms. Must admit the Mormons think of comfort for this uncomfortable ceremony) knowing nothing of the scripted vows that are the same for every single Mormon. "Do you, Megan Marie Schafer, covenant to give yourself unto your husbamd..." My mind blanked out at that moment, waiting to hear his vow in return. "Do you, Shadrick Howes Kendell, promise to receive her as your wife..." My mind blanked out again, not in excited anticipation, but in sheer horror. What the fuck was this shit where I just covenanted (oh, shit, that's Mormon lingo for two-way promise with God) that I would give myself to my husband and this was not reciprocal?! What the fuck do you mean that he promised to receive me, not also give himself to me?! WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS HAPPENING?! But I couldn't walk out. I could only black out.

I blacked out and didn't talk about it. 

Let's dig in deeper. I was lucky. My marriage ceremony didn't happen the same day as my initiatory and endowment ceremony. Initiatory should be a self-explanatory word.  Endowment means gift. The initiatory ceremony, as I went through it, was uncomfortable and I just wanted it to be over. I had a 2-month old baby at the time. You're not supposed to have that, no matter how inclusive they try to be. If you happen to be a convert to the church, you're still supposed to somehow fit into the mold for women to not be pregnant or breastfeeding for this ceremony. I was breastfeeding and born and raised Mormon. The most wrong way to do this. It takes multiple hours and is not constructed for a mother (the highest calling for a woman from God) to do. From the moment I walked into the temple, I was on edge and defensive about my need to take care of my baby and breastfeed him, not just go through a three-hour ceremony with no other thought. He fed every two hours and my boobs fed him. How are we gonna make this work for me? Nope, I felt like an inconvenience the whole way.

The initiatory ceremony was one that left me questioning immediately. I don't have a sense of smell, never have, even before COVID. So there I am, going through this ceremony wearing only the Mormon underwear, no bras allowed (this is a significant detail because I was a breastfeeding mother), and a thick fabricked "shield" aka poncho. And I started the ceremony approximately 1 hour after I had fed my baby. So I was sweating bullets with the ticking time-bomb and separation anxiety. And this woman who is only authorized to operate the priesthood in this one room of the temple that is only for similarly naked-ish women as myself, started saying her memorized words while touching my correlating body parts: "I bless your eyes that they may see. I bless your ears that they may hear. I bless your nose that it may smell." Hold the fucking phone. I don't have a sense of smell. Never had. Never had any half-ass or more medical professional examine me and give me hope otherwise. Mostly, they've just been baffled that I exist and wanted to use me for medical curiosity. At this point in my adulthood, I've accepted the point and at least resigned myself to allowing Jesus to heal me when I die and am resurrected. But now you want to taunt me? Honestly, that was the first brain black-out moment in the Mormon temple for me. I got past the women touching me and was relieved to have a quick moment to unload my body's milk supply into my waiting baby before being shuffled off into the endowment room.

That's the room where women promise to listen to their husbands as their husbands listen to God. Ooops, shit! I mean, wait, Mormons believe in gender equality. Okay, but really, I covenanted in the endowment room to "hearken" unto my husband as he "hearkens" unto the Lord. And I cajoled myself to go along with it.

So I went through the initiatory and endowment ceremonies on one day and then my sealing marriage ceremony was a couple weeks later. For my mother in 1977, it was all in one day. And during her endowment ceremony, the language and hand signs were different than what I went through. She would've committed to blood sacrifice which means that she'd be worthy of being murdered, having her throat slit and her body disemboweled if she ever strayed from the church teachings. And then roll right from that into the marriage ceremony. Mormons are like the Schrute family. Death is very romantic, but weddings are a bleak affair.

I forgot the veil ceremony. That's the one that cut me the deepest. After you go through the endowment ceremony, there's a veil (thick white curtain hanging from the ceiling to the floor to divide the room) where you make all the hand signs you just learned and speak all the passwords you just learned to a random man who grants you entrance to the portrayal of the highest kingdom of heaven: all white room with lush carpet and chandeliers and mirrors and lamps and couches. Everything white, carved, and gilded. And where you have to let go of your fear of ruining the pure cleanness and richness of the room because you know God wants you to be comfortable here. You made it. You did everything you needed to do to earn your entrance into the highest heaven. But back to the veil: when you go through the initiatory, they give you a new name, "which you should only divulge at a certain place at a certain time which shall hereafter be made known unto you." That time and place is at the veil. So, when the unknown dude on the other side of the veil asks you a certain question, you respond with, "Elizabeth." And he now knows your new name.

When you get married and endowed in the same day, this happens back to back. For me, I got endowed and then weeks later, sealed "for eternity." When you do it the wrong way, like I did, they still get what they want out of you. See, the catch is that when a woman gets endowed and then married, her husband is the man who pulls her through the veil, but if you get endowed and then later sealed, they perform a short veil ceremony so that the husband can pull his wife through the veil anyway. So there you are, a Mormon woman covered in the most unattractive clothing ever, and you tell your husband-in-five-minutes your secret new name. Does he tell you his? Fuck no! You weren't an authorized man behind the white curtain.

I felt so short-changed.

And then shoved right into the sealing ceremony where I had no consent to the words that were spoken, just told that I was promising to give myself to my husband (instructed beforehand that my response was to say yes) and hearing that he promises to receive me (also instructed beforehand to say yes).

And if you were good and proper Mormons, not sinners like we were, then you'd not have had sex at this point, and then go on to photo shoots and luncheons and receptions knowing that you are suddenly authorized to have sex and either you have to wait until the day is over and you're away from people, or you find a time to sneak it in. But either way, the wedding ceremony DID tell you to go forth, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. And that all fruitful productions from this temple sealing will be "born in the covenant" and automatically sealed as family members to the parents. I mean, honestly, Joseph had to pick one poignant sticking point to get people to convert to his cult. What better than to promise 1830s parents that all of their children who died in infancy and childhood were waiting for them on the other side of the veil and they could be a family forever after death if the parents would just live according to whatever he told them. Solid selling point.

Going back to the whole point of "I was a born and raised Mormon who fucked this process up and did it wrong..." I already had a baby by the time I got to this ritual. Therefore, he needed to be brought into the ceremony to be sealed to his two parents after we were sealed to each other. Can I tell you how fucking hard it is (and weird) to look forward to this moment so much only to be asked by everyone if you're going to bring your baby to be sealed to you? I suppose I should just chalk that up to ignorance, but fuck, was it insensitive. To be taught every single moment that if I or my husband died at any time, we wouldn't be together after death. To be taught every single moment that if my baby died, we wouldn't be together after death. To live in fear of those possibilities. And then to have everyone ask you if you're bringing your baby to that sealing ceremony. My response become practiced snark: No, we're still in the trial period and not sure if we want to commit to eternity yet. We might wanna return him.

Oh, right. And then there's no alcohol at the reception.