I started reading the Times' Vows section a couple years ago, after I realized people I went to college popped up in there every so often. You can learn some really interesting tidbits about people you sort of knew from their wedding announcements, like one former classmate of mine whose family apparently owns a plantation.
I'll admit I don't dwell much on the articles or personal stories; I just skim for basic details like age of bride and groom, where they went to college, whether I might know them (or of them), and what investment banks their fathers run. Not a high-minded activity, but interesting nonetheless.
One thing about this has started to bother me. There's something jarring in the way the announcement blurbs read. An example (names changed to protect the innocent):
Sarah Marie Weisman, a daughter of Judith Weisman and Allan R. Weisman of Summit, N.J., was married on Saturday evening to Samuel David Hirschman, the son of Linda and Robert Hirschman of Princeton, Mass. Rabbi Shlomo Levi officiated at a service on a private estate owned by the bride's family.
Mrs. Hirschman, 28, was until March a senior manager of loans at Merrill Lynch. She graduated from Dartmouth...
There's nothing but a space between paragraphs one and two, but suddenly, in a few milimeters, Sarah Marie has made the transition from high-powered, working Ms. Weisman to the jobless Mrs. Hirschman.
Of course, the sudden name change is far more common than the abandoned career, though that creeps up far more often than I would have thought among highly educated, successful women of my generation.
I suppose the one-line space in a newspaper column is a fairly appropriate way to describe these transitions. They're weirdly sudden. Not that the wedding ceremony described in paragraph one isn't a major threshold crossed, based on months of preparation and years of courtship, but it's still a strange thing. One minute (or paragraph) you've got one name, the next, you're someone else. One minute you're a rising star on Wall Street or some other industry, the next you're wifey.
Weird.
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1 comment:
And then there are people like me who take a very slow route to any change at all. We're finally living together after about 9 months of being married! :) People are always asking me "How's the married life?" And I always say, pretty much the same. If I had given up my career aspirations upon getting married, I'm sure things would feel different. But since we'd been acting like a married couple and had been dating for a gazillion years by the time we finally tied the knot, there wasn't any seismic shift. In fact, I found the move from having a fiance to having a husband far less abrupt than the switch from having a boyfriend to having a fiance since we had all the months in between planning and talking about the wedding. The main difference I've felt is a stronger sense of permanence and becoming part of each other's families. (Suddenly having a new sibling, my brother-in-law, is a bit odd!)
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