Every wedding invite should come with a plus one – but for mates, not dates
‘No plus ones.’
That was the one request of the bride and groom at a wedding I attended this summer.
The ceremony was small and intimate, and numbers were limited. Instead of a partner, I attended the wedding with three of my best and platonic girlfriends who had also been invited – and, surprise surprise, it was wonderful.
We danced with each other until the bottoms of our bare feet were black, we toasted to our decades-long friendship at our shared table, we laughed at speeches and wept into napkins. It was, in my opinion, how a wedding should be. A chance to observe people in love – and feel love in return.
But not all weddings are like that.
Bringing a romantic plus one can change the dynamic completely, adding to an environment that often tends to favour those in love, and pressure those who are not.
After all, how many Hollywood movies have been churned out based on the desperation to find a plus one for a wedding, lest you look like some tragic idiot without one?
It’s as though arriving at a wedding alone or with a friend is akin to arriving with 40 cats in tow, swinging a half-drunk bottle of sherry.
Perhaps because of this, people are beginning to question why the quest for a plus one needs to be so hard, or if it even needs to exist at all.
Why, in so many instances, are plus ones only valid (and invited!) when they are romantic, when a platonic partner could fill the role just as well, if not better?
I’ve had friends choose not to go to a wedding, rather than face the shame of going alone. A shame that’s brought about either through self-imposed feelings of loneliness, or unnecessary sympathy from family and friends.
Whether we like to admit it or not, the very institution of marriage is still deeply laced with traditions that – under any other context – we’d find pretty old-fashioned.
From ‘giving our daughters away’ and wearing white to represent purity, to throwing the bouquet at single women supposedly desperate to be next down the aisle, it’s enough to welcome raised eyebrows from me, put it that way.
Recently, a friend who attended a family wedding without a plus one told me that everyone in a couple received a shared gift bag to take home. My friend, on the other hand, had to share a bag with her parents. Before you ask, she’s 29, not 10.
She told me that it was weirdly mortifying. As if, because she wasn’t part of a couple, that she was essentially just someone’s child. She doesn’t even live with her parents!
Of course, there is the argument that, if you know a bunch of people at a wedding, you could simply go alone and you’d probably be fine. Weddings are, at the end of the day, a party.
But for anyone who only knows the bride and groom, bringing a friend along with them could be a real comfort. And, for an introvert like me, probably the difference between attending and not attending at all.
It’s also no weirder to bring along a friend that the bride and groom don’t know, than it is to bring a romantic partner they don’t know. Strangers are strangers, after all!
For anyone recovering from a break-up or divorce; for anyone not ‘out’ to their family yet, or for anyone who simply chooses to be alone and doesn’t want to change that, some traditional weddings are not, currently, the most forgiving of spaces – but platonic plus ones could alleviate at least part of that.
Whenever I picture myself getting married, it is a small affair, with two handfuls of loved ones. That said, the idea that my wedding would cause anyone to fret about their relationship status or invite people to treat them differently is bleak, to say the least.
I might not want a 500-guest extravaganza but – for anyone who might want to, for God’s sake, bring your mates.
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