lifestyle

Shadow weddings. If anyone suggests you have one, RUN.

 

A shadow wedding encourages you and your partner unload all the things you hate about each other, a week before the wedding, in a ceremony in front of your closest friends.

 

 

 

Engagement party. Bridal shower. Hen’s night. Buck’s night. All fairly standard pre-wedding traditions.

And then there’s the ‘Shadow Wedding’, a new trend designed to set you up for a life of matrimonial bliss. How? By encouraging you and your partner unload all the things you hate about each other, a week before the wedding, in a ceremony in front of your closest friends.

It’s a foolproof plan.

But if you’re still not convinced, here are the basic facts.

The Shadow Wedding is essentially a pre-wedding wedding, designed to be a counterpoint to the “light wedding” (read: the normal, lovely ceremony) a week or so before the big day.

The idea has apparently been around for a while, but has been developed (and commercialised) by husband and wife Jim Benson and Jessica Wolk Benson. The Bensons are both therapists, and before their wedding they wanted to make sure that the aired all their niggling worries about their future – and dealt with the problems head-on with humour.

For example, Jim told Jessica at their Shadow Wedding: “I vow, Jessica, to remain distant and aloof throughout our marriage, preferring that you – as the woman – take your rightful place as the emotional barometer for our relationship. And, in fact, I’m going to ask you to feel all of my unfelt feelings as well as all of your own.”

Jessica vowed to Jim: “I vow to demand that we return every single year to my family for the holidays solely out of obligation; a sense of no choice, no freedom but absolute, complete burden. And I will force you to come with me whether you want to or not.”

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They also wore their ugliest clothes, exchanged pieces of trash in the place of rings, and got their friends to throw mulch at them. So, pretty much the opposite of the wedding on the big day.

These days, the Bensons run a Shadow Weddings service, where – for a fee between $2,500 to $7,500 – they will help other happy couples share all the things about their partner that make then unhappy. On their website they explain:

The full spectrum of a real wedding experience, and of a real relationship, is far more multi-dimensional than these glossy images. When we marry one another, we marry all of our beloved, the light and the dark. This idealized scene omits any of the murky aspects of getting married — underlying relationship dynamics, family challenges, fear of commitment, doubts about each other — not to mention the stress and chaos involved in creating the actual wedding day.

Jessica and Jim Benson

It might sound totally crazy to ‘vow’ to the love of your life a bunch of terrible things right before your wedding – but the Bensons say it isn’t exactly a vow. In fact, it’s a way of acknowledging that you will make an effort not to do those things. SFGate writes:

At most shadow ceremonies, the bride and groom speak vows to each other that would be unthinkable at a light wedding. Benson and Wolk Benson explain that by saying “I vow,” they actually mean “I pray to release.”

In preparation for his two weddings, DeVere wrote his light wedding vows first, and then flipped each one to create his shadow vow.

For example, his actual vow: “I vow to love the person that you are and do not wish to change you into someone else,” became its shadow vow: “I vow to always expect perfection from you and belittle you when you fall short.”

Of course, theirs is the danger that these promises become self-fulfilling prophecies – and promising to treat your partner terribly is a less than ideal way to enter into your marriage. Some writers have also pointed out that a Shadow Wedding could be considered pointless, because isn’t that what dating is supposed to be about?

Tracy Moore writes for Jezebel:

Shadow Wedding: isn’t that what dating is supposed to be all about?

I couldn’t agree more, and honestly I truly love the spirit of that sentiment. And yet — there is already an existing experience out there that doesn’t omit the murky aspects of getting married, that should explore relationship dynamics and family challenges and fear of commitment, and it doesn’t require the planning of a second wedding ceremony: It’s called dating. Living together. Also: Pre-marital counselling.

If you are dating someone, you are, for all intents and purposes, allegedly getting to know them. You are ostensibly finding out that they are not necessarily the person who courted you, but a real, flawed, actual person who has baggage and is sometimes going to be pretty full of shit. Just like you.

So is a Shadow Wedding a completely pointless exercise, and a waste of money? Or is it a chance to head into years of wedded bliss, knowing that you’ve been completely honest and open with each other?

Do you think Shadow Weddings are an unnecessary extra, or something that will help make your “light wedding” even more light-hearted?