Skipping the Wedding, Embracing the Birth: A New Kind of Celebration

With our current understanding of human development, we now recognize that the foundation of who we are—our sense of self and how we perceive the world—is established remarkably early. Much of this imprinting occurs even before we are conceived or born.

While we can't go back to affect anything in our own prenatal lives, wouldn’t it be awesome if we made a conscious effort with the next generations – making sure that they develop with the best imprinting possible, giving them a lifelong gift of immeasurable value? 

How could we do it, though?

Since most of my work is directly or indirectly associated with this million dollar question, the answer is "in a lot of different ways!". 

For today though, I have a suggestion for one way that wouldn't be very difficult, and would probably feel really good to everyone involved.

Over the years of working with pregnant women, and having seven children myself – I’ve become very familiar with how “things” work. I’ve also been around for a while now, fully embracing my Crone status, which comes with finally figuring a lot of things out.

Let’s start with this - the social norm of planning a wedding for about a year prior to the event and all that goes into that. A year of relatively hard work, organizing an event for potentially hundreds of guests, making decisions that will satisfy everyone from grandma to the step mother. Considering everyone's schedules, as well as holidays and weather.

Throughout that busy year, as the big day approaches, it’s also expected that friends and family of the couple adjust their work and living schedules to prepare for and attend the wedding. Typical as well for each of those friends and family members to spend a significant amount of money for travel expenses to and from the wedding, for gifts for the couple, potentially lodging for a few days as well as incidental expenses. Altogether, the average cost for a guest to attend a wedding is around $700.

Now let's consider the cost of the wedding itself – an obscene amount of money for flowers, venue rental, caterers, wedding dress, bridesmaids dresses, tuxedo rentals, photographers, honeymoon…and so much more.

Resulting in an average cost (in the U.S.) of around $30,000.

I once attended an extravagant wedding where the venue was an old castle with an ocean view in New England, where the cost was well over $100,000 – and yes, it was super fun and beautiful. Ironically, though, the marriage lasted for just a few years. The last I heard, the couple were still recovering from a long bloody battle over custody of 2 beautiful, sweet and innocent girls after a very difficult divorce. I often think about the father of the bride that paid for the wedding just a few years before and if he thought his money was well spent.

We don’t even question this societal practice of spending a ridiculous amount of money on an event that lasts only a few hours - one that doesn’t ensure any long term value to anyone, except maybe for photographs and memories - which I agree hold some value.

I’m actually not surprised that this is the “way” right now. We have been living in unsustainable decadence for so long now being overcome with debt and slavery to “the system” just to survive - coupled with a fantasy of marriage and fairy tale weddings from the time we are old enough to sit in front of a tv screen that it makes sense that people would continue to engage in this practice as a last hold out with the possibility that what they saw in the Disney movies really was real and possible. Spoiler alert - not real, not possible. It never was.

Ironically, and conversely – we are filled with fear over CHILDBIRTH – something that truly is beautiful and life changing. It would be interesting if the two beliefs were reversed: where we had utter fear over planning and having a wedding, and a  beautiful fantasy over having a baby and creating a family.

I’d also like to interject here for a moment that I had the privilege of occasionally assisting my niece who works with an upscale catering company when she needed extra hands for wedding receptions. A wild experience! SO much money spent! Glass after glass of champagne and $100 plates of food thrown in the trash during clean up, not to mention the stress that was palpable from the key players (parents of the bride, parents of the groom, the bride, the groom) - as well as the drama that so very often is unavoidable at occasions where people have to be in the same room together whether they like or hate each other. Drunk guests, crying babies - I could go on and on. I had front row seats to these occasions - that I wouldn’t trade for anything, the result being a unique view into the whole crazy tradition that we share in our culture.

As a result of all of the above, my proposal is this –  that we take the nice, beautiful, fun aspects of what we usually associate with a wedding, including the costs that go along with it, and transfer it to the pregnancy and birth year.

Let’s break it down further by doing some math…

If the average cost for a wedding guest is $700 (this amount by the way, does not include bridal shower gifts, or pre-wedding anything) – and there are 200 guests that would attend – that comes to $140,000. Now, let’s add the average cost of the wedding itself, $30,000 and add it all up – that’s a total of $170,000.

I know – your head is already spinning! “What if…?” you’re saying to yourself…and yes, keep going! Can you even imagine being given $170,000 to have a baby?? Now THAT is a real dream fantasy that’s worth having!

Let’s just play for a few minutes and go further… let’s say that once you and your partner were sure that you wanted to have children together (maybe a similar commitment as getting married), that you had $20,000 to take a  vacation together to Spain, or Morocco, or Thailand or Iceland – with the intention of conceiving your baby during a really fun, beautiful time of connection together, and then from there, after the conception, you had the amount of money you would need to just live, and grow your baby, hiring others to clean your house, with a private chef that would only prepare delicious, organic food that was available to you all the time. If you were able to do whatever you wanted – whether that was take a nap, or go on a weekend long adventure in nature.

 You spent your time creating beautiful art, you gathered with other women to sing, and to laugh, and to talk about the upcoming birth. You had the resources to give birth WHEREVER you wanted to – with WHOEVER you wanted there. You had the resources to create a beautifully decorated postpartum NEST – one that you were so excited about spending time in after the birth with your precious baby. You could have bouquets of fresh flowers in your house ALL THE TIME! You could hire a clothes designer to make clothes specifically for your changing body…the list, like in a wedding, could go on and on. And the result would be rather than having one huge event that lasts just a few hours - you could have a whole year of bliss - for about the same cost.

Imagine…

Knowing what we know about human development – the feelings that would be coursing through your body would be full of happiness and love and anticipation for the arrival of this new person. You would feel safe and secure and happy and loved.

And your baby would feel the same things while developing. This would act as foundational imprinting to your baby, BECOMING A PART OF WHO THEY ARE. For life. Happiness would be imprinted in their cells. Feeling wanted, and safe, having trust – would be encoded in their organs as they develop. And then throughout the birth and afterwards, being surrounded by and loved by a significant number of friends and family – would give them the much needed sense of BELONGING.

Now that, to me, is money well spent. No matter what. I honestly cannot think of anyone I know that would say otherwise.

While the chances of us each getting $170,000 to have a baby may not seem realistic right now – we can still do the best we can with what we know. And I believe that we, as women – the mothers – really have so much power in how “things are done”. WE ultimately dictate social practices by just DOING them.

What if, when we made a life commitment to a partner, we asked everyone we knew to donate to a baby “fund”, or, more accurately a “building a strong future” fund – instead of gifts, or spending the money on costs associated with a wedding?

What if, in addition to the financial contributions, all the friends and family also pooled their resources together – such as property, vehicles, food, time, etc.? For example, Aunt Sue has a beautiful cabin on the lake that she usually rents out for vacation rentals and is sitting empty. She gifts this property to the new family for one year so that they have no mortgage or rental costs for that year, needing only to pay utilities. And then what if Uncle Scott has an extra car that he doesn’t really use, but is keeping it because he is emotionally attached to it and can loan it to the couple for one year? And then cousin Jessica offers to come to the house every day for 42 days postpartum to do laundry, while bringing free dinners from the restaurant that her brother works at. Mom agrees to buy the birth pool, with the condition that she gets it as a jacuzzi for her back deck afterwards. What if cousin Lindsay puts a social media campaign together to gather all clothing and baby needs for one year from the community?

We could get so creative! The point that I’m making – and yes, I used actual names of actual family members that had the actual resources that I listed – but the point is, that we have so many possibilities that we may not be thinking of.

And through the collective effort of the group of people that feel connected to the new baby coming, it’s possible that there would be enough support that both mother and father would be able to take one full year to devote to giving the best to the new baby and family.

What if?

There are many options that we have. RIGHT NOW.

This just makes sense – that we begin shifting our focus onto the things that truly have importance and value – that deeply affect us as individuals, as well as the whole. Engaging in social practices that SUPPORT us all in a real and tangible way.

Let’s start giving priority to this important time of a new human beings’ life, and come together to support this principle, sparing no expense, with the vision that maybe one day it will be normal and respected by everyone.

One day.

Let’s envision together a day where putting as much time, energy and money as we do now into a wedding – into the birth year of a new beautiful soul – is NORMAL and ACCEPTED – and a major part of how we act as human beings together – a practice that is a cornerstone of our traditional life.

Together, we can begin this shift.

Start talking to people about it – people like the woman at the park, people like your friends and relatives, but mostly, start talking about it with people like your daughters and sons and grandchildren.

Most importantly…let’s just start DOING it ourselves.