TOnight we are headed to That Sister’s second reception. Yes, she is having two. If you followed my bride blog you may recall that I had two as well. The first was much more fancy, with a full dinner, the second was rather informal and quite cold. (Though the cold was expected, since we were holding a party outside, at night, in the middle of October, in Washington)
We won’t talk about “cultural hall receptions” quite yet, though I think they are a unique phenomenon worth covering. One of you has been asking me to write some “LDS Culture” posts (I’m sorry I can’t remember who), and I realized that this second reception is something that seems so normal to all of us but isn’t quite as common for those outside of our faith. Or is it? Do other cultures tend to routinely have a reception in her hometown, and then a reception in his?
Almost every LDS couple I know of has one. The couple gets married at the temple closest to where she is from, and then a second reception in his hometown follows either a few days or a few weeks later. Friends of ours had their second reception several months after the first. My friend from college just had three receptions, the first in SLC where she got married, then another in her hometown, and the last one in his hometown.
I’ve thought a lot about why this happens, and I do have one theory. Many non-LDS couples date for years, and live together for much of that time. They often feel established enough in a certain place to call it home, and that is where they want to have their reception. They are both working professionals and usually fund the wedding on their own. LDS Couples usually don’t date for very long, they are usually right out of high school and thus not very established in a new place, and because they are young their parents fund their wedding.
As for why the bride gets to have the wedding closest to her hometown, or at the location of her choice? No specific reason behind that, it’s just tradition, and a needed one. Helps to eliminate fights about what temple to be married in.
That Sister asked me to take pictures of the reception tonight so I will have lots to share with you. Several of the bridesmaids and groomsmen will be in attendance but last I heard we aren’t even supposed to dress in our birdcage veils and black knee length dresses this time. I don’t know much about it, I’m just the one taking the pictures. 
July 30th, 2009 on 9:15 am
Bring on the multiple receptions! I’m not LDS and I’m having 3. A tiny reception immeidately following our tiny wedding. Then a larger open invitation drop-in for all the tons of people we know but couldn’t invite about a month later. And then one in Michigan for our extended families.
Question. Did you wear your wedding dress at your 2nd reception?
Reply
Annie @ Marry You Me Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Almost everybody does…I learned this the hard way when my MIL told me I would be wearing it to the cultural hall reception she was having for us where she lives!
Reply
July 30th, 2009 on 10:00 am
Can I ask why it is that LDS couples generally date for a very short time? Is it encouraged that way for a specific reason, or is that just the norm, so it just happens that way?
How do interfaith marriages work? Does the non-LDS partner have to convert?
Thanks,
K
Reply
Katy Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 10:17 am
One explanation for why we tend to date a shorter amount of time (I think at least) is since we don’t engage in premarital sex , it’s best to not have a long engagement! If you’re living together, or at least not doing the whole saving yourself for marriage thing, then what’s the big deal to wait a year or so to get married.
But to marry in the temple, the couples cannot have engaged in premarital sex whatsoever – being morally clean is part of getting a temple reccommend. *(notice I said PREmarital sex – if you were married once before and now are remarrying someone else in the temple, that’s different – the rule is being chaste when not married and fidelity in marriage)
My personal advice to other LDS couples – if they were to ever ask – is that you DATE a long time or however long you need to and then be ENGAGED a SHORT time period.
To your second question – - both people need to be members of the church with temple reccomends to marry in the temple. An LDS gal or guy can marry anyone of any faith outside the temple and that person (like all people) are welcome to attend church and participate in any church activity that they and their spouse want to, but the only they cannot do is have their marriage sealed for eternity (if/when the non-LDS spouse converts and can get a temple reccommend, then they can be sealed!)
Reply
Kristin Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 10:43 am
I commend couples who make vows to stay sexually pure before they are married. But I have some of the same concerns that phruphru posted below. Why is it that LDS couples marry so young, usually without finishing school first? I can’t believe that it only has to do with sex. My husband and I dated and were engaged for a collective 4.5 years. We endured a long distance relationship for 3 of those years. And we saved ourselves for our wedding night. That’s not to say it wasn’t an immense struggle to remain pure. But our first priority was to finish school.
It just seems that LDS couples date for short periods of time and are engaged for an even shorter amount of time. Aside from sex, did you (and anyone else who wants to chime in) feel other pressures to marry quickly and young?
Reply
Turtle Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 10:50 am
I agree, Kristin. I think that the culture of marrying young and quickly must have to do with many other things in addition to sex. I knew many couples (I went to a very Catholic University) who saved sex for marriage and didn’t live together, and all of the ones I’m thinking of dated for 4+ years. I would be interested to know what else contributes to the short courtships. Thanks for sharing with us Jenna!
Reply
Katy Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 11:56 am
There is definately more to why we LDS do what we do with engagements/marriages than sex – you’re right about that, and I didn’t meant to imply it’s the only reason, just threw it out there as one reason why we have shorter engagements. You’re right – it’s a struggle to remain pure, especially when you’ve taken that bigger step to get engaged.
We could have a long discussion about why LDS couples tend to marry younger/quicker – - AND – - I can’t say I speak for all LDS people, just what I’ve observed as a lifetime devout member, but here’s just one reason to throw out – - the family unit is so important and fundamental to our religion. We want to have these family experiences so we tend to marry a little younger. But education is also very important, so most LDS couples do what they can to make it all work (education, jobs, etc).
I can see where other LDS young people would say they felt pressure to marry young, but I never did. I think more of that pressure may come from one’s family/extended family just as much if not more than the LDS community. Our church leaders don’t mandate an age to be married by or counsel us on how long we should date and be engaged for. Those decisions are made by individuals, but of course the community does influence all this. I never felt pressured to marry young, but that’s mostly because my mom encouraged me to date for a long/good amount of time. Even if others had made me feel that I needed to marry ASAP, I wouldn’t have cared.
Reply
Julie Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
I also agree that the whole ‘waiting for sex’ reason seems funny for one of the justifications for marrying early. My husband and I had been together for 5.5 years, including a year and a half engagement, before we got married, and we waited until we were married. It’s also not as though we met at 14 and had to wait for an appropriate age to wed; my husband had already graduated medical school and I was in my 4th year of my Ph.D. program. Waiting was never an issue for us — we both were in agreement that it was far better to hold off on getting married until we knew 100% that it was right, and not rush it just for the sake of sex.
I’ve had two LDS friends, one from high school and one from my freshman year of college. They both were discouraged from dating at all until they were old enough to be married; it was like the parents believed that there was no point in just dating if it wasn’t going to lead to an immediate marriage. I don’t understand that concept — is it just that parents do not trust their children to abstain so it is better to have no emotional relationships, or is the act of ‘dating’ actually discouraged? I understand marrying young to start a family since it is central to the religion, but why is it a bad thing to date before you are rapidly approaching the ‘appropriate’ time to marry? Isn’t the point of dating to spend a significant amount of time with someone to ensure that you meet the right person?
Reply
JessicaMayBe Reply:
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Honestly, not everyone can wait 5 years…. to get a Temple Recommend (as I understand it) you not only have to NOT have sex, you can’t be feeling up boobies or doing anything that would suggest “heavy petting.” It may be hard to wait until marriage to have sex, but it’s even MORE difficult to JUST make out, especially when you KNOW you want to be with someone forever. It becomes really easy to compromise oneself, especially after being engaged and planning your futures together.
My folks dated 5 years and didn’t have sex, but they don’t exactly tell us what they DID do.
The Hubs and I dated for six months before we got engaged, and were engaged about 5 and a half months. I would have never guessed I’d know that soon; I dated a guy in high school and college for two years and I was never comfortable talking about marriage to him. But with the Hubs, I just knew. He was raised LDS but left the church, and I’m a Christian (good pastor’s daughter, you know). We didn’t have sex until we were married, but I think if we had to wait a few years, we’d be awwwwfully tempted to do so. However, I KNEW this was the man I was going to be with forever, and the idea of living apart or of not being a family was just so sad I didn’t want to think of it. So we got married a few weeks before our one year dating anniversary. And now we’ve been married for two years!
I think it can be dangerous to marry young and fast if one of you hasn’t had a lot of experience dating. I was the Hubs first girlfriend, which was cool but scary at the same time; everything was new for him. But I’d been in several long-term relationships, and I knew from them what I DIDN’T want. When I started dating the Hubs, it was so obvious that this was what I had been waiting for all that time. So it made sense to get married faster than I’d planned (my decided upon age to marry was 25. I turn 25 in October. Didn’t go according to plan, exactly).
I think it’s definitely different for everyone. But I do believe there is something really beautiful about committing to someone as soon as you know, and learning about life together along the way.
Reply
Natalie Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
I don’t think it has everything to do with sex, maybe for some couples, but I think LDS teens start to be focused on marriage early. From age 12, we’re thinking it in church and whatnot. For me it was all, graduate high school, and get married and go to college — with the latter two happening at the same time.
But I think most nonLDS people (going by my older single coworkers and nonLDS friends here) think college, career and then to find someone.
Reply
Annie @ Marry You Me Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Hi Kat,
(Jenna I hope you don’t mind if I answer this, I have some experience in this dept.!) If an LDS member has an interfaith marriage and wants to be married in the temple to be sealed for time and all eternity, then yes, the non-Mormon would need to convert. LDS members can have “civil” marriages (not temple sealings) however. My husband was raised LDS and I am not a member, but since he was not practicing we had a Christian ceremony with a Methodist Pastor. This was okay with his family since his mother is LDS but his father is not and they also had a “civil” marriage.
Reply
July 30th, 2009 on 10:07 am
I think the second reception is starting to become “more normal” when families are larger and spread across the country. Especially given the current economic conditions effecting travel budgets. That said my family is rural southern baptist and our hometown reception seemed a bit odd to a few of them but they were all thankful they didn’t feel pressured to make the trip to the wedding since they knew a few weeks later we would have a “normal reception” in their church fellowship hall. The only people who didn’t question it at all were my LDS friends….which makes sense now that I think about it.
Reply
Kristin Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 10:19 am
I agree CeCe. We had two “receptions.” My husband and I were married in MD at my home church. My in-laws hosted the second at their house in NJ. Since our wedding guest list had to be limited due to the budget, not everyone we might have wanted to be there could be invited. A second reception allowed us to celebrate with many more people.
Reply
July 30th, 2009 on 10:10 am
Hi Jenna – I very much enjoy your openness about LDS culture and find it truly fascinating, as I’ve not personally known anyone of that faith. Remember the reader on Weddingbee that asked, once upon a time, who cleaned the bathrooms in the temple? Yeah, that was me.
Reply
July 30th, 2009 on 10:13 am
I just wanted to say that there is an (Irish) Catholic tradition of getting married in the bride’s parish. That tradition has fallen by the wayside as a lot of couples decide to get married in their home town, as you described above, or somewhere else entirely. But, especially if the bride’s parents have offered to host the wedding, it is still very common for the bride to go home to the parish she grew up in to be married. That is why I planned a wedding from 1000 miles away and my mother planned hers from all the way across the Atlantic.
Reply
July 30th, 2009 on 10:24 am
Could it also be because LDS engagements are so short, that multiple receptions are favored to minimize guest travel? When you’re engaged for a longer period of time and can send STDs to alert friends and family that travel plans need to be made, you don’t need to plan multiple receptions.
Just a thought.
Reply
July 30th, 2009 on 10:30 am
Jenna – random question for you: Do LDS couples ever choose to buck the tradition and do a “Destination Temple Wedding”? Like Nauvoo or Hawaii or a neutral temple inbetween two families?
Reply
Erin Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Jenna’s was kind of a destination temple wedding because she was married in Seattle and it looks like her sister was married in a temple closer to where they are from in Eastern Washington (3+ hours from Seattle I’m assuming).
Reply
kacey Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 11:29 pm
oh for sure. sometimes LDS couples get married in a temple just because they think that one is especially pretty or it’s in a fabulous location…like hawaii or something. it’s less common, but it does happen.
Reply
July 30th, 2009 on 10:31 am
Interesting! I love these culture-type posts. I also got married in my home parish/church and most of my girlfriends got married in their hometown, too. (But we didn’t have receptions in our grooms’ hometowns.) I think it’s awesome that you get to wear your dress twice!
I know there is definitely a huge importance/sanctity placed on marriage in the LDS faith and I know that’s why so many women get married young, but how does education figure into this situation? I may be just basing this on your openness about the struggles to finish your college degree, but it seems like a lot of women get married before they finish school. This is hard to write without sounding judge-y, but I’m genuinely curious because it goes against so much of what I was taught growing up. (Disclaimer: I am an immigrant and education was always touted to me/kind of shoved down my throat as the No. 1 way to achieve the American Dream, get ahead, have a better life, etc., etc.) Jenna, were your parents OK with you not finishing your degree before getting married? Did your sister finish hers?
Reply
July 30th, 2009 on 10:57 am
My problem with the cultural hall receptions (I’m not LDS, but most of my friends are) is that people show up in jeans or other casual attire. It has happened at almost every single one I have been to and it seems kind of disrespectful to the couple.
Reply
July 30th, 2009 on 11:21 am
Yeah – an LDS culture post!! (I’m the one always requesting these – thank you!). It does seem like the LDS are on warp speed to us non-LDSers: short courtship, short engagement, and *boom* a baby! There are other sub-cultures in the US that are similar (marry young, have babies quickly) – but often those communities are less educated, lower SES, etc.
I think that is why it is always seems so “shocking” that it (starting a family young) is part of the LDS way because education seems to be very encouraged in LDS and it is a very middle-class, upwardly mobile group. If we remove LDSers from the census data, there is a very clear picture of who gets married and has children at a young age – but LDSers don’t fit that demographic.
Regarding why LDSers do everything at warp speed – I don’t think it has anything to do with sex – I think it is because it is deeply routed in the culture. That is what their friends, siblings, cousins, parents did – and so that is what you do too. It’s probably the same reason why I married my husband after 5 years together (1 yr engagement, 2 years of living together) – because that is part of my “culture” – ALL of my friends have gotten married in their late 20′s (27+) after years of dating. This isn’t “if your friends jumped off a bridge would you…” – this is culture. Maybe snotty Ivy League grad school culture – but it is the culture (and sadly waiting FOREVER to have babies is also part of this culture). (Or sub-culture – because many of us are part of a larger similar culture). And to take a guess at why warp speed is part of the culture – it is a relatively young religion. I’m sure that a lot of LDSers had LDS grandparents that remember when their religion really felt like an “outside” religion that wasn’t accepted by society, etc. When people feel like outsiders, you cling tightly to people who are the same – and family was the center of their lives. I’m sure there was also tremendous pressure to increase church membership, and having 7 kids would do that! But also, though family is important in all churches, it sounds particularly central to LDS (from what Jenna has talked about) so as soon as you are old enough to be able, they want to do the one thing that their church has held up as the best, most wonderful thing to do – have a family. I’m done with the longest comment ever. Sorry! Thanks for the culture post!
Reply
Katy Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 11:43 am
No, I usually win for the longest comments ever….
We could talk all day long on the subject of why LDS couples marry a little quicker and younger, but you got it pretty much right – - having a family is VERY important to us. We believe it’s one of the fundamental, most important experiences we can have in this life as it teaches us all those things that parenthood/marriage committment teaches us, plus we better understand the love God has for us His children by having children of our own, etc.
I didn’t mean to imply earlier that the only reason for our different marriage/engagement practices was sex – I think the no-premarital sex component only influences the shorter engagements which would impact a couple no matter what their age. But as all things in life, there is no one ‘pat’ answer as to why things occur the way they do in a particular culture – there are many reasons and often different for each person in that culture.
Reply
phruphru Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
I like both of your responses; thanks, ladies. Erin, your “culture” sounds a lot like mine. Most of my friends would think I was crazy to get married within a few months of knowing my now-husband without him first finishing law school. But if I were LDS, maybe my friends would think I was crazy for *not* getting married before he/we finished school.
Katy, I’m obviously not LDS, but I am exploring my relationship with God and trying to make it deeper and I really love what you wrote about understanding God’s love for us by raising children of our own. Beautiful sentiment; God is everywhere.
Also, I clicked on your blog and your boys are just adorable
Reply
July 30th, 2009 on 11:31 am
Having the wedding closest to the bride’s home is definitely tradition, and when we got married in Salt Lake where Dave’s family was I had soooo many people ask us why we got married there instead of in California, like we were so peculiar. I really like reading these types of posts, even as an LDS member, because it makes you realize some things that really are “different” about our culture that you don’t think about much!
Reply
kacey Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 11:35 pm
my husband and i were sealed in the salt lake temple. he’s from california and i grew up in the midwest…but my family had since moved to idaho. i didn’t have any friends or emotionally attachment to idaho and wouldn’t have known anyone in california (plus my in-laws aren’t LDS)…so we opted for utah where we have both lived and worked and attended college. we had a big reception in SLC and a little backyard open house in cali. (and not EVERYONE gets married before they earn their degree…my wedding was during my third year of teaching.)
different strokes for different folks
Reply
July 30th, 2009 on 11:46 am
I find this very interesting, thanks for sharing, Jenna. My husband and I met when I was 19 and got married when I was 24 and remained pure throughout our dating/engagement. We also did not live together. Perhaps it is the community of people I surround myself with but I know many Christian couples who have done the same thing. I feel like perhaps it would be better to say that most secular couples tend to live together, engage in pre-marital sex, etc…? Just a thought. Also- I saw someone said that you could be sealed after being previously married– I would assume that would be because of being widowed? Are there divorces within LDS or is it more like Catholic where the state recognizes you are divorced but according to the church you are still married?
Reply
Katy Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
That was me that said stuff about remarriage….
You can be remarried/sealed to someone else in the temple if:
*you’re previous marriage was done only civilly (sp?) (outside the temple, so not sealed together at all) but are now civilly/legally divorced
*if you were married in temple to someone else, are now legally divorced, and also sought/receieved a “temple divorce” (goes through higher church leaders for approval and is not a quick and easy thing to come by)
*I may have left something out, but these are the most common scenarios. Basically, to remarry in the temple, you can’t be legally married to anyone else and if you had a previous sealing performed it must be dissolved by higher church leaders before be sealed to the new person
hope that answers your question!
Reply
Kristin Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Katy,
I had heard that men could be sealed more than once, if perhaps his first wife had died and he chooses to remarry. But that women were only allowed to be sealed once. Is this correct or have I been misinformed?
Reply
JessicaMayBe Reply:
August 3rd, 2009 at 1:09 pm
CORRECT. Yeah…. let’s just leave it at that.
Reply
July 30th, 2009 on 12:08 pm
I’m non-LDS and got married last year. We have been to a lot of our friends’ weddings this season as well. I believe that we do not have two receptions because everyone is allowed to come to our ceremonies. Since the ceremony is the important part of the wedding, people are expected to travel if they want to attend. I think this is the biggest difference and why we do not typically have two receptions, regardless if couples have lived together or established their lives in a new place prior to marriage.
Reply
July 30th, 2009 on 12:22 pm
One more cultural question– what if you don’t find the right person for you early in life or at all or if you simply prefer to stay single? Is there a culture of single LDS people? It seems like it’s such an important part of LDS culture to get married and have children– I wonder how it is to not be a part of that aspect of the church. Thanks again!
Reply
Sophia Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
I’m just going to jump in here and say that the older singles issue is much talked about on the bloggernacle- the name all the Mormon blogs have given themselves, taken from the Mormon Tabernacle choir, cute right?
The singles ward is for people aged 18-31, where young singles go to church and meet one another, so it is definitely hard to “graduate” from there without a mate. A lot of my older (27,28,29) Mormon friends feel a lot of pressure to get married, or else they feel like they’re kind of in limbo because the Church places so much importance on families. I think it’s one of the most beautiful tenets of doctrine, that commitment to family, but the other side of it is that if you *don’t* have a family you can feel a little bereft. From everything I’ve read/heard the Church seems to be making a concerted effort to be more inclusive of older singles/never marrieds in the Church.
Reply
phruphru Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Very interesting. I like the term “bloggernacle,” too. Ha!
What about divorced Mormons? How are they accepted? Or is divorce pretty rare, in general?
Reply
Sophia Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
There is no official rule against divorce (my ex’s parents were divorced, and his sister just go divorced) but there is definitely the expectation that you do everything in your power- counseling, working it out, etc.- to save the marriage. Probably in line with most Protestant thinking- divorce isn’t forbidden, but it should definitely be a last resort. As to the numbers of divorce statistics vary wildly- there was a cool discussion over at feministmormonhousewives.org about different perspectives on the strength of temple marriages. A few neutral sources seem to line up with saying that Mormons have a slightly lower incidence of divorce than other groups, and those married in the temple are even less likely to divorce. Um, sorry Jenna if I’m just like blahblahblah all over your blog here
Reply
Erin Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Sophia -are you LDS – or just your ex-boyfriend/husband? I like your comments.
Reply
Sophia Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Well…..I’m not LDS but my ex-fiance/boyfriend is. We dated for two years, I waited for him on his two year mission, and about 6 months before he came home he ended it because I wasn’t LDS. I’m very much a researcher though, and I love learning new things, so in between going to Church every Sunday with him and hanging out with his family 4 nights out of 7 I read the Book of Mormon a few times, hooked up with a feminist Mormon blog that I love to read to this day, and I’ve read *so many books*, from those written by Church elders to those written by journalists and historians. My roommate is an ex-member from a very traditional household, but when she came out as a lesbian she left the Church. We have a lot of silly inside jokes that most people outside of Mormon circles just don’t get. My family was never religious, so as strange as it seems I feel most tied to Mormonism as the religion of my upbringing, even if it was for only 4 years from 21 to 25
Reply
July 30th, 2009 on 1:18 pm
I’m not part of the LDS faith, but I do go to a Christian church that follows many of the same moral guidelines as LDS. It is relatively common to marry before you are 25 in our church, although you do see many couples where the bride is much younger (18 or 19). The joke in our church is that you should expect a proposal around the “1 year mark” and for the most part it has truth to it. Engagements generally last about 6 months. I think the main reason for short dating periods in my church has to do with the premarital sex component, as well as tradition. Most of the parents in our church also married young or had short courtships.
This however isn’t true for everyone. For example, my fiance and I have been dating for 3 years and will have had an engagement of 17 months when we get married next June. It’s hard. It’s really hard, but it happened out of necessity more than anything. We were both in the middle of college when we started dating, and it just wasn’t realistic for him to be finishing up his degree and working to support 2 people. So we’re waiting.
Reply
July 30th, 2009 on 2:46 pm
I’m ok with short engagements, but what freaks me out are the short dating periods- sometimes people date for 3 weeks before proposing, or 6 weeks, or 3 months. The thing is this is not an isolated occurrence. My ex’s sister had a family blog that I followed, and she had done a “wedding tag” thing where you answered various questions like how long did you date, how long were you engaged, and she tagged like 15 people and I thought “meh, what else to do but surf random blogs?”. Literally, not ONE of those people tagged dated for more than 6 months before they were engaged, and that was just one outlier- all the rest were engaged after dating for less than 3 months, one was engaged after 2 weeks. And then the longest engagement was 3 months, the shortest was a month or something. To each his/her own, but it confuses me a bit- one would think that with the importance of choosing someone to spend not just this life, but *eternity* with, and with the aversion to divorce, people would be very cautious about selecting mates. Not to say they’re not cautious it’s just… getting engaged after 3 weeks freaks me out a little bit, and I don’t have anywhere near the expectations of marriage that LDS couples do, you know?
I do remember going to a singles ward and having the bishop tell the congregation that any two worthy members can have a strong marriage, and not to get wrapped up in true love, because love is a commitment more than anything else, so maybe that’s why?
Reply
Erin Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
This culture post is really making my day! I really like your comment Sophia – dating under 3 months! I am 29 and my husband is 35 – we were married 1 year ago. One of our friends (29) is about to propose to his girlfriend – and they’ve been dating for less than a year (9 months). Needless to say, a lot of his friends are freaking out because it is “so soon” – and the reason we are freaking out is because a lot of us think our marriages are strong BECAUSE we dated for so long before getting engaged. We didn’t spend our dating period “waiting” for a proposal, but really getting to know each other and deciding if we wanted to spend our lives together – and most of us have done a lot of dating and thus joke that we’ve made very “informed” decisions in choosing a spouse! Anyways, I agree with you, considering the church’s views on marriage, you’d think that they didn’t believe that just any ol’ LDS member would do – but that you should find the best match for all of eternity. Jenna, other LDS peeps, your thoughts? Keep these culture posts coming! Fascinating!
Reply
Sophia Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Hey Erin, I like the culture talks too- I have a really diverse group of friends- races/religions/etc.- and I love discovering all these neat things we have in common and things that are different.
I just wanted to clarify that they did say that you should be compatible with the person- you know, not marry someone that was totally different that you had nothing in common with- but they were pretty adamant about not getting caught up in finding the “perfect” mate, because as long as both people were strong members, they would be committed to a strong marriage and being good parents, etc. I think this advice makes sense in some ways, but in others I think it does contribute to getting married quickly and maybe thinking that the blessings of the temple will kind of smooth the way for you as you get to know each other more.
I’m sure we all know people that have gotten married after very long engagements/dating and gotten divorced, and others that were married within a year of meeting and are still together, so of course it takes all kinds
Reply
Turtle Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
This is really interesting. I agree that a longer courtship doesn’t guarantee anything, but I don’t see how if the partnership is right that agreeing to test the relationship with a little time could hurt.
One possible thing is just that the LDS concept of marriage is different– not that 2 compatible people make it work, but that the same beliefs and commitments about marriage and family make it work. Does that make any sense?
Reply
Sophia Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
I think that’s exactly it- when the Church is such a huge part of so many aspects of your life, if the two people are both committed to it it takes contention out of so many things. If you’re both active members, a lot of your actions are determined by Church expectations and morals and such, so you’ll just naturally have very common goals that form the bedrock of your marriage. I’m sure this is the same thing for many other orthodox/traditional religions, where a lot of the spheres of life have expected ways of behaving. And honestly, it makes a lot of sense and *does* create a strong unified marriage. It kind of comes down to that classic dichotomy of collectivist versus individualistic cultures. When everyone shares the same values there is harmony, a sense of group solidarity, and lots of support and focus on a shared goal, but less individual “wiggle” room or acceptable differences. In more individualistic religions/societies/groups there are about as many ways to do a thing as you can dream up- but way less support and harmony, because of individual motives trumping group needs. I think both have pros and cons, and I’m thankful we all can choose which way of life- or a mix of the two- works best for us.
Reply
Turtle Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
fascinating. I totally agree that you, Sophia, that you would find a version of this conception of marriage in many other traditional/orthodox religions and traditional societies all over the world. Just think of the concept of arranged marriages and other ways that people make partnerships work that challenge our more individualistic conception of things. Great food for thought!
Reply
phruphru Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
I was just about to mention arranged marriage, Turtle! My husband comes from a background where arranged marriage is the norm. Forget about “dating” someone for three months and getting married; try meeting someone a week before you are committed to spending your entire life together — and you have never been alone with this person once. His extended family has arranged marriage success stories. As you guys have mentioned, two people who come from similar backgrounds and hold the same beliefs/moral bedrock automatically have a lot of common ground. But there certainly are examples of complete mismatches (i.e., people put together solely based on horoscopes, etc.). Divorce is an absolute taboo, though, so if your arranged marriage didn’t work out, you’re stuck being miserable for the rest of your life. Good times.
Reply
kacey Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
i also think it’s interesting to think about how much you learn about your spouse after you are married…no matter how long you dated or were engaged.
Reply
July 30th, 2009 on 2:55 pm
Hi Jenna,
Your comment about non-LDS couples kind of through me for a loop. You said: “Many non-LDS couples date for years, and live together for much of that time. They often feel established enough in a certain place to call it home, and that is where they want to have their reception. They are both working professionals and usually fund the wedding on their own.” Those all seem like such a random bunch of generalizations grouped together to characterize non-LDS couples. I’m not trying to be a hater or anything but I kind of feel like non-LDS couples are really all over the place. Some date for a short time, some don’t live together, some are certainly not professionals and even if they are they don’t fund their weddings. Know what I mean?
Thanks for the post about LDS culture. It’s very interesting to hear about how weddings/marriages are viewed across cultures.
Reply
mhb Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
I felt the same way about that line – it made me bristle. Being non-LDS doesn’t mean DH and I lived together or jumped in bed with each other during the 4 years we were dating and the year we were engaged… and our parents paid for 95% of our wedding/honeymoon. We did get married in the city where we’ve settled as individuals and where we continue to live, which was unusual for my family and caused some friction – everyone expected me to “come home” for the wedding.
“Non-LDS” is an overly broad term, I think. As fairly devout Catholics, DH and I planned our wedding quite differently than this flippant general description.
Reply
kacey Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
not to butt in, but i don’t think it was jenna’s intention to offend. those WERE generalizatons…she said “many” couples, not all. i think she was just trying to express how LDS couples are different than many others out in the general population. i don’t think she meant to imply that non-LDS couples do everything the same way. that’s not how it came off to me, anyway…
in fact, the things she said about LDS couples are generalizations too! not every woman dates for 3 months, spends a month engaged, gets married at 19, is sealed in her “home” temple and has multiple receptions. she’s just pointing out that those things are sometimes common in our culture. half of those things definitely do NOT describe my courtship/wedding…but i’m not offended that they were mentioned.
every couple is different. some just have commonalities associated with their culture.
Reply
Sharon Reply:
August 1st, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Hi Kacey, Thanks for your reply. I hadn’t read it the way you explained it but now looking back I can totally see what you mean and that that’s more what Jenna was trying to say.
I didn’t really get offended and didn’t think Jenna was trying to offend. I just think the way that sentence was written was odd and inaccurate. If she had just started the sentence with “Some” instead of “Many” I wouldn’t have even thought twice about it. I sincerely don’t think that many non-LDS couples live together before marriage or are working professionals, etc… Maybe “many” compared to LDS couples. Would that be closer to the point?
Sorry, I realize this might sound silly… I’m knee deep in grading students’ papers and clearly need some perspective….
Reply
July 30th, 2009 on 5:36 pm
DH and I are LDS, and we decided to get married at a temple that was in UT, between my home state of AZ and his home state of CO. Worked out well that way!
And we only had one reception, the night of the wedding in UT. I had no desire to celebrate my wedding on a different day.
DH and I dated for 8 months before becoming engaged, which is quite a bit longer than a lot of LDS couples. There is definitely pressure to get married and start a family, and I’m happy to say we’re doing things differently! We’ve been married for 6 years and we don’t have any kids yet- and we enjoy it that way! LOL. I can’t imagine getting married after a few months of knowing each other, like a lot of LDS couples do. I think you need to get to know your significant other before committing to them. I also (personally) think that it’s important for couples to have 2 or 3 years alone together before having kids. I’m not saying that it’s necessary, but for us it has worked really well. I feel like DH is my best friend and that I know him incredibly well, and we’ll have a lot of fun alone together once our kids are grown. Call me selfish (although I am decidedly not), but I didn’t want to give up my identity and immediately begin having kids and become “Mom” for the rest of my life. I can’t wait to have kids and add to our family, but I wanted to have alone time with DH and time to enjoy our life together as just a couple before having kids. For us, it’s worked well. It obviously isn’t the first choice for a lot of people.
I also think the excuse that LDS couples get married quickly because they don’t engage in premarital sex is ridiculous. Get some self-control, people!
Sorry, off my soapbox now. I hope I haven’t offended anyone.
Reply
mhb Reply:
July 30th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
No offense here. You and your DH sound a lot like us… we’ll happily welcome kids… in a few years!
Reply
Alisha Reply:
August 3rd, 2009 at 7:33 am
Reply
July 31st, 2009 on 2:42 am
not to take a completely different turn from where the comments are going, but since they weren’t really going along with the original post i guess it’s not bad
i just wanted to throw in my two cents about “cultural hall receptions” before you make your post about it or whatever. i had my wedding reception in my home ward’s cultural hall, and while i would have really liked to have it in some other place because of the stigma placed on it by mormons, of all people (i would have really liked to have it at our neighbor’s house, because that’s where they filmed “father of the bride”… ahh…), i think that it turned out perfectly. my friends were there, my family was there, we danced, we ate, and everything was just perfect. at the end of the night i wanted to just stay at the party.
i guess that i have a hard time with the fact that my reception even fits in a category, that it’s a “phenomenon,” that when i told a friend at BYU that i was having our reception in a cultural hall, she just kind of paused and said, “oh.” we were engaged for four months, which leaves no time to try and find a different place, and i just don’t think that a wedding needs to be dictated like that. also, cultural halls are freeeee! unlike many other churches, even. i also love our church building because 1) that’s where i grew up going to church for 18 years, 2) it has a cool courtyard, 3) it’s in a decent neighborhood, and so on. i had more of a connection to it than i do to any other building in my hometown that we could have rented out for tons of money (in southern california it can get outrageously expensive).
honestly, the most important part of the day for me was the wedding ceremony in the morning (which is something that i’ve noticed you’ve emphasized in previous posts), so why does it matter where the reception is? i was only self-conscious about it because my other LDS friends would joke with me about it. i’ve been to weddings for friends of other faiths, and it’s completely normal to have their wedding in the chapel and then move to another room in the church building for the reception. granted, our wedding wasn’t in the building at all, but you get the point.
anyway. i hope i don’t sound like i’m attacking or anything. to answer the original question, we only had one reception. my husband grew up in the marshall islands so as much as i would have liked to have a nice reception in paradise, it just wasn’t possible.
and to address the other comments, i think that the best description about getting married fast was the comment that said that there are people who date for a very long time and have long engagements are as prone to divorce as people who date and marry quickly, which, by the way, i think is funny that it’s looked down upon now because that’s a practice (short courtship etc.) that has only changed in the past 20 or so years. my husband and i had been dating almost a year and a half when we got married last june, i was done with school, he had a year left. but now i’m starting a master’s degree in the fall, and after i’m done with that he’ll probably get his mba. school never seems to end so we would have probably gotten married when we were 30 if that were the main concern.
okay, that’s all. enjoying your comments. it’s interesting to see how interested people are in mormon weddings.
Reply
hanner Reply:
July 31st, 2009 at 2:46 am
also, really quick. a girl from my home ward had her reception in the multi-purpose room (for the uninitiated, it’s the little room off the kitchen area in ward buildings) with apple pie filling and brownies from her family’s food storage. that’s just what she wanted. again, different strokes for different folks, as someone commented earlier.
Reply
Amanda W Reply:
August 1st, 2009 at 9:26 am
I too had a cultural hall reception. We were married in the Columbia River Temple in Kennewick, Washington. My opinion on where the reception is, it’s the wedding that matters, right? Our parents didn’t fund our wedding/reception and we decided we would rather spend $3,000 on a luxurious 8 day 7 night cruise to Haiti, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, and Mexico than having our reception somewhere fancy. We were able to decorate the cultural hall and it looked soooo nice! We have no regrets and in all our actual wedding, or should I say dress and reception because it doesn’t cost anything to be married in the temple, cost maybe $2,000 ($1,000 being my dress that I paid for myself) which includes my hometown reception at the cultural hall.
As far as getting married quickly, we were married 6 1/2 months from the day we met, 6 weeks after we were engaged. Our reasoning? Why wait. We knew it was right, and we were ready for that next step in our lives (I was just about to start my Junior year of college). We also welcomed a family right away, although it didn’t work out that way and we ended up being married 2 years before I got pregnant with our daughter, but to go back I would say it worked out perfectly. I was in my last quarter of college when I got PG and my husband finished a few months later.
In all we have no regrets and are so glad that we had each other to lean on while we finished up our schooling. Lean on in a way that a boyfriend/girlfriend couln’t.
I am happily a stay at home mom now, and I am grateful to have a degree that if something happens to my husband I know that I can support our family.
Reply
Amanda W Reply:
August 1st, 2009 at 9:28 am
p.s. We had a reception the night we got married, left after 2 hours to fly out of Seattle to Florida to leave on our cruise the next morning (yes, we spent our wedding night on an airplane). We then had an open house in my in-laws backyard 2 weeks later.
Reply
July 31st, 2009 on 9:50 pm
My husband and I technically only dated for a few weeks before getting engaged. However, we had been very close friends before that. We were only engaged for three months because it just felt right. We were married in Louisville, Kentucky, which is the closest temple to his family. We only had one reception in his hometown since my parents have long-since left my hometown.
I was 29 when we got married–spinster age for a Mormon girl, for sure! For me, it was the perfect time to get married. I had never felt really ready to get married and honestly, I don’t think I was mature enough to get married when I was younger. My husband is five years younger than I am, which is also not the norm for Mormon marriages, at least among my friends and acquaintances.
I think it’s so interesting to see how many different dating/courtship stories there are out there. No two are the same!
Reply
August 3rd, 2009 on 11:09 am
We actually had my hometown wedding reception in Ohio this past weekend – 3 months after the wedding
Reply