On the surface, it doesn’t seem like it would be a big deal, right? I mean, you say bride, you think ‘bridesmaids’.  What wedding photographer doesn’t have a plethora of pictures of a girl in white, smiling, with five other women of varying ages in a terrifying shade of coral, looking less happy? If you’re the bride, you’re meant to be surrounded by loads of female extras being feminine and cooing about appearance and hair and The Dress and flowers – that’s what the media show. But I had a big issue when it came to my bridesmaids. I have a lot of friends and they are’t all female, and lots of them are in different groups and some are in different countries. In the end, I have a family member (stepsister), my best mate (who lives in South Korea) and a bridesman.

Yup, that’s right. I’ve known Dan since I was 18 and he knows me almost as well as my fiancé, so screw it, he’s in my bridal party. I have a bridesman.  There are actually some great sides to this. For one thing, like my fiancé, he doesn’t drink, so he’ll be very helpful in negotiating the family tensions on the day when it comes to the group photographs. For another, he’s great at calming me down and getting me to remember to have some perspective. And he’s funny and can cheer me up when I’m stressed and grumpy.

Needless to say, my mother does not approve. ‘Why can’t he be part of Future Husband’s party?’ she wailed. It is seemingly ‘not done’ to have men in your wedding entourage if you’re a woman, I imagine because of women not having male friends in the same way in the old days, because, tradition implies, that would surely lead to romance.  (Although I have in fact slept with him. I am not revealing this fact to my mother.) A couple of other people have joked ‘Oh, in a dress?’ and I’ve just stared at them until they stop with their gender stereotyping.

The idea of just having your female friends is a lovely one but a little outdated when you a) know what sex is and don’t need your married friends telling you before your wedding night, and b) regularly talk to men without the worry that someone will see you and call you a strumpet. We’ve moved on as a society, haven’t we? It’s nicely balanced by the fact that Future Husband chose his sister as his best man. I love that our wedding party is made up of a mix of men and women on both sides.

It’s also nice to have an additional excuse for extra parties. I’ve always said I would have a Cock Party as well as a Hen Do. Future Husband is having a Doe Night as well as a Stag Do. Fine, we’ll segregate by gender but by god we’ll have both. It shakes it up from the normal alternative of one single party we could throw, but also means that I’m not just hanging out in a female-only group.

It’s not even that I’ve set out to be ‘controversial’ (my mother, yet again), it’s just that I couldn’t see how I could organise my wedding and not be non-gender biased. We have too many friends, male and female, to simply be that abrupt and schismatic.

• Lizzie is getting married in 2013 and has already planned roughly 5,748 weddings in her head. You can find more of her musings, wedding-themed reviews and rantings at Wedding Belles UK.

Photo by flickr user ninasaurusrex

Oh, it’s a little thing, I grant you. One word. And it’s so innocuous that most people don’t even think it’s an issue. When we got engaged, we got cards addressed to ‘The Future Mr & Mrs HisLastName’. One friend remarked she couldn’t wait to address her first Christmas card to ‘the HisLastNames’. Another asked if we were looking forward to be announced at our reception as ‘Mr and Mrs HisLastName’. Each time, I’m afraid I’ve shot them down brusquely – even though I’m still deciding what to do.

Why? Well, for starters, I’ve had 30 years of being Lizzie MyLastName, not Lizzie His. It sounds weird to me, like I’m playacting someone else. I’d have to change my passport, my bills, my driver’s licence, my personal emails, my work email, my Facebook – it’s too much damn work. And the biggest reason for my uncertainty: why should I have to literally rename myself to my husband’s last name when I get married? What’s so special about him? (Note: Obviously he’s very special or I wouldn’t be marrying him, yadda yadda don’t take the ring back).

The looks and comments I get when I say these things are rooted in blustering British patriarchal tradition. I’ve had ‘But that’s just what you do’, ‘Just change it in your personal life, you don’t have to change your professional name’ and ‘But don’t you want the same name as your husband and children?’.

Um, maybe, if I planned on having any children. But he could change his name. My name is perfectly lovely. And quite frankly, if we did have kids, plenty of people would call me Mrs HisLastName without me ever having to change it. And for the person who said ‘But that’s just what you do’ (hi, mum! I forgive you because you gave birth to me), we used to put lead in cans, but hey, we changed our way of doing things! As Lucy Mangan said, “I’ve only known him six years. How come he gets to obliterate my history?”

So, what to do? If I don’t want to change my name to his, equally he doesn’t want to change it to mine. People have suggested hyphenating, which is what we would usually do – but alas, our name is a spoonerism that equates to ‘a bird’s balls’, so that’s not the ideal option after all. I quite like the idea of portmanteau-ing our name because it sounds like ‘Baroque’; clearly the most awesome outcome. But he thinks that sounds a bit fake. So, future husband and I are on a quest to find a new name that we can both change to. And in an example of patriarchy working for women instead of against them, this is easier and cheaper for me to do. He has to change it by deed poll – I just have to sign my new name on the marriage licence.

I’m secretly convinced that this will not happen. Family pressure will mean he keeps his name – plus, his profession of author spills into his personal life, so changing his surname is not the most sensible thing to do. And my name actually sounds great with his last name. But while it doesn’t make a whole lot of logical sense to insist on keeping one man’s name (my father’s) instead of taking another’s, equally I don’t want to have a visible sign that I am subsuming my identity into his and becoming ‘the wife’. I’m sure we will make a decision – but more late night discussions and trying out new signatures may be required.

• Lizzie is getting married in 2013 and has already planned roughly 5,748 weddings in her head. You can find more of her musings, wedding-themed reviews and rantings at Wedding Belles UK.

But feminists come in many shapes and sizes and while the froo-froo shit doesn’t bother me in weddings (although really, someone tell me why you would spend money on wedding favours instead of booze?), there are a couple of traditions that I’m having trouble swallowing. I’m talking about being given away. This is actually really stressful for me, because I’m torn between duty/love and wanting to remain true to myself. It’s tradition that the bride’s father gives her away. Sometimes, if he isn’t available, it’s her brother or uncle, or her mother. In Jewish tradition it is both her parents. And I sodding hate the entire idea.

It’s only in recent years that we primarily started marrying for love. Back in Ye Olden Dayes^TM, people married for financial security, or because their families had arranged it. Brides came with dowries of land, money, and/or resources and grooms came with significant presents to her family. To show that the head of the family (the dad) was satisfied, the bride would be handed over on her wedding day by her father to show that she was no longer his property and was now the responsibility of the groom’s family.

Ick.

The very thought of this makes my skin crawl. I don’t understand why I can’t walk down the aisle myself, head high as I approach my future husband – my own agency, my own choice, nothing to do with being someone’s chattel. I even like the idea, becoming more common in America, of meeting your betrothed at the entrance of your ceremony venue, having a private moment and then walking in together. You are, after all, entering the married state together, so why not the church or hall?

But. There’s a but. In that I know my dad has always planned on walking me down the aisle. I mean, it’s not like he’s been fantasising about it since I was seven, but it was taken as fact that that’s what I’d have. And while he’s said to me he doesn’t mind what I do at my wedding and that he doesn’t even have to be invited, I can’t quite get to the point of saying ‘No, dad, I don’t want you to walk me down the aisle’. For one thing, he’s my dad and he’s been damn supportive of me, so making him happy with this one thing should be a compromise I’m willing to make. For another, I may need someone to lean on so I don’t wobble with nerves, or panic, or booze (fuck yeah, Dutch courage!). And part of me thinks ‘aww’ when I envision his face as he walks me down the aisle and I face my fiancé. We’re not having a traditional ceremony so there will be no ‘who gives this woman’ because no one does – so surely it won’t matter that much.

So with all these reasons, why does my stomach clench when I think about it? Why do I actively fret over this very simple, 30 second task that is dwarfed by the lifetime vows I’m going to make five minutes afterwards? Do what I want, and I have to deal with a hurt father and guilt – do what will make him happy and I feel like a fake. It’s a conundrum and one I’m not sure I know how to answer. I’m hoping wisdom and clarity will come to me sometime this year.

(Photo: Phil Hawksworth.)

• Lizzie is getting married in 2013 and has already planned roughly 5,748 weddings in her head. You can find more of her musings, wedding-themed reviews and rantings at Wedding Belles UK.