Recently there’s been a rise in websites and apps dedicated to making life easier. Now you can get married on the Internet, thanks to our favorite cheap DIY furniture store, IKEA.
Gone are the days of needing something borrowed, something old and something blue. Now all you need is a laptop and maybe a box of tissues for when you start to get really depressed that your wedding is a party of one.
In order for your marriage to be legally legitimate on Wedding Online, the bride and groom must be together with the marriage officiator, along with two other witnesses. So if you’re doing this thing for real, congrats, you have a wedding party of five.
Essentially, Wedding Online is one big Skype phone call where long distance family and friends can witness a marital pact. You also need a Facebook profile to operate the entire site. The bride and groom invite their closest Facebook friends, who in turn receive the wedding’s URL.
Now life is that much simpler. There’s no need to hop on a flight to Vegas to elope in a drive-thru wedding chapel. That’s what saddens me — there’s no excitement, ?spontaneity or grandeur.
No regretful jitters or bursting church doors when the priest says, “Speak now or forever hold your peace.”
There isn’t even a real place where you can say you had your wedding when you’re older. IKEA provides preset locations where your wedding can take place. There’s a carnival theme, classic white festivity, high society rooftop soirée, or, my personal favorite, a fairytale wedding in a ?mysterious forest.
The ultimate downer of this not-so-celebrated celebration is there’s no cake. We all know the only reason people get married in the first place is to go taste copious amounts of cake at 10 different bakeries. The other downfall of having an online wedding is that there are no pictures. Pics or it didn’t happen? I guess this virtual binding marriage didn’t happen, because the professional photographer was replaced with a Command + Shift + 4, the screen shot.
What I’m trying to get at is we cannot experience hallmark moments like these by staring at a screen. It isn’t going to give us happiness. Our world has a problem with looking for joy in all the wrong places. Sometimes the best way to live is by physically moving outside in the real world with real people who are consciously making an effort to do rather than watch. Receiving a hug from someone or giving a toast at a wedding are things you can’t genuinely do online.
Take a moment to listen today. Our language, although full of colloquial terms like “bae” and “yaaas,” also consists of “like” between every other — like — spoken word. Why are we horrible at speaking out loud and giving speeches? Maybe it’s because we never do.
We communicate far more by typing than we do speaking to each other face-to-face, or even screen-to-screen. There shouldn’t be online weddings, or apps called “Ordain Thyself” that allow you to become a certified religious leader, yet there are. Technology has begun to act as a shortcut to living life. It’s tempting, but we need to take the scenic route. It isn’t always easy, but it’s far more fulfilling in the long run.
jlkarl@indiana.edu
