I’ll never understand the rough deal women get for being single generally but being single at a wedding… the pity, the sympathy, the shame – what’s that all about?
It goes without saying that there is nothing wrong with being single. Be single, be in a relationship – be with a man or a woman or both or neither. It’s 2019 and we’re all fully capable of establishing our own versions of what we want and there is no shame in living them… unless you’re a single woman at a wedding, apparently.
Why is it, that single women get such a hard time? It’s awful when people think they should set you up with someone – because you’re obviously doing something wrong – but it’s even worse when they drag your biological clock into the mix. A woman’s love life is no one’s business but her own and what she does with her womb is even less to do with anyone else.
And yet you dare to turn up at wedding alone and you’re someone to be pitied. Someone who clearly needs a hand.
When I was single I attended the wedding of a younger female relative, which apparently meant I was giving everyone permission to ask me why I was single, or to feel sorry for me, or to reassure me that it would be my wedding any day…
I think this is why I love writing about weddings so much, they make people stupid. In Bad Bridesmaid, Mia has to contend with being single (and not a big fan of weddings) on her younger sister’s big day. Then, in You Can’t Hurry Love, when she finally finds love and does want to get married, everyone has their own idea about what she should be doing and how she should be doing it. In The Accidental Honeymoon, Georgie would rather bribe a near stranger to pretend to be her fiancé, rather than turn up at her cousin’s wedding alone In The Time of Our Lives, which came out this year, Luca turns up to a wedding/uni reunion as the only person who isn’t married/doesn’t have kids/isn’t engaged/isn’t in a long term relationship, and people treat her like she has a contagious disease.
I love examining the way single women are treated at weddings. I’ve been there, I know how horrible it is. And the worst thing of all is that, even when you do ‘get a boyfriend’, people simply switch from asking why you’re single to asking when you’re going to be getting married. What is it about weddings that bring out the nosy in people?
From the prying questions of other to the rounding up of the single women for the tossing of the bouquet (yes, I am coming at that tradition – so dumb), we need to stop thinking that other people’s love lives are any of our business.
