In the upcoming legislative session, Utah will be the latest state to consider permitting so-called self-uniting marriages — nuptials in which a couple can pronounce themselves as “wedded” without the need of a judge or ecclesiastical officiant. There are, of course, still papers to fill out and witnesses to recruit, but self-solemnizing nuptials promise to help streamline the marriage process for smaller — and during a pandemic — more socially distanced ceremonies.
With declining marriage rates across the country, removing barriers to tying the knot may also help nudge those on the fence toward the altar (or wherever else a self-uniting couple might make it official). But, in our contemporary zeal for more convenience or safety in marriage we must not overlook the institution’s public purpose.
Traditional ceremonies — the kind with guests and an ecclesiastical figure officiating — are, by their nature, about more than just the intimacy of the couple’s love. They help embed marriage within vast webs of relationships and responsibilities extending up to God and out to kin and community.
In writing to his betrothed niece, the great German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, famously observed, “In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations.” He continued: “In your love, you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal — it is a status, an office.”
As marriage has become a personal and private matter — and now with the potential of self-solemnization — it’s worth noting that marriages are often better positioned to thrive when situated within community life. A widely read study from 2014 looked at survey data of more than 3,000 married (or recently married) people and found an inverse relationship between money spent on the ceremony and the actual duration of the marriage (the more money spent, the shorter the marriage on average).
This would seem to suggest that smaller weddings might be a harbinger of long-term marriage success. But, curiously, the study also found a correlation between the overall number of guests at a wedding and the length of the marriage. In other words, the more people attending a wedding, the more it appears the married couple stayed, well, merrier.
These findings, of course, may simply tell us that couples with lots of friends and kin tend to be the kind of people who are able to make marriage work. But the study’s findings might also suggest that couples with bigger (and cheaper) weddings are more likely to experience what researchers call “the community effect” — the impact of supportive friends and family that help a married couple get through the inevitable peaks and vales of married life.
A significant body of scholarship has found that marriages in social isolation are at greater risk for divorce; marriages that are supported by friends and family, on the other hand, are more likely to flourish. There is even a notable organization — “marital first responders” — that teaches people how to help when friends or loved ones divulge to them their marital struggles or thoughts of divorce.
We often idealize the couple eloping in the heat of passion against the wishes of loved ones. But whether it’s Pyramus and Thisbe in Babylon or Romeo and Juliet in fair Verona the tragedy in these stories is that love is cut short because there isn’t the kind of support from family and community that there ought to be. Certainly, plenty of couples make it work in all kinds of circumstances, but we’ve all seen how Shakespeare’s play ends, and we know that supportive communities are a strong ingredient to successful marriages and families.
Wedding ceremonies — though often viewed as mere formalities or needless money pits — do, at their best, serve as a kind of symbolic reminder of support, orienting newlyweds to those who can help in sickness and in health, in poverty and in wealth.
Ours is an age of personal freedom and autonomy; it’s an age of atomization and isolation. Self-solemnized marriage may be yet another manifestation of these times. But, even if traditions and ceremonies shift, we ought not to forget that marriages thrive when planted in deep commitments and interwoven relationships. And we must not lose sight of marriage’s profoundly communal purpose.
Hal Boyd
Hal Boyd is an associate professor of family law in Brigham Young University’s School of Family Life and a fellow of the Wheatley Institution.
Alan J. Hawkins
Alan J. Hawkins is a professor of family life and is the director of Brigham Young University’s School of Family Life.