Preparing for our wedding
We finally applied to get married here in beautiful Denmark. Our marriage is international (my partner is a Danish citizen and I am a British citizen), which means we have to fill out some forms and wait for permission to get married. Before we began to fill out these forms, I had thought that I would feel frustrated with it. After all, getting married should be about love and not bureaucracy. But then I thought about my wish list. And I decided to simply give some of those things (kindness, care, gentleness, empathy, etc.) to myself and to Familieretshuset at that very moment. I decided to fill out those long forms with love, care, kindness. The Agency of Family Law asked for, e.g., photographs of our relationship. I chose the ones I love the most from my Instagram account (usually I don't keep pictures). I wanted to share some beautiful details about our love story. The rest is outside our control. After applying, two things can happen. Either we get permission to get married soon, or they will ask us for more documents, and then it might take months.
These days, we talk about our wedding rather often. It no longer feels like an idea, but rather as something that will unfold soon. As sustainability researchers and practitioners who strongly believe in the unity of theory and practice, we could have a low-waste wedding (local food, second-hand dress, local honeymoon, and so on). But we decided to practise (extreme) minimalism even in relation to our wedding. Having a traditional wedding with many guests and a white dress has never been my dream. And after 15 or so years of practising minimalism, spiritual rather than material aspects of life have become so much more important than material aspects (apart from the very basics of life). Our celebration will thus take place mostly in our hearts, in our souls, rather than through stuff.
We will get married in the city hall. We will have no guests. We will wear what we already have. We will not exchange rings. I will not wear any makeup or jewellery (apart from the ring that my partner gave me when we got engaged, or nothing at all). I will not style my hair. We plan to see some of our family members after the wedding (not on the same day), but we will not accept gifts apart from donations to environmental causes. Such donations have become our standard practice around holidays and events. We want to eat what we usually eat. Perhaps we will get a cake from a local bakery. We will not go anywhere after the wedding. We want to be in our home city, Copenhagen.
A while ago, when I told a fellow human about my ideal wedding, they mentioned that I would regret not having a traditional wedding with guests, gifts, special food, and a white dress. I cannot imagine having regrets about not consuming something that is not an essential. I could regret not eating healthy food, not resting/sleeping enough, or not being helpful, empathetic or kind in some moment. But I would not regret not wearing a certain dress, not eating a certain cake, or not applying makeup. I don't even worry about the weather on our wedding day. It might be grey and rainy in Copenhagen in the autumn (or winter, depending on when we receive our permission to get married). And that's wonderful!