Thoughts on Etsy's "Hobo Wedding"

It seems like this couple: http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2011/handmade-weddings-depression-era-hobo/ have the internet up in arms after over their cultural appropriation of depression era poverty as their wedding theme.  

Kenwood House: Dream Venue



This reminds me of something that happened when I was planning my own wedding.

 Hampstead Heath is a beautiful big park in London, which I just adore. At the top of the park is Kenwood House, an old manor house which is now run as museum and restaurant.  Kenwood House is licensed to perform marriages and I loved the idea of having my wedding there. I could picture myself coming out of this big white building, family and friends around me and looking out over rolling parkland at all the families picnicking and the kids running around. I just thought it would be perfect.  

Hiring a manor house does not come cheap but I was encouraged to see that they also do a reception package in the kitchen, which is a good sized room, and can be decorated in something called “shabby chic”: which seems to involve a lot of meadowy flowers in mismatched vintage milk jugs and oldie worldie style table cloths and doiles and so on.  


The Old Kitchen
Pleasant but visibly "Below Stairs"
 
 I checked the prices on the kitchen wedding and predictably it was still way out of our budget so I put the idea aside, set myself down to organise something more realistic and thought no more about it.
No more that is, until my Mum mentioned that she’d seen the package advertised with the slogan “Have your wedding below stairs.”  She was genuinely freaked out by the idea and literally could'nt imagine why anyone would find the idea attractive. Her exact word were: “My whole life is about trying to get away from life “below stairs!” I never want to go back.”
I should point out here that my Mum is from the post war baby boomer generation and benefited from the social mobility of that period. She has never worked as a servant and, given the times she grew up in, it would have been deeply surprising thing if she had.  


Her own mother however (my grandmother), was “in service” from the age of 12 and clearly, the experience has cast a long enough shadow that the idea of celebrating anything “below stairs” still carries with it a sense of horror and shame. Even for the next generation. Even 70 years later. And yet this response had not, for a second occured to me.


In case you were wondering: this is how it turned out in the end!

What’s interesting to me here is the difference made by that one additional generation, that can transmute a grossly insensitive act of cultural appropriation into a perfectly acceptable wedding theme. An object of aspiration even.  You really have to laugh at capitalism sometimes.  They would have had me break the bank to buy a sanitised pastiche of my own family history.  



Instead of which, we had a quaint registry office ceremony and pub reception, encorporating all the authentic customs of the 21st century white working class. It was just just so cute. I can't wait to see a knock off version at 4 times the equivelent price in 70 years time.  













Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The NCT Meeting: A Vignette

The light from the generous bay window is shining in onto a dozen anxious couples perched on mismatched sofas and chairs, more indicative of wealth somehow than matching ones would have been. Various clutter including a child sized viola case and sheet music has been pushed into a corner to make room for us and a jolly woman in Birkenstocks has just asked us to brainstorm sources of help for new parents. We are at an NCT  class is Glasgow's West End.  “Imagine you’re at the very end of your rope” says the Jolly Woman “Who would you go to for help” It’s a sobering thought. I have worked at the CAB, however and I pride myself on knowing what to do in most situations. I think I would know what to do. In my mind I am thinking “Sure Start Centre, GP, Health visitor, Social Services” Following my usual strategy for group activities, I do not leap in straight away with the answer. More polite to let everyone else have a go first, I think. I am immediately glad of th...
Read more

My first blooding in the Terf Wars

When I moved to Glasgow 12 years ago, I joined two groups which were to have a profound effect on my political outlook. And set me on a course that culminated recently in 6 solid months of stress,  my first intimate experience of a political split and my first proper blooding in the Terf wars.   The first was a very small, trans inclusive feminist group. It was in this group that I coined the ridiculous  phrase "are now or have been a woman" in an attempt to find a form of words which would allow us to  keep a very nice young woman who identified as non binary and kick out two sexist blokes who err… also identified as non binary.  If you know anything about contemporary trans politics you will instantly see that this tack was offensive  to all parties but, hey, my heart was in the right place. I was trying to be inclusive.  The two non binary blokes…..I later talked to a member of the group about them in private. She felt that at least one of...
Read more

Intersectionality 1: In which we define our terms:

OK, So I’m going to have a dive into the massive and Choppy waters of Intersectionality   Intersectionality is a sort of add on to feminism. It’s the shocking idea that gender is not the only basis on which people might be oppressed and that other thing (class, race, sexuality) might be worth looking into too. Nothing to argue with there. My slight problem with Intersectionality (and it’s a geeky one) is that adding new bits to an existing analysis (feminism) to make it encompass more things can be a little bit clumsy and can lead to some odd conclusions. Some of the limitations have been very well over here  by the magnificent Mhairi. I comepletely love this post and once based an entire gender training day on it.   As Mhairi point out, Intersectionlity (and the term Kyriarchy  used here to describe the totality of these intersectional oppressions) does not tend to deal well with class. This is because class is to do with material things. On...
Read more