Boything's twin sister, Stache (so called because she has the most spectacular mustache I've ever seen on a woman and she's a shitty person so I have no problems being mean to/about her), got married on Saturday. Apart from my boyfriend, his oldest sister Erin, and their dad, the bride and groom's whole entire families are hardcore Jehovah's Witnesses. So pretty much all but about ten or so of the 120+ wedding guests were, of course, Jehovah's Witless Witness. I've been to lots of weddings before, from lots of different religions and cultures, but this was my first JW wedding.
It was so boring I fell asleep halfway through it. Like, actually seriously fell asleep. At least I wasn't the only one--the bride's father ALSO fell asleep and had to be shoved awake in order to stand up and say that he giveth this woman to her shitty husband. (The groom is just as rotten a person as the bride--which is the only redeeming feature of this union, the fact that it saves two other people from ever having to get involved with either of them.)
The wedding ceremony itself wasn't very different from most other religions weddings, except that it focused damn near exclusively on the belief that women are subservient to men and should aspire to nothing more than being a 'complement' of men--and that specific word was mentioned no fewer than a squajillion times--that that the most a woman could hope for was for her husband to admit that she's a little better at one thing or another than he is, but of course she can't be her own person without a man and she naturally isn't equal to any man. They weren't even trying to pretend NOT to be sexist.
Then at the end of the ceremony, the 'Elder' (which is JW-speak for a preacher or minister, apparently) actually FORGOT the 'kiss the bride' bit and had to be reminded, so the entire wedding party marched back up to the dais for the kiss and they plodded back out again.
This was the first time I've met the bulk of Boything's relatives. Jehovah's Witless is one of those religions where if you leave it, your entire family and everybody you ever knew will shun you completely. So about half of them ignored him completely, but the other half felt the need to at least say hello to him considering he's the bride's twin brother, and also they wanted to see if possibly this girl he turned up with might be appropriately religious and might 'save' the wayward child. They were disappointed. They gave me the stinkeye a lot as soon as they realized I wasn't a JW. They had a number of hints.
Firstly, I wore trousers and was the only woman there wearing them. Boything's family said this would be okay--because I said I didn't own a dress and couldn't afford to buy one just for one event--but I stood out and got lots of disapproving looks from pretty much everybody there. (For the record I was still dressed very nicely and even wore my only pair of high heeled big-girl-shoes. I didn't even show cleavage, which is kind of an achievement for me because I'm up to a DD now.) My pants were extremely itchy so I changed into jeans for the (very casual) reception, which still looked very nice, but they were PISSED OFF because THE WHORE WEARS MEN'S CLOTHING. Secondly, my wrist tattoo was visible, which marks me out immediately as NOT a JW and most of them seemed to think I was showing it off on purpose. And then of course, whenever the annoying relatives were asking questions, Boything and I mentioned that we live together and obviously we are not married, since I was introduced as his girlfriend. They wouldn't acknowledge me or him at all once they found out we were cohabiting. Except to come up behind Boything and give his braid a YANK, because the only thing they hate more than unmarried couples living together, tattoos, and women in trousers... is LONG HAIR ON MEN. It really is hard to overstate just how much people gave us nasty looks or outright said something like 'that's not right!' or 'you shouldn't be doing that!' or said nasty things about me (the words 'slut' and 'whore' were bandied about) within earshot without caring that we could hear them.
Jehovah's Witlesses are masters are shunning nonbelievers. It's bad enough that I and a couple of other guests were never members of the church to begin with, but people like Boything, his sister, their dad, and the rest of the non-JW guests actually LEFT or were KICKED OUT and those are SO MUCH WORSE. At the reception, there was an extra table set up further away from the rest of the family tables. There was a table for the bride's family, a table for the groom's family, and a third table furthest from the food and drinks and set apart from the rest of them. That was the 'expat table', as I started calling it. It was a table specially for the ex-JWs (or, in my case, the just plain non-JW). It was right next to the speakers for maximum discomfort, and people gave us a wide berth. Yeah.
Boything's maternal grandfather especially seemed to hate me. Lots. The other grandfather is a great guy, and also not a JW, and I get on with him quite well. (He was also much too ill to go to the reception.) This guy didn't even bother hiding it. I had to leave the reception about an hour early because I had to go back to work (I could only get someone to cover half the day for me), but as Boything was leaving to go spend the night at his dad's house, Grandpa demanded, "SO WHEN ARE Y'ALL GONNA STOP LIVIN' AND SIN AND GIT MARRIED?" Boything laughed at him and left the hall to go wait in the car. He wouldn't even give an answer. I love him to death.
Actually, the whole wedding in thing in general--and watching Stache go crazy for the last few months planning it, and the rest of the women in the family going crazy, and the fact that all this time and money and frustration and craziness went into half a day... it got me thinking. As we went from the JW hall to the reception, I turned to Boything and went, "Let's never, EVER get married."
And then there was the groom, who I'm positive has cheated several times before and will continue to cheat now. He's a shitty person who's also scared to death of me despite the fact that there's literally nothing scary about me. He reached over me for something while I was sitting down and paused to flagrantly staaaaare straight down my top. I was so shocked I didn't even say anything. I should have backed my chair into his groin.
So yeah, that was my experience with a JW wedding. I hope it's my last.
