Christian Weddings Should Reflect Reasonableness 1.0.0

Full article from January 15, 1969 Watchtower

*** w69 1/15 p. 57 Christian Weddings Should Reflect Reasonableness ***
Christian Weddings Should Reflect Reasonableness
THIS is what I’ve wanted since I was a little girl,” said the prospective bride in Florida about her wedding.

She was thrilled over what was planned, including her costly lace-and-pearl gown, with its thirty-foot train. The traditional wedding music would flow from a ten-piece orchestra as she made her entrance. And what an entrance it would be! Emerging from an artificial “cloud” emitted by a hidden device, she would descend a twenty-one-step staircase. Down she would come, between gilded cages of doves, to her waiting bridegroom.

Following the ceremony, the reception or wedding feast would include champagne and an eight-foot-tall wedding cake. When the bride began to cut the cake two lovebirds would be released to flutter through the ballroom. How did the prospective bridegroom react to all this? Unnerved by the extravagant plans for the $25,000 affair, he fled the scene nine hours before the wedding!

You probably have never seen a wedding as lavish as that one. Yet you likely know that weddings and associated events range from modest to mammoth, from simple to sumptuous, from God-honoring to godless.

How, then, is a Christian who loves God and desires to be guided by the principles of his Word to decide what to arrange for his own wedding? Where does he draw the line? Complicating matters further, one author observed: “No social custom is as deeply rooted in tradition and bound by convention as a wedding.” Should the Christian try to follow all the traditions, some of them, or none of them? Just what is a reasonable Christian wedding?