A Wedding in Prison
September 16, 2009
As marriage becomes more meaningless, weddings become more extravagant and bizarre. The wedding day is now a chance to display originality and defy tradition with ironic gestures and theatricality.
I thought I had heard it all until I read this about a couple who got married in a former prison. Eastern State Penitentiary was built in the early 19th century and is famous for its creepy architecture and its system of placing inmates in solitary confinement. It housed as many as 1,700 convicts at a time and was closed in 1971. It is now open for tours and an annual Halloween haunted house. The couple thought it would be neat to get married in the central rotunda overlooking crumbling cell blocks such as the one below. “Kevin entered the rotunda to the theme from Shaft. Lori walked in to “Time” by Pink Floyd.”
They’re both 43. He’s divorced and has four children. They intend to live hundreds of miles apart until his youngest child graduates from high school. Judging from the description of the wedding, which involved decorating the prison with strips of celluloid film, this was a typical extravaganza in the range of $20,000 to $30,000. I think Anthony Esolen would call this a case of “pseudogamy.” It would be wrong to think there was anything symbolic about this couple’s choice of a prison (even though the groom was a state trooper.) The point was originality and I think they succeeded. The problem with marriage is that inherited form, not novelty, is what keeps it going.
As the reader Rose points out, the Mel Brooks’ song Prisoners of Love would have been an appropriate wedding march:
Convicts:
Gotta sing, sing!
Gotta sing, sing!
Alright, you animals, from the top!
Prisoners of love
Blue skies above
Can’t keep our hearts in jail
Prisoners of love
Our turtle doves
Soon coming ’round with bail
Oh, you can lock us up and lose the key
But hearts in love are always free
Prisoners of love
Blue skies above
‘Cause we’re still prisoners
We’re still prisoners
We’re still prisoners of love Tempo, fellas! Pick up the tempo!
That’s it!
OK,
Just the murderers!
Hey, you, the warden wants to get in on this thing.
Tell the warden he now owns 100% of “Prisoners of Love.” / Thank you.
Sing on, fellas!
Let ’em hear you in solitary!
Take it home, boys.
We open in Leavenworth on Saturday night!
Rose writes:
That cell has such Gothic beauty. (I couldn’t think of a more inappropriate place for a wedding though. Maybe a graveyard.)
Laura writes:
If you liked that picture, how about this?
By the way, I’m sure a cemetery wedding’s already been done. You know, the bride posing next to a mausoleum, looking off into the distance and thinking of the eternity of love that awaits her. Perhaps a picture of the bride and groom framing the tombstone of a couple married for an unthinkable 50 years before …..
Rose writes:
You’re right! See this about a couple planning a cemetery wedding. I wonder if the couple’s “marriage hearse” is a clever homage to William Blake’s “London?”:
But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot’s curse
Blasts the new born Infant’s tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
In fact, the second photo has a certain Blakean aspect.
Laura writes:
I don’t think it’s a reference to anything but the breathtaking originality of the bride and groom, who have turned something so ordinary and imprisoning as marriage into a spectacle of self.
Melissa writes:
On a first date in college I was picked up in a green hearse. No joke. He also listened to recordings of video game music and was seriously creepy. I left him at an IHOP and went home with a brother. He went to the same school and made it clear that this guy would regret it if he ever spoke to me again. The man I married had to make it past the protective twin brothers who seemed to be everywhere I was!
