Cultural Cartography

Wedding bells and moving boxes

Thought I should put up a quick post about why I've been so remiss recently in my blogging. Not only am I getting married in under 5 weeks, I'm also moving to Berlin (from London) and so am in the process of selling my flat and sorting out my life in general. It takes up a lot of time. No real excuse but still an excuse. So apologies.

It does of course mean that I'll have lots of exciting news on the way that Germans live their lives and the signs they use to do it.

But I'm not the only one who is talking about "moving to Berlin": check this out

Pull a veil over it

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Originally uploaded by Perpetually.

As my wedding is getting closer (only 4 weeks away), I am naturally starting to think more about the various cultural associations and semiotic aspects of a wedding. We are getting married in church so there are numerous codes and symbols as you can expect. Interestingly our vicar told us that the reason the CofE service has the declaration which sounds very much like the vows and then the vows was that traditionally after the declaration the couple would go away betrothed and see if things worked out. Then they would come back and finish things off.

One of the most interesting things for me has been considering whether to wear a veil or not. My feeling is that the veil is the one thing which really makes a bride into a bride. It's bizarre given who I am and the world we live in. The one thing which least fit, in that it originates in order to preserve the bride's modesty is the thing that makes you into a bride. Actually on thinking about it, it's not bizarre at all given that brides are somewhat out of fashion at the moment.