We're watching the latest season of Bridgerton, and my kids are spinning out about the naked inequity of 19th century England. Our handsome aristocrat is in love with his maid - a woman of illegitimate birth - but they can't be together. Well, they can't marry, anyway. My ten year old is frustrated and confused. "But WHY?!" she keeps asking. Solid question, babe. Solid question.
In 2012, I was a young bride-to-be, planning my wedding on a tight budget. The line items were overwhelming. Flowers. Decorations. Dresses. Food. Cake. One night, caught in a Pinterest frenzy, I stumbled over an article about wedding traditions. This single read opened a floodgate of curiosity; I couldn’t get enough. Where did all these expectations come from? From then on, in between fervent pinning, I chased answers.
What is a wedding party for? (Depending who you believe: to protect the bride and groom from jealous spirits or jilted suitors, for camouflage, to protect the bride’s dowry, to avoid kidnapping).
Why do brides carry flowers? (Potential answers: to act as a protective charm, to cover bad smells, to ward off evil.)
The superstitions spilled into my real life too, when I wanted to bake a chocolate cake for the reception. My mother-in-law fretted: “It’s not a real wedding without a fruit cake!” My cheeks flushed with shame. It sounded absurd. But is it anymore absurd than having a wedding at all?
Challenging these traditions felt rude and ungrateful - like biffing out a dead grandmother’s precious tea cup. But divorced from their original history, once sensible practices can hang around long after they make sense. Avoiding sex before marriage was a sensible path in a time before contraception, before women were financially independent. Now? Fuck away!
Montaigne, 16th century essayist, was suspicious of traditions. "The laws of conscience," he wrote, "which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom". Sing it, Monty. It's here - in the sneaky conversion from custom to conscience - to be careful about continuing quaint, harmless-seeming traditions.
When cute rituals carry the weight of morality, it's worth picking at the power structures underneath, and asking some pokier questions. Things like: who's keen on us making these kind of choices? Why is that? What stories do these traditions keep alive?
For weddings, we might ask who benefits from the expectation we spend so much money on a ring. Or why a father would 'give' his daughter away? We can examine the systems, stories, and structures wrapped up in the idea of marriage, who is excluded from this tradition, and why that is. What stories do our films and TV shows tells us about how relationships should work? Is this is a true reflection? What's missing?
When a father hands his beaming daughter to her groom with pride, thinking of nothing more than his love and care, his gesture echoes through a history of dowry-setting and coverture. A time when daughters were chattels, traded into wives. When we plan events, share a post on social media, or watch TV with our children, we co-sign invisible messages: stories about our values and priorities, how life should be lived, who matters, and who doesn't. In these moments, it's our awareness of these stories, and our appetite for challenging them, where we have room to move.
That's not to say rituals aren't important, or tradition has no value. Rituals, in an increasingly disconnected world have incredible power. They unify people, transmit love and kinship, and create continuity throughout generations in a way that ranting on the internet never will. I didn't need to ward off any evil spirits, and I wasn't afraid of being kidnapped, but I adored my wedding bouquet and treasured my best friends supporting me as bridesmaids.
On a lighter note - parties are fun! We might no longer need a garter belt to satisfy our guests' hunger to rip a piece of the bride's clothing off (true story) but it might be fun to get your legs out in front of the fam. Dads might not own their sweet girls these days, but signifying the passage from one family structure to another is meaningful to many.
Whether we're picking our bridal getup, or walking arm-in-arm with a parent, we choose what we do, how we do it, and what stories we tell. In any one of those moments, we can pause to say: hmm, hang on a minute. What’s this about? Do I want to pass this on? Is there another way? It's in these pauses we can consciously adopt some rituals, release others - and form new ones.
In 2026, it seems ridiculous a rich dude can't put a ring on a girl from the working-class and turn her into a princess. Modern fairytales spring from that very premise. But customs, in their time, feel like common sense. People make life-defining choices about their careers, families, and relationships, based on rules and conventions that feel inescapable but are largely made up. It's only when we buck tradition or escape the norm that we open the window for difference.
I have no skin in the wedding game; my Pinterest wedding ended in a loving divorce seven years ago. But I am pretty hot on power literacy. I'm keen on a world where people make choices for themselves, eyes wide opened, old stories be damned. One where we ask better questions, make thoughtful choices, and show others the way.
I don't know if any outdated traditions are trapping you right now - maybe you've given up on a dream career or nomadic lifestyle for your kids, or maybe you're just sick of putting on mascara so people don't ask you if you're tired at work (IYKYK).
But I do know we're rarely as stuck as we feel. It's when people like you decide to do things differently or call bullshit on 'the way things are done', that the rest of us get a new set of options to pick from.
(Oh, and I made the chocolate cake.)
Til next week,
AM
This is a Wednesday Wisdom post, which I publish every week for free. We talk power, strategy, and change - and how you can keep your cognitive sovereignty in a world riddled with slop and suggestion.
