Bells, Belles, Chills - Do Wedding Jokes Go a Little Too Far?

There's nothing like a little wedding humor to make a potentially staid and boring wedding more exciting. After all, a wedding is a celebration, not a sacrifice - the hard work and fighting and bickering and snapping will come later. For one day, the husband and wife will celebrate their union with either glorious grandiosity or elegant simplicity. Humor does help: for instance, this wedding dance took the lucky couple all the way to the Ellen DeGeneres Show, and spawned different copycats on YouTube.



Another fun way to add spice to a wedding could include decorations, which may in turn include the wedding cake topper. Humor is harmless, some claim - but what messages do these cake toppers send? (all images courtesy of http://www.weddingaccessories.net/cake_toppers_3.htm)

A woman drags her man to wedded bliss. What a stereotype of women as the instigators of marriage, and men as the poor sheep who must simply follow!


That's right: start the wedding off with a fight. What a stereotype of marriage: all fights and quarrels, even on the wedding day itself?

A woman chains her husband down and keeps the key. Poor man, to be chained down all his life? What a bummer, or what a stereotype?

Here's a stereotype of woman as the shopper who leaves her husband behind. I don't have the shopping gene, and this ticks me off.

Even on their wedding day, our bride and groom are still too busy for each other. What a waste of money if they're just partners in name.

Due to wife being helpless, and apparently clueless as to where the top of the wedding cake is, the dear smart husband has to help her up there.

In another reversal of roles, we have the male on the leash and the woman leading. However, again, we also have a stereotype of the man being helpless in the face of slave-driving woman.

Okay, it's funny. BUT GET A ROOM!

Agreed, we need to have humor at weddings, but what would such cake toppers do in portraying what a wedding is, or in representing it? What would such images, projected online, or placed on a wedding cake for all to see, or shown in wedding pictures - what would such images say about marriage? That it is a burden for men? That men should lead and women should follow? That sex is no longer sacred? That couples fight all the time? That they have no time for each other? That women are inveterate shoppers? One day, I will be married - one day, many women and men all over the world will find their special someone. But will they back away because of a stereotype? Has marriage become so cheap, with cheap thrills and cheap humor? Has even the simplest wedding cake topper become a representation of how marriage is all pain and no happiness? What about the marriages that actually last, that are actually happy? Shouldn't the world get a chance to see them, too?