(no subject)

[pantryslut]

The other two WPs are chatting about their wedding silver. How their husbands didn't understand why they needed it, but they know that *someday*, it will be important.

I am boggled again. What does anybody need silver serving pieces for? Somebody explain these middle-class heterosexual rituals that I obviously missed out on.

Comments

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

i missed that class, too.

[beckastar.livejournal.com]

i think its important to people who feel they need to show off their monetary status / success.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

But, uh, these are wedding gifts. So they're showing off the status of their relatives, not themselves. Still confused.

[beckastar.livejournal.com]

somebody with money loves them?

*shrug*

i don't get it either. but i don't get ... most things that straight / normal people do.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

It's reassuring, though, to know I'm not the only one.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

It's so that they can melt them down to make bullets when the world is overrun by a plague of vampires like in The Omega Man.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

Silver is of dubious use against vampires, though; depends on your mythos.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I'm working on the possibly shaky presumption that people minded to care about such things as wedding silver are unlikely to have gone overly deeply into the workings of vampire mythoi and will be thinking of the creatures of the night in half-remembered Hollywood terms.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

I really want to write a scene now where some heterosexual couple is under attack by vampires/werewolves/other creatures of the night, and one of them has the brainstorm of melting down the wedding silver -- and the other one looks at them and says, "are you crazy? We asked for sterling!" Cue Music of Doom.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I'd read that.

[ Though I'm now seeing a very supercilious vampire's reaction to being clouted with the wedding silver as "That's for werewolves, idiot"... something like the innkeeper in Polanski's Dance of the Vampires brushing aside a cross with "Oy, lady, hev you got the wrong vempire." ]

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

I like that, too. Stabbed with a serving fork and sneering.

[whipartist.livejournal.com]

It gives them something with both cash and sentimental value to fight over in the divorce.

[wookiepocket.livejournal.com]

you hock it after the divorce when the child-support payments are late.

[tgeller.livejournal.com]

As someone with a silver fetish, I understand it.

Most people only possess a few objects in their lives that truly feel *right* in terms of quality, value, and meaning. Sterling silverware that's tied to a wedding has a high chance of meeting those criteria. It's a pleasure to hold; it has a practical use (as opposed to, say, a ring); it feels solid.

Perhaps an analogy close to your heart might be: Why own hundreds of books you're unlikely to read again? Answer: Because just having them around reminds you of their purchase and consumption -- and of the changes they wrought in you.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

I only keep books I am likely to refer to again. Otherwise I give them away or sell them.

[tgeller.livejournal.com]

Maybe you're less object-centered than many people. *shrug*

I felt sort of offended when my mother said, "None of you kids is materialistic." Screw that! I think that's her red-diaper-baby fantasy. I'm wildly materialistic... but also po'.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

I think it's more that I'm excessively practical. I like nice things, but only if I'm gonna use them. Otherwise, all they do is take up space...


...that I could use for books.

[wookiepocket.livejournal.com]

also, i've kind of liked the beauty of the wedding gift. it used to be that the bride had to have an appropriate dowry in order for her family to sell her into her husband's family. now both the bride and groom get gifts to help settle them into their new lives together. it used to be that only upper-class people did that (also, since we pattern ourselves after the upper class, it explains the silver).

of course, occasions like this are less known for this than they are as a mad dash for the wedded couple to grab as much loot as they can.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

Loot, I get. Gifts, I get. Crystal wineglass sets and sterling silver serving pieces, I don't get.

Actually, I know a couple people who might use the crystal. But I have never seen anyone use the silver, except at my in-laws scary Christmas parties.

[gramina.livejournal.com]

Oh, if we had silver place settings, we'd use 'em! I *like* silver, and if you use it daily it doesn't tarnish.

But I don't get "needing" silver. A good solid-feeling well-crafted flatware set is fine, from my perspective, and much less pricey. What will have inestimable value for me, when the time comes, is my grandmother's or great-aunt's silver service. Mother has them for now, and I'm in *No Hurry At All* (universe, please take note!!!!!) to have them myself, but at some point one set will go to my sister and one set to me. And that, I will treasure.

[brooksmoses]

I think some of the appeal is that one has the appropriate tableware to throw a scary Christmas party of that ilk, should one desire to.

I suspect that, as a culture, we've fallen away from the habit of throwing that sort of party rather but not quite yet fallen away from the desire to do so.

On the other hand, I may have a slightly changed view of this from having recently attended my grandmother's funeral. She was a woman who was always very careful to have everything just so; if the silver serving pieces would have been appropriate, they would have been used -- and she threw parties where they were quite appropriate. It was interesting, after having sort of thought she overdid it a little in life, seeing how this was something that mattered to those of us remembering her; it actively bothered several of us that some of the food people had brought was being served from a paper KFC bucket, and we pulled out a proper serving dish for it.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

,i>I suspect that, as a culture, we've fallen away from the habit of throwing that sort of party rather but not quite yet fallen away from the desire to do so.

Stop being so logical. That's no fun.

No, I think you're right. And I think part of my disconnect is that in my world, only Old People entertain this way if anyone does, and so why would newlyweds need silver that's only (apparently) going to go into storage for thirty years or so? I'm not saying, of course, that this is an accurate assessment, only my initial one.

My parents never entertained. Never. Not even friends over for pizza or anything. Not even *my* friends over for dinner. I think this, too, has a lot to do with my skewed sense of these things.

[kiya]

It's partly a class marker thing, as well.

The family silver comes out for holiday family gatherings. It's done thus because This Is The Way Holiday Gatherings Are Done. I find myself marginally bothered by the fact that I don't have the place for such things, because I can't Do It Properly. (The equipment is really less a concern at this point than not having a dining-room, let alone a dining-room table.) This will become a more significant concern when we've established a household, rather than just having one couple living together, because there's a whole bunch of Responsibility Of Householdness stuff tangled up in it.

[lcohen]

i see my mother's silver at least two times a year: thanksgiving and passover. she loves occasions where she can use it--it reminds her of those occasions with her parents and grandparents--but then, it's their silver, it's not stuff my folks got for their wedding (my parents had a tiny wedding--maybe ten people?).

we're going to have thanksgivng at my sister-in-law's this year. i have no idea if they have silver and if they will want to trot it out if they do, but we are starting to be the generation that hosts these occasions. btw, my family is not at all wealthy. but i believe my mother intends to split her stuff between the three daughters (my two sisters and me) so at some point (may it be in the distant future) i will probably have a silver service for eight.

[rgay.livejournal.com]

These are members of a mythical tribe of people who believe that silver makes the food taste better.

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

:)

[ms-anthropy.livejournal.com]

I think it's a sort of vestigal remnant of the old dowry idea, only they've gotten confused about who's supposed to be buying whom. There are a lot of weird things like that floating around. I read somewhere that the veil was a holdover from when the bride and groom wouldn't have met before the wedding, and it was supposed to keep him from getting a look at her and backing out if she was a woofer. True story: we got married in Tennessee, and the license still contained some very archaic wordings - apparently they'd just never bothered to print new ones since, oh, I don't know, the 18th century maybe? We signed backwards, just to be pissy - I signed where it said "husband" and vice-versa. They never noticed. But when my father-in-law asked what we wanted for a wedding present, I showed him the license and told him he owed me a cow, because the bride was clearly not "untouched."

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

One of my pieces of personal mythology comes from a newlywed couple I met once on a camping trip more than 30 years ago. They told me and my companions the story of how they took the most ostentatious wedding present they received, which was a cut-glass punch bowl with a set of matching punch cups, and ritually threw it off the Tappan Zee Bridge into the Hudson River in the middle of the night. They felt like that was the act that made their marriage real.

I love them for it to this day.