Diversity is most definitely a hot topic right now, we have our socio-political climate to thank for that. Rock n Roll Bride has always been about accepting everyone that feels marginalised – regardless of whether that’s because you identify as LGBTQ, you’re from a minority group, you’re plus sized, disabled or just a little bit goth! Basically, if you don’t see yourself being represented by the mainstream wedding media, at Rock n Roll Bride we want to say pull up a chair and join us.

But we don’t always get it right. There was a VERY heated discussion on cultural appropriation in regards to weddings in our private Facebook group recently. The reason I think it can cause such uproar is because often these things fall on a sliding scale – what offends one person may not offend another and the cultural history of something in America, for example, might not have the same significance to people that grew up in the UK.

For me personally it is a very difficult thing to discuss publicly. I will be 100% transparent with you here and admit that it actually makes me extremely uncomfortable. I don’t want to get it wrong and I don’t want to cause even more offence. However, I do think it’s something that needs to be addressed, least of all so we can all become better educated about it in a non-judgemental space. I don’t know all the answers, no-one does, but I hope that by opening up this discussion we can learn something and become a more actively inclusive group.

After a recent (very lengthy!) discussion with my friend Nova of Nu Bride, I’ve invited her to write this article. Nova is a diversity advocate and does incredible work on raising awareness around race and culture. She is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to this stuff and I’m honoured to publish this piece for her.

Over to you Nova!

I often get asked how to fuse cultures together without them looking like, ‘mish-mash’. How to respectfully celebrate cultures that might not be your own without appropriating.

Nu Bride is all about celebrating difference and encouraging you to have a wedding that acknowledges your western side and is also representative of who you both are in a way that at times honours more than one culture, something more and more couples are keen to do. So, with a growing online cancelling culture, how do you do that without culturally appropriating?

What exactly is cultural appropriation?

In black and white (no pun-intended): Cultural appropriation is ‘the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society.’

The key component to cultural appropriation is remembering that it only becomes problematic when a dominant group of people (for example, white people) take on the culture of a minority group of people (for example Native American Indians) who have historically been marginalised / oppressed in some way and who still face discrimination pertaining to their culture. It could be anything from clothing, food, sacred religious artefacts or hairstyles like braids or dreadlocks, for example. It is generally considered offensive when it is done in a way that stereotypes, exploits for commercial gain, or is taken without consent.

Here some examples to bite your teeth into:

Beyoncé Slammed For Cultural Appropriation After Performing At Indian Wedding

Gucci Criticised For Cultural Appropriation On A Global Scale

The jury is out for if this wedding example is appropriation or not, I will let you decide after you have digested this article in full.

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Last week, an article allegedly published by an Irish wedding magazine in their Winter 2018 issue went viral. In it, the writer had some sage (ahem) advice for wedding night sex. My favourite comments being that obviously you’ll be a virgin, you should absolutely forget the foreplay and that you might want to consider a sex tape because, ya know, your hair will be all on fleek and shit.

Here at Rock n Roll Bride we couldn’t let this momentous occasion pass us by without putting our own two cents of advice for the best wedding night of your life. Thanks to the crushingly funny Hannah Millard (she also takes lovely wedding photos you know) for our alternative suggestions.

You’re welcome.

Its 1.30am and you’ve just fallen out of a taxi at your wedding night accommodation. The reception is closed and you can’t find your key card, so you spend twenty five minutes waiting for the night manager to arrive and let you in. The night manager appears, could this be the first time he’s encountered another human being? He stares at you disdainfully, with the cold, dead eyes of a serial killer and begrudgingly unlocks the door.

You finally make it to your room, you’re knackered and sweaty and drunk because your friends kept handing you jagerbombs and you’ve been up since 5am. Your hair’s stuck to your forehead, you’ve got individual eyelashes stuck to your cheeks like whiskers and your mouth tastes like a bin – It’s time to get naked!

That’s when you remember that it took twenty minutes and a highly trained team of bridesmaids armed with a crochet hook to wrangle you into a dress with twenty million buttons. Under the dress you’re wearing structural, functional underwear. There’s no bridesmaids, no crochet hook, only your spouse whose hands can’t stop shaking because they’re hopped up on red bull and coming down off a massive adrenaline high. You briefly consider ringing the night manager to come and bring the hunting knife he almost certainly has but also, you don’t want to get murdered.

You’re both gassy as fuck because you’ve lived like Henry VIII all day. You’ve consumed a surplus of booze, cake, cheese, coffee and a three course dinner and it’s all good and curdled because you jumped around on the dance floor to ABBA (even though before the wedding you vetoed Dancing Queen and threatened the DJ with death if they played it, because when all’s said and done it’s a banger and… y’know… JAGERBOMBS). Before the day you’d agonised over picking a special wedding day perfume because scent is the strongest sense associated with memory, but now the only aroma that will truly take you back to the day is truly eye-watering.

After an hour of dress wrestling (dresstling if you will) you give up and collapse in a farty heap on the floor next to a king sized bed with towel swans on it who are silently judging you as you fall asleep, ready to start the rest of your lives together.

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