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Why We're Reimagining The Wedding Ceremony

An illustration featuring two femme-presenting individuals holding each other and smiling. The person on the left has light brown skin and long dark brown hair that is up. She is wearing a red sari with gold accents and a golden sash across her body, gold bangle bracelets, gold dangly earrings and a golden piece of jewelry at the top of her forehead. Her nails are painted red. The person on the right is wearing a white dress with small pink accents and a red and gold sash tied around her waist that matches her partner's outfit. Her brown hair is short, and she's wearing a golden Grecian headband, a gold bracelet, a gold necklace and a gold wedding ring. The border of the illustration is full of red and golden flowers, and the word "Embodied" is at the top in yellow block letters.
Charnel Hunter

Specific marriage traditions and ceremonies have been around for millennia. But for some couples, reimagining the exchanging of the vows is a significant step of the process — from blending faiths and cultures to acknowledging queerness and relationships beyond the couple.

Host Anita Rao is nearing her first wedding anniversary — something she never imagined herself saying! It wasn’t a question of desiring and finding a life partner, but the idea of participating in the ritual of a wedding, or even the institution of marriage, that gave her pause.

There was the fact that marriage’s origins have roots in ownership, particularly of a woman. Plus, she knew her dad would want a Hindu wedding ceremony that reinforced some of those gender inequities. These conundrums aren’t unique to Anita’s experience: the marriage rate has dropped nearly 60% in the last 50 years. And when the ceremonies do occur, there are now more same-sex, interracial and interfaith weddings involving a meld of old and new traditions.

Anita talks with two officiants about how they find out exactly what a couple values and bring that to old rituals — or build something from the ground up. Raja Gopal Bhattar officiated Anita’s wedding to her husband, and they were an instrumental part of blending the values of Anita’s feminist millennial partnership with the desires of her tradition-loving dad. Raja talks about preserving the intention of centuries-old Hindu traditions without patriarchal or heteronormative overtones and how showing up as a genderqueer officiant has further connected them to their community and identity.

Anita also talks with Kelli Dunham, a comedian, nurse and queer ex-nun who has officiated weddings involving everything from fire ceremonies to pets standing up for the couple. Kelli talks about the creativity that queer couples have long brought to marriage ceremonies and why she continues to officiate even while not wishing to get married herself.

Special thanks to Anita’s dad, Satish Rao, for guest starring in this episode to share his journey from skepticism to enjoyment of Anita’s reimagined ceremony.

Read the transcript

Kaia Findlay is the lead producer of Embodied, WUNC's weekly podcast and radio show about sex, relationships and health. Kaia first joined the WUNC team in 2020 as a producer for The State of Things.
Anita Rao is an award-winning journalist, host, creator, and executive editor of "Embodied," a weekly radio show and podcast about sex, relationships & health.
Amanda Magnus is the executive producer of Embodied, a weekly radio show and podcast about sex, relationships and health. She has also worked on other WUNC shows including Tested and CREEP.