This is the Culture Study podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson.

And I'm Amanda Montel, host of the Sounds Like a cult podcast and author of books, including The Age of Magical Overthinking.

We got so many questions for this episode, but one of my favorites, and I actually laughed when I read this, was literally, why do people give in and have a wedding?

And we're not talking necessarily about why do people get married.

It's more a lot of people don't want to have a wedding or are disinterested, neutral,

and then just like, as this person said, give in and have a wedding. So you had one last year,

so I wanted your answer. This was me. This was absolutely me. I was repulsed by the conformity and consumerism and

patriarchal pressures. I was like, I'm not doing that. And up until the day of the extravagant event

that I did indeed throw wholeheartedly, I was referring to it as my dog's birthday party just as like a mental

gymnastic act. I was like, this is not a wedding. I would not go to these lengths for a wedding.

But I did. I did. And I can talk anecdotally about why I did it.

Yeah.

I am a person who greatly enjoys pageantry and festivity.

I take it upon myself as a hobby to throw involved parties at my house for my friends.

My husband and I, well, we joke that this is independently a hobby for us, both,

Halloween parties.

But it's kind of a thing.

Like, you have to do it as a couple because if he were just like a single man throwing like this over-the-top Halloween party, it would suddenly be like kind of

creepy. But as a couple, we, I mean, last year we threw an event called Club Vampire. We flew in

our demon twink DJ from Brooklyn. He's a friend. So this was like a love themed party that the

culture sanctions, you know? And that felt like a negative not a

positive for me the cultural sanctioning so I proposed to my cisgender male

...