{"id":1854,"date":"2011-06-25T12:54:01","date_gmt":"2011-06-25T04:54:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.weddingsatwork.com\/wawnewsblog\/2011\/06\/25\/gender-bender-here-comes-the-flower-fella\/"},"modified":"2011-06-25T12:54:01","modified_gmt":"2011-06-25T04:54:01","slug":"gender-bender-here-comes-the-flower-fella","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/weddingsatwork.com\/gender-bender-here-comes-the-flower-fella\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender-bender: Here comes the Flower Fella!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Soon-to-weds welcome the newest member of their wedding entourage, and the role is not for the faint-hearted.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s an excerpt from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">New York Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.weddingsatwork.com\/wawnewsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/flower-fella.jpg\" alt=\"flower-fella.jpg\" height=\"420\" width=\"420\" \/><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>For her otherwise traditional Filipino Catholic wedding last October in  Mountain View, Calif., Jen Fernando chose her friend Sean Hopkins, 37,  to be the \u201cflower fella.\u201d \u201c<em>She thought it was the perfect way to  represent our friendship because it was totally our sense of humor,\u201d<\/em> Mr.  Hopkins said. <em>\u201cWhen it had to be approved by the priest, I thought that  would be it, but he was tickled by the idea.\u201d        <\/em><\/p>\n<p>The crowd at St. Joseph, a Roman Catholic church, cheered as Mr. Hopkins  tossed silk rose petals onto the carpeted path from an onion-shaped  basket wrapped in silver ribbon. <em>\u201cI was nervous,\u201d<\/em> he said. <em>\u201cWhen I took  the first petals out, I saw my hand shaking and I heard whispers, but  then everyone started laughing so I could let go.\u201d        <\/em><\/p>\n<p>As gender roles in weddings have gradually blurred, it is less rare for  the bride and bridegroom to have opposite-sex attendants or so-called  honor attendants.\u00a0 The gendered wedding is breaking down, which is allowing heterosexuals  to play with the stereotypes in a way they didn\u2019t have permission to do  before. Although flower men might bring on waves of laughter, they did not undermine the ritual.<\/p>\n<p>You can play with the traditional mold, but in the end, you\u2019ve had a  wedding, Whether you do it on the back of a motorcycle or  underwater, it\u2019s the same thing.<\/p>\n<p>Weddings were one of the last institutions to hold on  to strict roles for the sexes, but that they were changing.\u00a0 We continue to have the marriage ceremony, but we\u2019re slowly changing it  to represent the greater balance of the genders. It\u2019s a  significant shift to have the male be the flower girl because it  introduces a male who represents gentility, flowers and femininity. It\u2019s  just another step toward the dismantling of the patriarchal formation  of the marriage.<\/p>\n<p>Typically, the flower girl settles for a few compliments in the bride\u2019s  shadow, so it can be tricky for a man to manage the task without  upstaging the bride. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/06\/26\/fashion\/weddings\/as-wedding-roles-evolve-here-come-the-flower-men-field-notes.html?_r=1\" target=\"_blank\">READ FULL STORY<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Soon-to-weds welcome the newest member of their wedding entourage, and the role is not for the faint-hearted.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s an excerpt from the New York Times: For her otherwise traditional Filipino Catholic wedding last October in Mountain View, Calif., Jen Fernando chose her friend Sean Hopkins, 37, to be the \u201cflower fella.\u201d \u201cShe thought it was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weird-amusing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weddingsatwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1854"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weddingsatwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weddingsatwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weddingsatwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weddingsatwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/weddingsatwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1854\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weddingsatwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weddingsatwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weddingsatwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}