Anya Tate-Manning, 33, has been with her partner, James, for “about five years” now.
That she has to stop and think about it for a moment, counting backwards to when they first got together, is telling of their level of commitment – there’s no self-conscious mental tallying of months like there is by those on their toes in the first throes of a new relationship.
But like many people her age, she sees no real need to get married. Both she and James are children of divorce; her parents opted to get hitched in a registry office over a white wedding. “I don’t know if it matters much to me,” she says.
The hundred-odd wedding dresses she keeps in boxes piled high in her living room tell a different story.
They’re leftover from Brides: A Dress-up Conversation, an “interactive theatre” project Tate-Manning and a collaborator, Barbarian Production’s Jo Randerson, held in Wellington last year.
It ran in an empty shop across the road from the Beehive for two weeks in April, happily coinciding with the passing of marriage equality.
Their aim was to generate discussion about the meaning of marriage in a time when one in three end in divorce. Continue reading.
Source: The Wireless
Image: Salon
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