How Offbeat Bride Changed My Life

I remember the day that my sister Karen called me to tell me she was engaged. It was in late winter of my senior year of high school back in 2006; I clearly remember getting her call on my little flip cell phone. I picked up while walking from my old black jeep in the parking lot of my high school on my way to the band hall. I could not have been more excited. Everyone in my family already loved her fiance Steve and we knew they'd be a great married couple. 

At that point in my life, I had been to maybe two or three weddings of people in my congregation from church and one distant family member's wedding, but I'd never been directly involved in one in any way. I had no idea how any of these things worked, and I don't think my parents really knew either. I remember my mother bemusedly telling us about how their own wedding in 1977 involved a ceremony at a church and punch and cake at her parents' house afterward. She wore a handmade white lace dress. My dad wore a powder blue suit. Nothing like the average wedding today. 

I served as my sister's maid of honor and did what I could to help her, but to be honest, I didn't do much besides planning the bridal shower and the bachelorette party. I helped her put on her hose on her actual wedding day. But the bridal magazines that I started finding around the house triggered something in me- a desire to learn more about the entire industry and start dreaming about my own wedding. 

Those magazines and those dreams led me to Offbeat Bride somehow. I don't remember the exact sequence of events that got me there, but I started reading that wonderful website back in 2007 and have haunted it on a regular basis. When I had a boyfriend and was optimistic, it tended to be weekly to daily. When I was single or despondent and had to limit my exposure to such things or risk just getting depressed, I lowered my exposure, but I still visited often. When Offbeat Family launched, I started reading that, even though I didn't have a spouse or kids personally and didn't know if or when that would happen (it's now been folded into Offbeat Home). When Offbeat Home and Offbeat Empire launched, I started reading those too.

You see, Offbeat Bride isn't just any wedding website. It espouses an openness to other people, other ways of life, that was entirely new to me and completely fascinating. My family is wonderful and accepting and great, but I had really just never been exposed to some of these other subcultures or viewpoints before. I was a little Lutheran girl who grew up in the church in Texas. I didn't know anything about goths, or pagans, or polyamory, or steampunk, or atheism. These are all things I learned about by reading Offbeat Bride. While I thought I was just reading it as a guilty pleasure to read about other people's weddings, I really was learning how to be a better person. How to not just accept people, but to try to understand them. 

It really changed me. I learned that there were many beautiful, consensual ways to be in love and be married (or not) and be alive and that all of them were valid options. I learned how to decorate my first rental home off campus from Offbeat Home. I figured out how to interact with my nieces long-distance from Offbeat Family. When I was an online journalist and editor, I learned a lot about content planning, social media, and community management from Offbeat Empire. I even wrote a few stories for the sites; some under my own name, one or two under pseudonyms. 

10 years on into reading this one publisher's content on a regular basis, it's pretty awesome to look back and wonder what I would have been like without its influence on my life. I fully believe it's made me more open to other people and other possibilities than I would have been otherwise. That constant exposure to diversity and a loving, supportive community of people happy to wave their freak flag has honestly made me a better person. 

And it all started with my sister's wedding. That's one reason I won't let myself feel guilty about caring about my wedding or reading so much on this topic. It's so easy to say that these ceremonial parties we throw to celebrate the joining of people is all just a huge expense or a waste of time, but they, as every other ceremony, bring people together and make them bump up against each other in ways that cause both tension and delight. I know people who have found their own career calling while planning their own wedding, who met their significant others and spouses and weddings, who found new ways to express themselves as part of the process. 

Of course there are plenty who just don't have those experiences and that's fine too. But I like to study it. I like to learn. I like to know all the things. And I think part of that insatiable curiosity and love of other people's stories really can be directly traced back to my years and years of reading OBB. Thanks y'all. <3

Book Review: Weddings - Dating & Love Customs of Cultures Worldwide

What is this book about? 

This is a gorgeous and super detailed book full of black and white photos, explanations of customs and cultures, and scripts of ceremonies and vows from around the world. It also includes a small section on weddings of royalty at the back (I love that they included JFK and Jackie in that definition).  

It's basically like an encyclopedia of weddings. It's very well organized, easy to navigate, and  thorough, with lots of thank yous to various people and sources cited throughout. The author clearly reached out to a ton of people, including several embassies, and read just stacks of books for this. It's pretty darn impressive. I'm sad I didn't get to read this one as in depth as I might have liked (I'm actually turning it in late to the library after renewing it three times as it is. Oops. My books-I-want-to-read eyes are bigger than my actual-time-to-read stomach.)

Who would love this book?

This would be super useful for a student doing a project on any sort of wedding wedding comparison, or a wedding professional who wants to have a good broad knowledge of a variety of ceremonies and traditions at hand. It's also great for a school or library setting. Really, 

My Favorite Parts

It really goes very into depth on the individual ceremonies of lots of different religions and cultures (Many of which I hadn't even heard before!). We get so in our own heads about the way things are done in the U.S. sometimes that it's easy to forget the beautiful differences out there. Cambodian, Navajo, Myanmar Buddhist, Laplander, Druze, Rural Campesinos, Ngoni, Chagga - I really enjoyed looking through them all!

Does it talk about marital surname changes at all? 

Not that I could find! I didn't read every single word on every single page though, alas.

Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/Weddings-Customs-Cultures-Worldwide-Including/dp/0961382325

About that Mrs. Thing

I've never particularly liked or understood the reason for using different lead-ins for women based on their marital status. It seemed to be very old fashioned to me, even when I was fairly young. In my previous life as a journalist, I interned a semester at a newspaper in London. Their practice there was to use honorifics on the second reference to a person in a news article; so if John Doe is mentioned once, on the second time, he'd be Mr. Doe. I always hated having to ask women interviewees whether they were married or not just to figure out what honorific they'd use, so I ended up defaulting to using Ms. a lot of the time. In retrospect, I could probably have just asked "What's your preferred title, Miss, Mrs, or Ms?" but I was 21 and awkward and sometimes the simplest solutions don't occur to you until 8 years later when you're in a completely different career.

Made by DefineDesignEtc on Etsy. Available at https://www.etsy.com/listing/491089913/miss-to-mrs-canvas-makeup-bag-bride-gift

So honestly, because of my own personal dislike for the practice, I'm unlikely to start using Mrs after getting married. However, it's almost certain that at least some people will call me that anyway, whether or not I change my name. People have a nasty habit of assuming such things. I've gotten called "Mrs" on several occasions just in my regular life; once even when a boyfriend and I went to a very fancy restaurant when I was only 18! I got it most recently at a doctor's office. This makes me believe that a considerable number of people don't actually know the difference between the different titles and particularly don't understand its historical context.

"In the middle of the eighteenth century, 'Mrs' did not describe a married woman: it described a woman who governed subjects (i.e., employees or servants or apprentices) or a woman who was skilled or who taught. It described a social, rather than a marital status. 

Mistress is also the basis of another 'title of politeness' (as the OED terms it): 'Miss', which we use to designate an unmarried woman. Miss is almost as old as Mrs as an abbreviation of mistress and, like Mrs, it was applied only to those of higher social status. Unlike Mrs, which has changed from a social to a marital meaning over time, Miss always designated the marital status of being unmarried. But until the eighteenth century it was only applied to girls, never to adult women." - Mistresses and marriage: or, a short history of the Mrs, by Cambridge University historian Dr Amy Erickson. (This paper is really fascinating - Dr Erickson looked at a ton of old records to see what titles were being used over time)

The use of Mrs for women in authority can also be seen in the use of Mrs for "Mrs Hughes," the housekeeper in charge of all the servants on Downton Abbey, taking place around the time of the first World War. Dr Erickson also notes that the appropriate title for single business women in the 19th century was also Mrs.

Quick sidenote: I've been reading some Jane Austen lately, and this paper also describes the naming conventions used there. 

"Where Miss was used, it followed the conventions of Mr for sons. Where the father was 'Mr Cibber', his sons were 'young Mr Cibber' or 'Mr Theophilus'. With daughters, the eldest unmarried daughter was 'Miss Cibber' with no first name, the younger daughter was 'Miss Charlotte Cibber', or just 'Miss Charlotte'. When she married she became Mrs Charke, or Mrs Charlotte Charke to distinguish her from any other contemporaries who were also Mrs Charkes, notably her mother-in-law"

Surprisingly, the "tradition" of calling a wife Mrs. "Husband's First Name Husband's Last Name" is actually fairly new. Dr Erickson's paper continues snarkily, "Through the early modern period, where Mrs was used and the woman was married, the title was followed by her own first name and her husband's last name. The total annihilation of wifely identity which assigned a woman not only her husband's last name but also his first name only appeared around 1800." 

Awesome Dr. Shirt available over at https://www.amazon.com/Miss-Mrs-Shirt-Funny-PhD/dp/B01FRGK47U

Here's the thing: Is it actually appropriate for someone to call a married woman who hasn't changed her last name Mrs? According to several sources, such as Miss Manners and Offbeat Bride, no, as Mrs in this instance literally means "wife of" and actually only makes total sense when used with the husband's complete name.

So since I don't plan to legally change, it sounds like I will not be partaking of any of the fabulous and often glittery "Mrs." themed garb out there. Oh well. There's still plenty of other ways for me to engage in blatant wedding themed consumerism.

Sidenote: I really wish I could find some fabulous MS. NOT MRS. merchandise out there. When I searched for "Ms. T-shirt" I just found a ton of stuff for Multiple Sclerosis.

Anyway, I'll leave you on this note: 

Book Review: A Short History of Marriage (from 1913!)

What is this book about? 

This book is a survey of marriage customs from a variety of cultures and countries around the world. It does have one historical chapter on "Marriage Among the Ancients." Most of these chapters are just little snippets discussing each tradition in turn and then moving briskly on to the next one. 

Warning: Because this book was originally published in 1913, it uses some language and viewpoints that are pretty offensive to modern society. For example - the entire first chapter is titled "Primitive Marriage" and reviews customs among Native American tribes (referred to as "Red Indians"),  African cultures and various other groups that somehow fall under "primitive" for no discernible reason I can tell (Hindu people? Aborigines? Scandinavians? What?)

There are also some occasional references to people that were probably experts and very well known in 1913 but are.....less known today. I was a little confused when page 5 of the book started waxing poetic on what "Lord Avebury" thinks about the nature of early marriage. Fortunately, Lord Avebury has his own Wikipedia page so I was able to learn a little about him. He apparently invented the terms Paleolithic and Neolithic. Sidenote: Lord Avebury would be an excellent name for a cat.

Lord Avebury (John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury) and his excellent beard.

Further sidenote: If you google Lord Avebury and marriage you'll find that he's quoted in a ton of pre-1920 texts on the subject, including a six volume set on the history of marriage published in 1891. I must investigate further and write more blog posts. ALL THE AVEBURY.

Who would love this book?

A lot of people might enjoy reading this book! It does seem to concentrate on more of the less traditional and more unusual traditions from around the world, so it's really amusing if you're into that sort of thing or get a kick out of old-school books. However, because it's old, it looks like copies of this are going to be pretty expensive to find. Even reprints are running $30 +. I honestly don't think I'd pay that, but if you can find it at a library, I highly suggest it. It's really entertaining.

My Favorite Parts

There are like four whole pages dedicated to the custom of giving "a flitch of bacon [half a pig] to any pair who could come forward and state on oath, after a year of marriage, that they had never once quarrelled or regretted their marriage during the year," celebrated in Dunmow and Whichnoure in England. There's an entire account of a parade held in honor of the ceremony of the awarding of the Dunnmow flitch of bacon. It's glorious. This tradition is apparently still going on. This blog post talks about it and includes PICTURES, so you should go check it out.  

There are also several pages in the "Marriage Superstitions and Omens" chapter dedicated to the best and worst days and months to get married among various cultures. Apparently, February 11, June 2, November 2, and December 1 "are considered the most unpropitious days of the year on which to get married" (according to either English custom, ancient Roman tradition, or the Roman Catholic Church? This book doesn't cite its sources very clearly). This amuses me, as my wedding day is June 2, 2018. I must tell John that our date is unpropitious. 

Some other superstition jewels:

"A woman should not marry on the day of the week of her birth." 

"If there is a cat in the house, the bride must feed it herself on the wedding day, otherwise the day may prove rainy." 

"If you cut your nails on a Saturday your lover will call on Sunday." 

"The bride should always buy something as soon as she is married, and before the bridegroom can make a purchase. 'Then she'll be master for life!' say the old women. It is customary for brides to buy a pin from their bridesmaids in order to retain the mastery of their husbands."

"Hindoos believe that anyone who kills a frog will never be married." 

Also, apparently in certain parts of Germany, it used to be customary on the wedding eve ("polterabend") to throw out of the window every article of crockery or glass which is cracked or broken.  

Also also, if you want to say no to someone's offer of marriage in certain parts of Thuringia, a sausage is placed on the table at meal-time when the suitor arrives. 

Karen weddings in Burmah are conducted at funerals!

Basically I could include fun trivia from this book all day, but I have to return it the library at some point.

Does it talk about marital surname changes at all? 

Only very briefly in passing. For example: "Among the Ainus a married woman does not take her husband's name. She either uses her maiden name or is designated as 'the wife of So-and-so.'" (the Ainu are an indigenous people of Japan)

Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Marriage-Folklore-Countries/dp/1447456130

Book Review: A World of Ways to Say "I Do"

What is this book about? 

This book is a small, slim collection of vows from various religions and cultures, common and less common quotations for wedding ceremonies, and encouraging advice about how to write your own vows.

The book definitely does encourage borrowing from other cultures, which I think is wonderful to an extent, but you do need to be respectful and thoughtful while doing so or you could really easily slip into exploitative cultural appropriation.. Offbeat Bride has written some wonderful articles about how to carefully navigate these issues; this one's my favorite:

Why do couples borrow cultural elements for their wedding, and how can you do so respectfully?

"Obviously this doesn't give people the right to mindlessly usurp these treasures from the cultures of others. I believe, however, that if people who feel a particular bond or attachment to traditions that resonate with them, then they should be able to carefully and thoughtfully find ways to honor those pieces of a culture, and possibly create new cultures/traditions where there weren't any before..... Essentially, I think it comes down to "Don't be a jerk about it." I believe that the exploration of other cultures does not have to mean the exploitation of other cultures. If done carefully, with consideration, tact, and a heart of the intended meaning and purpose, using cultural traditions of others can be a nod of respect."

Who would love this book?

Like literally any person planning a wedding. It's so sweet and useful. I've actually marked several passages myself and am really thinking about using some of the things in here in our ceremony.

This book also does have several wonderful sections of quote for use by couples who have been married before and couples from different generations or religious backgrounds, so I think it could be particularly useful for couples falling into those categories.

My Favorite Parts

I really love several parts of the Celtic Vows and handfasting ceremony:

• You cannot possess me for I belong to myself. But while we both wish it, I give you that which is mine to give. 
• "Partner 1, will you cause her pain?" "I may." "Is that your intent?" "No." /Partner 2 repeats/ "Will you both share each other's pain and seek to ease it?" "Yes." 

I also found the collection of vows from various branches of Christianity fascinating (although I want more information about their sources for these vows). They're so similar but just slightly different to reflect the different tenets of that faith. As someone who grew up in the Lutheran church, the end of that church's vows are just so....Lutheran. "I will try with you to better understand ourselves, the world, and God; through the best and the worst of what is to come as long as we live." 

I also love that the Methodist vow opens "I ask you to be my husband as my friend and my love" rather than the usual "I take thee/you to be my husband."

There's also a strangely moving sentence that says, "We live in an age of uncertainty. Love and marriage are statements of faith in the face of this uncertainty."

Does it talk about marital surname changes at all? 

Nope! It's just a lovely little book talking about vows.

Here, read some poetry from the book instead:

"Oh my beautiful one.
Are you not my health and my life?
You are health to the heart that finds you."
- Fragment from an ancient Egyptian love poem.

"My boat is floating on the sky. 
And I am also as my beloved is a dream mirrored on my heart."
- Tu Fu, Eighth-Century China Love poem fragment

Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/World-Ways-Say-Do-Readings/dp/0071422951

Who Traditionally Pays for the Wedding: Why and How Much?

Offbeat Bride wrote about this in an article talking about the tradition of dowries:

"[T]he responsibility of a bride's parents to pay for a wedding. I've never been especially fond of this tradition, because I think in some circumstances all it does is foster an attitude of entitlement in those brides who would condemn their parents for choosing not to finance their extravagant tastes. That, or parents end up killing themselves (figuratively!) trying to earn the money for their child's wedding out of a sense of obligation, whether it's practical or not.

In the end, why?…

Because hundreds of years ago, women were considered chattel and the bride's family used to have to pay off the groom's family in the form of a dowry to take their daughters off their hands. After dowries went out of style, there was still the trousseau (the bride's dress and accouterments for the wedding, in addition to stuff like cake, etc.), usually hand prepared by the bride's family. Now that we have wedding vendors to make cakes and dresses for us, the trousseau has also gone out of style for the most part, and instead the bride's family just ponies up the cash....

We no longer live in the times where marriage was essentially a way to ensure that women were taken care of. Love wasn't always a factor (and still isn't, in some cultures). Teenage brides weren't uncommon, because people just didn't live as long. Girls who were practically still children themselves got married and started having children right away, because culture and religion dictated it be so. The dowry and trousseau were a necessity of those times, because they ensured that a groom would have the things he needed to support his new wife and their children to come. This is no longer the case, for the most part, as most couples who get married had acquired quite a lot of crap of their own-they don't need the "starter kits" that couples used to need."

Photo used under a Creative Commons License. Taken by Flickr user 401(K) 2012. Available at https://www.flickr.com/photos/68751915@N05/6355351769/

How often does this tradition actually continue? The 2015 survey from the Knot said this: 

"Tradition lives on, with parents paying for a large portion of wedding costs, but today’s couples are happy to contribute. On average, the bride’s parents contribute 44% of the overall wedding budget, the bride and groom contribute 43%, and the groom’s parents contribute 12% (others account for the remaining 1%).  In 2015, 12% of couples paid for the wedding entirely by themselves, and 9% of couples don’t contribute any finances to the wedding budget.

In nearly half of all weddings, the bride pays for professional hair and makeup. Forty-four percent of brides, along with her parents, contribute to the costs for professional hair-styling, and 41% contribute to professional make-up for their bridesmaids. The average cost of professional bridal party hair and makeup services are $70 and $68 per person, respectively."

Photo used under a Creative Commons License. Taken by Flickr user Tax Credits. Available at https://www.flickr.com/photos/76657755@N04/7027595009/

However, these statistics do only represent the type of couples and weddings that are using the Knot, which is one reason I take many of the claims of this survey with a gigantic grain of salt, such as the statement that the average wedding cost in the US is $32,641 and that the average cost of a wedding in Chicago is $61,265. That seems....unlikely to be representative of all people actually getting married. I would also like to point that every single place listed on their "Top 10 Most Affordable Places to Get Married" has a higher average budget than my wedding (I also fully intend to stay under budget because I am ultra competitive and cheap; I've already told my sister that I will beat her budget. :D She supported this completely. Fortunately, we're actually already on track to meet this goal).

I had a bit of trouble finding non-traditional wedding market statistics. I did see one statistic from a Splendid Insights market research report in an older Offbeat Empire post stating that 43% of nontraditional couples pay for their own weddings (about 20% of the wedding market identified as "offbeat" in this particular research round). Also, according to this research 48% of these nontraditional couples had wedding budgets of $10,000 or less. Offbeat Bride's own 2011 reader survey found that over 60% of their readership had budgets of $10,000 or less -  4.8% of their readership had budgets under $1,000, 13.5% had $1,000-$3,000 budgets, 18.1% had $3,000-$5,000 budgets, and 28.3% had $5,000-$10,000 budgets.

Royal Wedding Memorabilia

I found this book in the library of the assisted living facility where my theater troupe rehearses! I enjoyed looking through it very much; everything was just so delightfully 80s. 

This "How Stuff Works" article - "10 Wacky Pieces of Royal Wedding Memorabilia" - also quite entertainingly features several pieces of memorabilia made in honor of various royal weddings, including cups, thimbles, frisbees, and rubiks cubes! I will confess to owning a few small plates of royal memorabilia myself - for Charles and Diana's wedding and I believe King George V and Queen Mary's coronation - which I have used as soap dishes.

Bonus Material: 15 Most Gorgeous Royal Wedding Gowns of All Time, InStyle, By Mehera Bonner, July 1, 2016. These are AMAZING, I think my favorite is number 3 (Queen Rania of Jordan) and number 12 (Princess Victoria of Sweden- I adore her cameo crown!).

Book Review: The Meaning of Wife - A Provocative Look at Women and Marriage in the Twenty-First Century

The Meaning of Wife - A Provocative Look at Women and Marriage in the Twenty-First Century, By Anne Kingston

What is this book about? 

This book takes a particular look at the many ways of being a wife. I was a little worried that it would be a bit of a repeat of One Perfect Day when I read the chapter "The Heart of Whiteness" on the wedding industry (which was hilarious on its own, I just didn't want to read the same book over again), but it quickly distinguished itself with its incredibly well researched and pop culture reference stuffed chapters on the revival of "traditional" housewife roles in the 90s, married sex, domestic violence, revengeful wives, and the simultaneous glamorization and yet stigmatization of single women ("unwifes"). 

Who would love this book?

I think most women getting married would enjoy this book, as it takes a broad look at a wide range of cultural phenomena related to American marriage of the past 40 or so years instead. It has a lot of 90s pop culture references (It was published in 2005, so that makes sense, you know!). One chapter in particular references Sex and the City about a bazillion times, so I feel it would really appeal to a lot of people of my generation and older.

My Favorite Parts

There's a running theme involving the seeming "fairy tale" marriage of Princess Diana to Prince Charles that starts in the intro and keeps circling back throughout the book wherever relevant. I wasn't sure where the author was going with it at first, but it became a really illustrative example of the fairy tale bubble bursting for a lot of her points.

The chapter chronicling the very very different beliefs between generations about the role sex should play in a marriage is pretty intriguing. The immediate back to back juxtaposition of chapters on domestic violence/the pop culture obsession with the "abused wife" trope  and the laudatory manner in which society greets women who "screw their husbands over but good," either economically or physically (a few pages are dedicated to Lorena Bobbit's story) is really thought provoking and simultaneously disturbing. 

Does it talk about marital surname changes at all? 

Yes! I can finally say yes! Not a ton - it's definitely around the edges - but they are mentioned! Lucy Stone's marriage to Henry Blackwell and her decision to keep her name is mentioned; the National Organization for Women's campaign to use "Ms." as the standard salutation for women.

Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.com/Meaning-Wife-Provocative-Marriage-Twenty-first/dp/0312425007

Podcast: Stuff You Missed in History Class - History of the White Wedding

Stuff You Missed in History Class, "A Brief History of the 'White Wedding,'" April 25, 2016. Hosts: Tracy V. Wilson and Holly Frey.  

Queen Victoria's Wedding Portrait

Again from the cultural and historical side of things - this is an episode from one of my very favorite podcasts. The hosts of Stuff You Missed in History Class are super organized and hilarious (just the way I like my podcasts to be), with just the right touch of witty back and forth mixed in. 

This podcast addresses numerous "white wedding" traditions. Here are just a few tidbits from it! 

• White wedding dresses were a fashion started by Queen Victoria, who loved her husband Albert in the most passionate and adorable way ever (seriously, I ship them). After his death, she built him a magnificent memorial and wore black the rest of her life.
• Wedding rings date back to Ancient Greece and Rome and may have derived from the tradition of breaking a coin apart at the wedding and giving a half to the bride and a half to the groom. 
• Cakes have been part of weddings for a very long time, but only recently did those actually come to resemble what we actually consider cake today. For a long time, "cake" referred to almost any type of bread good. 
  • Queen Victoria's cake was 10 FEET in diameter and weighed 300 pounds. 
  • Tiered wedding cakes really started in 1851 and piped decorations on cakes weren't really a thing until the 1890s.

 Bonus Material: "How the Women Behind Stuff You Missed in History Class Became Unlikely Celebrities," By Josh Green, Atlanta Magazine (August 2016) - I love this profile of podcast hosts Tracy V. Wilson and Holly Frey and their work and I exceptionally enjoy the accompanying photographs of them in fancy dresses and feathery headpieces.

And of course, this blog post wouldn't be complete without this: 

Another George Bernard Shaw Quote

“When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.”

"In this 1935 photograph, botanist Wilmatte Porter Cockerell (1871-1957) is shown with biologist Theodore Dru Alison Cockerell (1866-1948), whom she married in 1900. In 1901, he named the ultramarine blue chromodorid Mexichromis porterae in her honor. Before and after their marriage in 1900, they frequently went on collecting expeditions together and assembled a large private library of natural history films, which they showed to schoolchildren and public audiences to promote the cause of environmental conservation." Unidentified Photographer. Public Domain. Available online here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/smithsonian/3378207203/in/photolist-4WhxBp-9nw5JN-9nw5M1-69AjNm-69wciM

Stephanie Coontz's A History of Marriage used this quote as an intro to Chapter 1: The Radical Idea of Marrying for Love and pointed out: 

"Shaw's comment was amusing when he wrote it at the beginning of the twentieth century, and it still makes us smile today, because it pokes fun at the unrealistic expectations that spring from a deeply held cultural ideal--that marriage should be based on intense, profound love and a couple should maintain their ardor until death do them part. But for thousands of years the joke would have fallen flat.

For most of history it was inconceivable that people would choose their mates on the basis of something as fragile and irrational as love and then focus all their sexual, intimate, and altruistic desires on the resulting marriage. ...

People have always fallen in love and throughout the ages many couples have loved each other deeply. But only rarely in history has love been seen as the main reason for getting married. When someone did advocate such a strange belief, it was no laughing matter. Instead, it was considered a serious threat to social order."