A shotgun wedding is a hastily arranged marriage due to an unplanned pregnancy, often involving a gun-toting father-in-law. While the practice is not as common today, some families still believe in marriage before pregnancy to restore honor and gain respect from the community. The term can also be used metaphorically.
In a Hollywood romance, life is simple and straightforward. Boy meets girl. The boy marries the girl. Boy and girl start a family. However, real life doesn’t always imitate art. Sometimes boy meets girl, girl gets pregnant, and boy meets his shotgun-toting father-in-law. This scenario is the basis for one of the more unhappy occasions known as a shotgun wedding.
A shotgun wedding is the marriage equivalent of gunboat diplomacy. The child’s father has to do the honorable thing and attend a hastily arranged wedding ceremony. Any questions or concerns can be addressed by Smith and Wesson.
The idea of a forced marriage to preserve the honor of a pregnant bride and her family isn’t new, even if the image of a gun-toting father appears to be uniquely American. The original shotgun wedding phenomenon may have involved royal arms, but many historians believe that the actual number of marriages performed under such duress was not unusually high. Tales of forced marriages often served as a lesson for young men of engagement age.
Even though the shotgun element has largely fallen out of the wedding business, the idea of restoring honor to both families has not. Although society in general has become more supportive of couples conceiving out of wedlock, there are still families who strongly believe in marriage before pregnancy. The social stigma attached to an unmarried mother, and by extension her family, is often hard to ignore. A public wedding involving a pregnant bride may not be the family’s first choice, but it at least helps restore some honor to the family and helps the young couple gain much-needed respect from the community.
The term shotgun wedding can also be used metaphorically to describe a hastily arranged arrangement or a decision made under extreme duress. For example, a merger with a rival company can be viewed as a forced marriage brought about by the threat of foreign competition.
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