I do -- kind of

To find the actual "I do" feminists, you have to turn to the brides themselves, who seem to be outing themselves in droves ever since Steinem jumped the broom. Personal essays on marriage are popping up in magazines and newspapers; Lori Leibovich (formerly of Salon's Mothers Who Think) has started a new Web site for brides called Indiebride.com; and Seal Press has just published "Young Wives' Tales," a collection of essays by young, self-proclaimed feminist brides, edited by Jill Corral and Lisa Miya-Jervis, the founding editor of Bitch, one of the best known of the girlie, do-me feminist magazines.

One theme that emerges over the course of reading "Young Wives' Tales" is how deeply indebted straight couples are to gay and lesbian couples for reviving institutionalized coupledom (legal or not) for progressive straight people. The domestic choices made by writers in this collection include everything from the kind of marriages that would pass the conservative litmus test of marriage as defined by the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act -- "one man married to one woman" -- to marriages that are so queer as to constitute a gleeful "Fuck you" to the entire institution.

There is the Filipina lesbian turned hetero wife who defends her right to call herself "omnisexual" for life; the lesbian who marries, then gets sick of being a "political action figure" and ditches her wife for a new lover; the gay man and lesbian woman who share every aspect of their (legal) marriage except for sex. There is even the token polyamorist -- a woman who has been a member of a three-way committed sexual and domestic arrangement for over 10 years -- who of course takes the time to point out that polyamory has no relation to the sexist institution of polygamy. (The cynic in me knew that there had to be at least one in existence; I picture the anthology's editors taking out ads in alternative weeklies across the country: "Desperately Seeking Polyamorist!")

Given the fact that same-sex marriage is still illegal in virtually every state (except for the watered-down domestic partnerships available to same-sex couples in Hawaii and Vermont) and country (except Denmark and, recently, Germany), it would be deeply disingenuous to suggest that this is an unequivocally positive, or even fair, development.

Andrew Sullivan, one of the most vocal advocates for gay marriage, complains that when he attends the weddings of straight friends, "At no point, I think, has it dawned on any of the participants that I was being invited to a ceremony from which I was legally excluded." On the other hand, Laurie Essig, who has two daughters with her lesbian partner of over 10 years, ranted against gay marriage in Salon last year: "The legalization of gay marriage does not make me feel liberated as much as it makes me feel depressed," writes Essig. "It's sort of like getting gays in the military -- until I remember that I don't really care about the military as an institution."

What gay marriage has done for marriage as an institution is similar to what drag did for girlie feminism in the early '90s: It denaturalized traditional gender roles, and therefore made the act of assuming a traditional gender role seem less like assuming one's "essential" gender and more like choosing a costume. Once a drag queen could play "girl," or a butch lesbian could play "boy," it seemed OK to mix and match one's gender at will: A woman (like, say, Courtney Love, or a riot grrrl) could play "girlie"; a boy could play "macho" (like the gay men at StraightActing.com or leather boys).

So if a lesbian couple can do a full-on "white" wedding, complete with a Niagara Falls honeymoon, who's to say that a straight couple who do the same aren't also adding quotation marks to their wedding?

Only a few of the 30 women in "Young Wives' Tales" spend much time dissecting or participating in the white wedding ritual: a pair of lesbians who debate over who gets to wear the white gown; a hetero couple who are married in a pagan ceremony and choose to exchange a pair of matching handmade engagement rings to denote mutual respect rather than ownership; and a woman who reluctantly agrees to have a traditional Indian wedding to placate her traditional parents.

In fact, a quick perusal of women's writing on their weddings suggests that the trappings of the white wedding are most likely to inspire fear and self-loathing in feminist brides, rather than a deep pining to be a princess for a day.

"The first time I bought a bridal magazine," writes Leibovich on her Web site, "I felt like I was buying porn. When I lugged a mammoth issue of Bride's up to the counter, I actually found myself asking the cashier to stick it in a brown paper bag."

"Yes that was me," writes Denise Ryan in the Ottawa Journal, "in a cold sweat at Chapters, skulking around the magazine racks, a tuque pulled low on my brow, reading a copy of Martha Stewart Weddings that I had discreetly folded inside of Harpers."

Next page: They go ahead and do the deed, then proceed to explore their motives