An adult man was the flower girl at his cousin’s wedding, and we applaud his commitment
In recent years, gender roles in weddings have gotten more relaxed. Groomswomen and bridesmen have emerged to buck an outdated expectation of only women standing for the bride and men for the groom. But flower men are a pretty new ball game — one that we are loving.
The latest viral example of this gender-norm-bucking practice? Patrick Casey, a Wisconsin-based PR firm owner and literal best relative ever, who just served as the flower man in his cousin Andria’s wedding.
And, you guys, he committed — as in he walked down the aisle with a little basket and crafted a grand finale out of any wedding planner’s wildest dreams: pulling flower petals out of his pockets and tossing them in the air, zero irony involved.
Patrick tells Buzzfeed that he and Andria were really tight growing up, even serving as a ring bearer and flower girl in the same wedding when they were little. So it was pretty much a no-brainer when Andria asked him to step up.
And while it may have been a little weird for some of the guests at first, Patrick insists that they were impressed with his NBA-star-fueled final act.
"I'm pretty sure they were won over when I got to the end of the aisle and then proceeded to pull out flowers I had stocked in my pants' pockets and did a LeBron powder toss with them," he told BuzzFeed. "There was an ovation."
And by the way, the child-sized basket he used? The same one Andria carried when they were kids. *SOB.*
"They FULLY encouraged me to do all of this. I would have never done anything to take attention away from them if they didn't want me to," Patrick told Buzzfeed of the bride and groom.
While flower men aren’t new, they are one of the newer stereotype-defying trends to hit the wedding ceremony. As Indiana University of Pennsylvania sociology professor Robert Heasley told the New York Times in 2011, “We continue to have the marriage ceremony, but we’re slowly changing it to represent the greater balance of the genders.”
"It's a significant shift to have the male be the flower girl because it introduces a male who represents gentility, flowers, and femininity," Heasley added. "It's just another step toward the dismantling of the patriarchal formation of the marriage."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP3RvCyqLUA?feature=oembed
You can watch the whole adorable ceremony go down above. Now brb while we go text all our cousins.
