5 Things to Remember for Your Historical Plantation Wedding

So you’re planning to have your wedding at a plantation? Before you put money down on a venue, there are a lot of things to consider. Here are five tips to keep in mind while you tour these potential venues.

1. You would not have a wedding at Auschwitz. Don’t have a wedding at a plantation.
2. Plantations were not ‘homes.’ They were rural money-making production sites that forced black people to live in despicable conditions until they died. The picturesque building and gardens will never change that.
3. Media like Twelve Years a Slave is an accurate story of plantation life with little fictional exaggeration. Plantations have been witness to so much pain, suffering, and trauma. It isn’t appropriate to have celebrations there, but I also don’t see how you would want your wedding in such a hurtful place.
4. You may not have thought deeply enough about the true history and significance of plantations. You have privilege, and that history does not automatically affect you like it would affect a black person. This is because you’ve never been forced to look at it from that perspective. Please think about the larger significance of the plantation before you make your deposit.
5. Historic homes or wineries are sometimes converted from plantations. Those buildings are still the real deal and that history is seeped into the every inch of wood and every window. Please do your research. (This also goes for the Spanish Missions in California and comparable locations internationally).

TL;DR: While history is everywhere, there are particular places that should be memorials, not modern money-making production sites that ignore their problematic past.

If you’re not convinced, or need more context to work through the negative sides of a plantation wedding, please check out this useful YouTube video on the NotYourMommasHistory channel.

Disclaimer: if my article was not clear enough, I do not condone plantation weddings.