Say "I Love You" By Swallowing Gold

Ted Noten has been featured a couple of other times on this blog for his humorous conceptual products, so when I saw his latest creation on NOTCOT, wedding pills, I knew I had to include these objects. The objects are simple. They are two solid gold pills that are ingested during the wedding ritual in lieu of wedding rings. I’ve covered several relationship based products recently, and this one is the most metaphorically disturbing to me. Imagine this couple swallowing the pill. Their expression of love is that they each want to take something precious and ingest it and make it part of themselves. This symbolizes their relationship with each other in how they are willing to ingest each other’s love within themselves. Awww! That’s so cute. Gosh, what a powerful and poetic gesture, right?

It seems that at the wedding this would come off as a weird, but deeply meaningful ritual. Of course, what happens at the end of the ritual when the golden ring has passed through the body? This Wedding Pill metaphor is starting to sound less appealing to me. Let’s go through this again: The couple each takes the golden pill, and everyone is happy. Then, days later the pill is shat out which, to me, marks what would be the end of the relationship. At the beginning, everything is all smiles, but at the end, you’ve shat out what’s preccious and your relationship (and your golden pill) is in the toilet. And the only way to recover your marriage (pill) is to dig through your shit each day until you find it.

Is this Ted Noten’s earnest and sincere (but twisted) attempt at rewriting a common wedding ritual? I would imagine not. With products such as the Meatbag, a clear Plexiglass purse with a piece of meat suspended in the center, I would think that the wedding pill is none other than a jab at the ritual of weddings. Or, is this project a play on the recent trend for couples to create their own rituals that are no longer bound by tradition? I would like to think that Mr. Noten has been down the path of a failed marriage, and this caused him to create a product that tells such a powerful story. More likely, it was just a couple of strong bowls of hash and a sketch pad that was the inspiration.