Letters to the Editor
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Ah yes, the groom's mother...
At least two of my female friends have had fancy weddings pushed on them by their fiances, and, in one case, by the fiances mother...
My ex's mother was the biggest, most expensive thorn in my side. Why did I get married in a church? Because it was her church and "people" would be offended if I didn't. What did I mean about there not being lots of pretty flowers all over the place that she could order and arrange? Oh, and the guest list? She wanted it tripled so she could invite people my husband hadn't seen since he was a toddler.
All of this at our expense, I might add, when we were young and very broke. She wanted a $25,000 wedding when we were living on less than that a year.
Seriously, if I were to do this again, and I see no compelling reason to, I would elope. I mean, really elope, down to the secret engagement. No force on earth could induce me to go through that again, not even "twoo wuv".
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Giving the bride away
The funny / ironic thing to me is that western weddings symbolized the time when a father would give his daughter away to her husband. This is the height of paternalism of course something femminists should decry. This is the reason the father of the bride traditionally pays for the ceremony. One last fling on daddy's credit card I guess you could say.
The part that is ironic is that we have done away with all the paternalism but we are left with the meaningless ceremony for the sake of indulging the brides narcissism. It is her day but when was the last time she paid for it? Almost never. Now it is the bride pushing everybody else to pay for her to be the center of attention.
What does the guy get in return. Basically very little. He gets to dig into his pocket or go into debt to finance the shindig (men don't care a whit about weddings) otherwise she will be unhappy the rest of their marriage which is certainly the case much of the time anyway. I know some men who are still paying off their weddings long after the marital bed is cold.
Don't do it guys. Make her pay.
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Technology Changed Weddings
Digital technology has changed the wedding industry and given brides far more choices than they used to have, just look at the photography market.
There are very few "old school" wedding shooters still going around with medium format film cameras, sticking to the posed formals and a few candids. They used to be able to hang on to cameras for a decade or more and all that changed was film. The advent of digital camera bodies and elaborate post-processing has fundamentally changed what wedding photography and it is expensive.
Upgrading to the latest/greatest $5k camera bodies every two years adds up, and even though no film goes to the lab now, somebody has to process thousands of huge, raw camera files in front of a computer for every wedding. Since brides go online and read magazines, they want that editorial/photojournalistic look to their images, and that's what it takes to get it done. It used to be 100 prints to make your album. Now it's 1,000 images, an online gallery, digital files, and a custom album desinged in Photoshop. I woulnd't compare that to 1990, let alone WWII.
Interestingly enough, the high-end wedding market seems to be thriving in my neighborhood. The well-off still have plenty of money to spend on $100k weddings. It's everybody else I worry about.
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Consume!
What else should we expect from consumer culture...actual meaning in the traditions? The whole point is to create need, as Mead accurately states, that is tied directly to goods and services.
The entire idea of the wedding is a cobbled-together tradition as it is.
Add it to the long list...did you know the Pledge of Allegiance began as advertising copy for a flag maker?
Welcome to America. What's most interesting is the social stigma associated with not buying into all this crap. America hates its shadow, and that's where all the healthy reality is...fascinating.
The manufactured tradition becomes a matter of morality and "proper" socialization. It's a self-protecting, self-nurturing market.
The best weddings I've been to have been simple, small and the ceremonies were hand written by the people getting married. No pushing cake into faces, "love is kind" readings, garter belts or the horrible "standard" wedding DJ orchestrated fun.
It says so much about what is lasting as well. The marriages don't last, but the wedding businesses certainly do.
Interesting stuff.
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The monotony of the modern wedding
It's one thing to spend lots of money on a truly memorable affair, but what I find depressing about the wedding industry of late is their seeming ability to separate people from gobs of their money and in return give them the most strikingly unremarkable result, the details of which no one but the couple themselves and perhaps the couple's immediate family will remember. What a waste!
Brides spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to look as much like every other bride as possible. With few exceptions the brides that I've encounterd in the past five to ten yars have run together in one giant blur of strapless ivory dresses with full skirts. A little bit of beading running across the bodice of one dress is not going to distinguish it from every other nearly identical dress, yet these are the sorts of notions that otherwise sensible women fall prey to. And for the amount that a woman spends on even a relatively cheap / non-descript looking wedding dress, she could buy a very nice non-wedding dress, look beautiful, and actually separate herself from the hordes of bridal clones.
Then there are those favors that, if people even remember to take them home, will end up shoved in a junk drawer until the next spring cleaning episode when they finally get tossed.
There's the tedious multi-course, sit-down meal that has considerably less flavor than would, say, a slice of homemade lasagna or some barbeque. (But at least it looks fancy!)
The poor bridesmaids, almost certainly too old to be dressed as a matching set (as anyone who has reached the double digits is).
The polite smiles as guests sit awkwardly watching the couple sway to the strains of "At Last."
The grim patience of the single women who must endure yet another embarrassing bouquet toss.
The familiar reception soundtrack, filled with songs that no one would willingly listen to in their spare time.
For this, tens of thousands of dollars are spent! And what will the guests remember? They'll remember catching up with this friend or that relative they haven't seen in a few years. They'll remember any delightfully un-choreographed moments that manage to slip through the otherwise rote performance of procession, vows, introductions, first dance, toasts, bouquet toss, Electric Slide, and cake cutting. They won't remember the centerpieces and flower arrangements, the color scheme, the bridesmaids' matching pedicures and updos, the flavorless food, the dry cake.
So maybe they're promoting reverse snobbery, but the folks having pot-luck weddings in their backyard have a point, if for no other reason than that these weddings almost certainly have more of a personal touch to them, and will consequently be more memorable, than the average $25,000 affair that looks like it was produced in a warehouse. And being able to do it without sacrificing one's savings or going into debt seems like a lovely thing.