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Let's Call The Whole Thing Off
Is it time to cancel the wedding?
by Caitlin Flanagan

...The drama and frenzy that the contemporary white wedding tends to inspire in its principals has lately become a topic of scholarly as well as popular attention. Cinderella Dreams, by the University of Illinois professors Cele C. Otnes and Elizabeth H. Pleck, examines "the relationship of ritual to consumer culture." Although its prose is sometimes marred by the jargon of the academy (white weddings, we are tiresomely instructed, are "socially lauded manifestations of heterosexual, patriarchal, and racial-biased ideologies"), the book is a treasure trove of information about the history of the opulent modern wedding, from the development of bridal registries to the rise in popularity of the diamond engagement ring (a trend created almost entirely by a De Beers advertising campaign of the 1940s). The best chapter—a model of engaging social history—concerns the evolution of the honeymoon from a period of seclusion devoted to sexual initiation to one devoted to unwinding from the stress of wedding planning. (Certainly only the deeply naive would believe that before the sexual revolution all women waited for marriage to consummate their relationships; it is, however, true that nice girls carefully fostered the outward impression of doing just that. As Oscar Levant once remarked of Doris Day, he knew her before she became a virgin.) It is this theme, of the unmooring of wedding customs and traditions from their original purposes, that propels the book most powerfully. Whereas a wedding once provided young people with a moment of transformation so powerful that even a modestly funded event was a momentous one, nowadays —with marriage an iffy bet and with most betrothed couples having already helped themselves to all the liberties of adulthood—the only way to underline the moment is to put on an elaborate and costly show. Further, there were once measures of propriety that held wedding spending in check: no large weddings for second-timers, or older brides, or couples of differing religions, or the visibly pregnant, or cohabitating partners, or couples who would have to assume large debts to throw a lavish reception, or women whose sexual history was extensive and well known. But these strictures have all eroded. With clergymen and parents no longer the guardians of wedding rituals, that role has passed to retailers and party planners, who would happily marry a pair of baboons if someone was willing to foot the bill (indeed, the summer issue of Martha Stewart Weddings included "Tips for Making Your Favorite Furry or Feathered Friend a Part of the Festivities"). ...