Altared states
Tracing the transformation of the American wedding from simple celebration to orgy of excess
One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding
By Rebecca Mead
Penguin, 245 pp., $25.95
Who could love the modern American bride?
Her parents have been told that their notions and emotions about weddings are not factors in the planning of this one, and that they should confine themselves to paying the bills and not even think of inviting their own friends.
Her future in-laws have been assigned to give a lavish party on the eve of the wedding without having a say in any of the arrangements or what costs they will incur.
Her relatives have found that they have no special standing, but will be judged fit to attend only if she happens to like them.
Her closest friends have been conscripted into service as hostesses, maids, and errand runners, stripped of control even over their own personal appearance.
Her wider circle of friends has been told for months that she is too busy for them, only to discover that she has put an extraordinary amount of time into choosing what she expects them to buy her to furnish her married life.
And while her bridegroom is permitted to serve as an aide-de-camp, his duties now consist of mastering such alien skills as declaring his favorite color, learning to waltz, and, above all, listening to the bride's complaints about the callousness and inadequacy of his relations and his friends as well as of the other people mentioned above.
But there is one person who has a soft spot for the bride who causes all this havoc. Rebecca Mead declares at the outset that her book on modern American weddings, "One Perfect Day," will not pillory that monster of selfishness popularly known as Bridezilla. She finds weddings emotionally affecting. Even the one where every man in the wedding party, including the father of the bride, was attempting to impersonate Elvis during the ceremony.
Mead neither whitewashes the excesses that are now commonplace nor takes the indulgent approach of those who repeat "Oh, well, it's her day" in the hope that normal relations will resume at the end of the day.
Rather, she depicts the bride as a victim. A victim in a hugely expensive dress (variously described as the size of a "pup tent," "with skirts so voluminous they could suffice for a parachute jump," and with "sleeves as puffed as a freshly baked popover" ) at the center of an orgy of self-glorification, perhaps, but a victim all the same.
There are economic forces at work, she argues, that lead brides into serious debt, draft them into spending their long engagements plotting social field maneuvers rather than canoodling with their fiancés, and cajole them into playing out their childish fantasies in front of everyone they know.
The immediate perpetrator is identified as the $161 billion-a-year American wedding industry led by professional wedding advisers, bridal consultants, and those who run bridal registries (not just at china shops but at hardware stores, ski chalets, mortgage companies, and a burgeoning number of other establishments). Together, they have been able to convince presumably otherwise normal women that they must have marathon weddings and all the new possessions they can imagine.
The doublespeak such business interests use to do this is impressive. "Memories" are not what remains in the mind, but can be retained only with the help of staged photographs and videos. "Tradition" offers a grab bag from any culture, including fictional rituals from movies, and need not be related to family background; indeed, couples are urged to "make up their own traditions." Costly and trashy doodads are claimed to be mandated, rather than condemned, by etiquette. And wedding guests are not viewed as those to whom hospitality is owed, but as debtors expected to help sponsor their hosts, not only with preselected presents, but, as is often suggested, with cash and payments toward the honeymoon.
Yet it seems that no one despises hysterical, domineering, and avaricious brides more than these very people who have created them. The scenes of off-duty wedding planners lampooning their clients, and merchants chortling that a bride who is successfully enticed into this orgy of spending becomes their customer for life, are chilling. This peek at their puppeteers would make better wedding preparation for the bride-to-be than all those glossy magazines and bridal fairs that only the engagement ring rivals as the focus of bridal attention. Surely a sensible woman would be moved to grab her fiancé and head for the courthouse in her office clothes -- which is what Mead confesses to having done halfway through her research.
But her implication is that commercial wedding pressure is comparable to preying on the bereaved to pay for overpriced funerals, or on children to whine for junk food or toys. But those who are getting married must be of legal age. And while one hopes they are in an emotional state, it is supposed to be a happy one.
As powerful as we may think consumer culture is, can it really turn people with full hearts into monsters of selfishness and acquisitiveness? Can it make them regard a civil and religious ritual as merely a way to celebrate themselves? Does the prospect of being exposed as figureheads of the culture of greed not make brides blush?
A deeper cause of their capitulation to commercial demands, Mead posits, is the state of the society itself. Uprooted from tradition, dazzled by celebrity culture, and disillusioned about human relationships, Americans are easy prey for those who insinuate that a conspicuous and "perfect" wedding (the industry's favorite term) -- meaning a major production in which they star -- is a prerequisite for living happily ever after. That is, presuming that happiness can be found by living above one's means, discounting family claims, and extorting money and goods from friends.
Judith Martin writes the Miss Manners columns and books. Her most recent book is "No Vulgar Hotel: The Desire and Pursuit of Venice." 