Something Old, Something New
The Wedding Resurgence Phenomenon

By Brendan Clarke
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January 1, 2000 | Page 1, 2

Weddings are like Christmas—a nice idea that has just gotten severely out of hand.

Before you dismiss me as a typical male, commitment-phobic cynic (although you wouldn’t be far off), let’s examine the facts. Any magazine rack will have an entire section chock full of wedding magazines thick enough to make the Bible look like a Latter-day Saints leaflet, all dedicated solely to one day. And these magazines sell like Beanie Babies, circulating many more copies than other "one day-related" publications such as Arbor Day Illustrated and Lincoln’s Birthday Quarterly. Just for research purposes, I entered the word "marriage" into an Internet search engine, and got 5,210 different sites. The word "wedding" had 1,041 hits, and "eternal mind-numbing hell" had 91. Judging by these facts, as well as the almost tangible wedding frenzy that most of my female friends have been exhibiting lately, young people are still getting married, early and often.

But weren’t at least half of us raised by divorced parents? One would think ("circle of violence"-type behavior notwithstanding) that a generation of latch-key kids, hardened by custody battles and weekend visitation rights, would be reticent to take the matrimonial plunge at all, much less declare their devotion in such a public, potentially embarrassing manner. Yet, young people are still getting married, in droves, in churches and temples... just like their parents.

Obviously, both genders don’t hold equal shares in the wedding concerns and responsibilities. With the possible exception of the touching ceremony between Sigfried and Roy, the wedding day belongs to the bride. Special hair and make-up, something old, something new, borrowed and blue, the much ballyhooed white dress: a woman must spend more time preparing for her wedding day than principal photography on a Stanley Kubrick set. Conversely, the groom, like a heavy metal lead singer skipping sound check, has only two responsibilities: show up and show up dressed. What does the groom matter? After all, it’s her special day.

If this squeaks of megalomania to you, you may have hit the bull on the nose. Logically, it would follow that only an individual with massive insecurities and an inferiority complex to rival Roger Clinton would crave such Oprah-like power over every minute detail of the wedding experience. "The flowers must be white, arranged in a perfect rhombus with the stem of every third rose pointing east to Mecca..." On any other day of this woman’s life, such Rain Man antics would result in immediate psychiatric testing, an OCD diagnosis, and a prescription drug addiction. But it’s her wedding day; not only is she allowed to abuse caterers, musicians, and loved ones, but she’s encouraged to behave irrationally. After all, it’s the most important day of her life.

Does it bother anyone else that the most important day of a woman’s life entails her losing her identity in just about every way possible? Most obviously, a bride’s renouncing of her last name and acceptance of a new one (a practice which has resurged in popularity after the ridiculous hyphen debacle of the 80’s) has inherent and overt implications about ownership and importance within a relationship. But there are more subtle, dangerous losses of identity on a wedding day, not the least of which is the inexhaustible preparation time. New dress, new hair, new make-up, new nails—Jim Henson’s creature shop uses fewer special effects than the average bride. And why else would a woman go to all this trouble other than to disguise herself, to look better than she actually does in real life. A particularly spiteful bride even go so far as to deliberately dress her bridesmaids in the ugliest contraptions known to the eyes, just so that she is the center of attention on her special day. An ideal bride’s humanity disappears within this porcelain doll image.

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