By Jacqueline Le Huec

Having surreptitiously planned my own wedding inside my head for as far back as I can remember, despite not during most of that time having found someone happy to marry me, it was comforting to find out that I am part of a majority. Academics¹ writing on the subject of weddings have stated that most little girls are preoccupied from an early age with the planning of their own wedding. The suggestion is that in being courted throughout our childhoods with stories of princesses and happy ever after fairy tales, this becomes the foundation of a collective desire to aspire to such a dream life. The elaborate white wedding is said to be a recompense for the fact that most girls are not going to grow up and be an actual princess, so instead we live out the fantasy for one special day, acting out our innermost romantic desires. Hence the majestical white wedding gown and veil, the often regal venue, the carriage to transport us and the people we love most to hold court for, as they celebrate with us. Obviously not every female follows this route but the ideology is immanent.

The Royal Wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer on 29^th July 1981² epitomised the visual representation of a fairy tale wedding and captured the nations hearts, juxtaposed against a backdrop of countrywide recession and political unrest. It became the catalyst³ for weddings to be celebrated as elaborately as individual budgets would allow and lead to the consumerist, materialist driven culture we have today, where every single aspect of the wedding market has been catered for, culminating in an average spend of £15,000 per wedding in Great Britain⁴. The pressure for a potential bride to create that special day has never been so great and because we do generally feel that it will be our one opportunity to get it right, brides are susceptible to sustained commercial pressure. This often means that couples encounter spiralling wedding costs, as they are seduced into consuming in a way they could not have anticipated.

Within a generation there has been a significant cultural shift from the traditional role of the wedding, (including religion) to the materialistic manifestation we have today. The wedding day used to commemorate the start of a couples life together, a kind of birth in the coming together of two individuals to join in a new life. But now the majority of British couples live together before marriage, most will have indulged in sexual relations and there may already be children between them. So the traditional reason for having a wedding is redundant and yet weddings have remained a solid part of our culture and our ways of celebrating them have diversified. Paradoxically the desire for a white wedding has remained very strong. So why do we go to all this trouble and expense? It has been suggested that it is an innate desire to validate our lives by following a chronological path in the life process which fixes it in our memory. Memory being what it is we find it very difficult unless we keep a daily diary to remember specific days unless they are an event: an occasion that for whatever reason stands out as different in our minds. Thus birthdays, weddings, christenings et al form part of a life story which defines us as individuals⁵.

There is an alternative train of thought that suggests in declaring our commitment to one person, we use the wedding spectacle as a means of issuing a public statement of our love, in order to display our wealth and status in society and validate our existence. A low key event might demonstrate a disdain for public acceptance and a very visual public affair might suggest that the couple need public approval of their perceived status in the community⁶. Whether we would subscribe to this notion or not, it would explain why for some couples excessive financial investment is paramount in assuring a successful wedding day.

Whether we are ultimately succumbing to global brainwashing, the wedding is the one opportunity for a female to embrace her unique femininity, indulge her innermost desires and create a glorious day of family celebration to which everyone connected will enjoy and remember fondly, and it’s these occasions that facilitate the bridal metamorphosis into idiosyncratic, hopefully lovable future wife!

By Jacqueline Le Huec BA (Hons) Cultural Studies
1 Boden, S (2003) Consumerism, Romance and the Wedding Experience, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, Ingraham, C (1999) White Weddings; Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture, London: Routledge, Otnes, C and Pleck, E (2003) Cinderella Dreams; The Allure of the Lavish Wedding, California: University of California Press.
2 Sheridan, D, Street, B and Bloome, D (2000) Writing Ourselves; Mass-Observation and Literacy Practices, Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press Inc.
3 Ingraham 1999:38-39.
4 http://www.britishcouncil.org.
5 Boden 2003:122.
6 Boden 2003:89-90.