Here’s the other story I was talking about with the adult daughters. I guess they didn’t even know their dad planned this! I would be mortified if my dad did that!
If what you mean was “how does she know she’ll get married at all” she doesn’t, but, let’s be honest, the odds are pretty good that she will. Most people do get married at some point.
Having never heard that term before, I was relieved to find out what it was. I hadn’t even considered the dance sense of the word. Still weird, though.
This yahoo article makes it sound like it was sprung on both of them by the photographer who then brought the mother into the plan. And the mother thought it would just be some posed pictures with a dress off the rack and a cake.
Read: “I wanted to exploit a family’s tragedy because I’m an attention-whoring money-grubber.”
If Josie is the kind of girl who likes to dress up and playing “wedding” and get lots of attention, it’s not so bad. But if she’s not into these things, then the photographer needs to drop the pretense that this was all for her.
We had one of these things on the local news awhile back, though the daughter was older. It was non stop for weeks and I grew to really dislike the young lady. It didn’t feel like it was anything but an attention grab for herself and a way to get others to throw her a big party.
Blech, I hate the whole idea. Maybe I’ll just plan my funeral now so I can attend and my family can tape it for later when I really die.
Traditionally the “meaning behind it” is a father walking a piece of his property down the aisle and transferring it to its new owner. Which is why my father, who was on a feminist kick when I was a teen, made a point to tell me he wouldn’t be walking me down the aisle ever.
Also, one of the memes that comes up on “Say Yes to the Dress” is the mom who always dreamed of going dress shopping with her daughter. Since there was no wedding in sight for me, I told my mom how sorry I was that it didn’t look like she would live this dream. She said, “I never even dreamed about my own dress let alone yours!”
Yeah, my parents were married 44 years when mom died, and didn’t really recommend it.
Again, this wasn’t the father’s ‘dying wish’ or staged by the family. This was sprung on the father and daughter and staged by the photographer with motivations I’m very suspicious of.
In addition to the suspect photographer angle, here’s why this strikes me as creepy. It’s the assumption that a girl’s wedding day is of course The Most Significant Event in her life. I’m not a huge fan of the dad walking daughter down the aisle, but I don’t find it creepy as such in actual weddings I attend. And of course, for those of us who have married, it was a really big day in our lives. But to project into the future and assume a big white wedding is the signal event in the girls’ life ignores her individuality completely. Maybe she won’t marry. Maybe she’ll want to marry another woman, but they live in a state where it’s not recognized. Maybe she and her partner will disdain all of the traditional stuff and elope, or spontaneously decide to hit up the Justice of the Peace, or jet off to Vegas with only their best friends in tow.
It’s just so presumptuous, and of course that’s piled on the nasty cultural legacy that getting married and pumping out babies is the highest (and only, really) calling for a woman.
I feel really bad for the father and daughter to have this foisted on them. Because once it’s sprung on you, what are you going to do, say no and walk away? Blech on this photographer.