I’m wondering about young women and romantic notions of wedding proposals. I was cruising about the internet and landed in the pinterest account of a young women from my church. I saw that she had a section devoted to wedding ideas.
Apparently she has thought a great deal about her wedding day and all the things that will go into the big event. I was genuinely suprised by the level of detail displayed, everything from photos of the bride and groom, undergarments for the bride, how he needs to propose (a minimum five step process), colors (not suprising), minimum size of the diamond, dresses, engagement announcements, save the date, how Christ will be involved, etc.
I remember my wedding day and think, the Future Mrs. Labor looked great, there was a cake, I think it was good. And that’s about all I remember.
Is this usual for a 20-something to spend this much energy on thinking about a wedding? Does she really think her parents can afford all that? Does she really think that her boyfriend can afford that ring? Is she in for a severe let-down?
If she’s curious how Christ will be involved, I can tell her he will be involved thusly:
She will tell her Dad how much she wants the wedding to cost, and he will say “Jesus Christ!”
She will start to cry because her potential fiance skipped two steps during the proposal and the ring is 1/4 carat too small, and he will say “Jesus Christ!”
When he dumps her sorry, high-maintenance ass, she will say…well, she won’t say anything. She’ll be crying too hard.
VAST sums of money are spent yearly in the pursuit of indoctrinating young women into spending time and effort “planning” their “perfect” wedding. Many people through this girl’s life (probably from her very first “wedding barbie” doll) have done nothing but encourage her to completely ignore objective reality in her quest to achieve the wedding of her dreams, assuring her that everyone who loves her will go to the ends of the earth and further in order to help her advance her dreams for a perfect and “unique” event to memoralize the important life event that is her wedding.
The college that I attended had a lovely venue for weddings that was booked SOLID 5 years in advance. Many ladies attending this school went solely for their “MRS” degree, and it was considered the “thing” to show your school pride by having your wedding there.
Quite a few of the ladies on my freshman hall had ALREADY booked the chapel for “their special day” before they even had a BOYFRIEND, let alone a proposal. They simply hoped (or assumed, for the more self-assured) that the guy would show up sometime in the next 5 years to finish out the required attendance list.
So, the short answer to *all *your questions is - Oh hell yes.
It’s unfortunately common, especially among middle- and upper-class white women (I’ve never heard of a Black woman, a Hispanic woman, or an Asian woman get carried away like that). It falls into that “I’m a princess!” and “this is my day!” nonsense.
Girls are also told that the wedding day is THEIR special day, and that they should have exactly what they want, no matter the cost. Women, well, girls really, used to be raised with the idea that their ultimate goal in life was to marry well and then live happily ever after. Their biggest day was their wedding day, and they’d only get one, so they wanted to have the bestest wedding EVER. And some women still think like this. It’s a fantasy, and they only have one shot (or now, two or three) of making it come true.
I’ve seen some pretty elaborate quinceanera plans and parties. Of course, the girls planning these parties are only 13 or 14 or so (they are 15th birthday parties), and teen girls tend to be even less cost conscious than adult women.
For the record, I got married in a somewhat dressy dress, street length, that was suitable for attending other dressy occasions and also suitable for job interviews. I selected the dress with this in mind. I never received an engagement ring, and my wedding band is a simple gold band, with our initials and the date engraved inside it.
I think that the wedding is not nearly as important as the marriage, but then I’m rather odd.
By buying large piles of stuff that’s just like what’s being bought for all the other “unique” weddings.
The thing is, a genuinely memorable wedding doesn’t have to be expensive. It’s just a lot of work. My niece’s wedding was a nine-day wonder in our little hometown, and it was mostly sweat and imagination that made it that way. (The family built a pergola on the pond in the backyard on which to hold the ceremony, grew the flowers, and concocted the ceremony itself out of our storehouse of cultural trivia. Between dances, her brother and I sang her favorite sea shanties, with the groom occasionally joining in. Wedding guests were invited to come in costume. I managed to get through it without quite getting knifed by the judge, but I did sport a minor sword wound before the night was over.)
I’m sure that people will drop by to say that weddings are horseshit, useless, a waste of money, and that they got married in a cardboard box beside a freeway and their marriage is all the better for it.
But please don’t judge all 20-something women via Pinterest. Pinterest is a social networking site that is really heavily reliant on the 20-30-40-somethings–women specifically–to drive it. Weddings are a huge portion of that site, but just because a girl has a bunch of stuff pinned to a board on Pinterest doesn’t denote actual time spent planning a wedding. You can spend two hours looking at stuff on Pinterest and have a huge wedding pinboard. It’s fantasy. The two things are not connected.
Now, women do face a lot of pressure in general about weddings, in a weirdly schizoid way. Their weddings are supposed to be big important events–which they are, in that pledging your life to another person is an important step in your life, and almost universally across all cultures worthy of solemnity and celebration–but yet, if they care too much about them, they get called Bridezilla. Your wedding should be inexpensive, but special, not tacky, unique, significant, demonstrate you as a couple, and on and on and on. Basically, they can’t win.
So, is it normal? Yeah, I’m sure that there are a lot of 20-something women out there who fantasize about weddings. But I think it’s more specific to cultures and class (I think there are a lot more 20-something Mormon women fantasizing about their weddings than there are, say, 20-something urban poor women struggling to make rent every month–and the former is a lot more heavily represented on Pinterest than the latter) than an age group.
The monetary aspects of wedding planning (and ring purchasing) are a frequent topic on the Suze Orman show. This week she had on a not-yet-married couple who are having financial disputes – it turned out that the future bride had her heart set on a particular wedding location that would cost $35,000. Suze told the bride that she needed to choose a wedding venue that would make the groom feel comfortable financially as well as emotionally, and reiterated during the closing of the show that having your heart set on the perfect (and expensive) wedding is likely to be an obstacle rather than an aid to having a good marriage.
Of course the SDMB is a “my wedding was even simpler and less expensive than your wedding” kind of place. If you look around the internet at wedding forums, you will find plenty that cater to exactly the type of women in the OP.
I’d love to see the bimbo after five years of marriage and ask if she still thinks her wedding day was worth it. (Actually, two will probably suffice.)
I will note that Bridezillas is reality TV and bears very little resemblance to real life. Nobody is making television about normal women who get a little frustrated or upset about family issues or frustrating vendors or whatever.
Anyway, I have worked with lots of high-maintenance brides from many different ethnic and religious backgrounds, and I guaran-goddamn-tee you that it is not a white phenomenon. By far. Furthermore, for certain groups, the bride is not necessarily the one causing the huge commotion–the mother of the bride or father of the bride are equally likely to be raising a huge fuss (because in some cultures the party is much less a reflection on the couple, than the bride’s parents, and it is their chance to make a big splash in the community). Rarer, but still sighted, are frantic grooms who are dead-set on something and won’t hear any argument (even when, for example, they are being talked out of an ice liquor luge at their outdoors-in-August wedding).
And I really don’t see any reason to call young women “bimbos” for the crime of being interested in their weddings.
Given that we don’t actually know this young woman, and the OP only knows her via his church, and simply stumbling upon her Pinterest (which as I’ve said is a clearinghouse for a lot of wedding-related stuff that doesn’t have any bearing on the wedding that the girl may or may not eventually have) doesn’t really say much about her thoughts and opinions on marriage and weddings, and the fact that is certainly possible to be interested in having a lovely wedding AND a strong marriage and the two aren’t mutually exclusive…I’d still say it’s a bit premature.
So are most young women getting all starry-eyed when they dream of their weddings? My wife tells me that she would play wedding with her sister as a little kid and imagine the wonders of it all. She also talks about girl talk centered around not accepting a ring of less than 1 carat.
Luckily for me (a poor musician at the time) my wife was very practical, she got a beautiful cake (I hope it was delicious) and a beautiful white dress. She was interested in a very simple wedding band (way less than 1 carat and affordable for me). I have to admit that I was a reluctant groom (she proposed), and had spent absolutely zero hours considering ceremonies, I was scolded more than once for saying yes to all possibilities of cakes, sandwiches, seating, etc.
I appreciate your responses today. Do you suppose there are all sorts of young women that will be disappointed this Thursday if:
*the guy proposes wrong [only 4 steps!]
*the ring is only .20 carats
*there is no proposal on Valentines Day?