Marriage is EVIL! :mad:
Even tho I had a Barbie with a gorgeous satin beaded gown that my mom made (she used to sell Barbie clothes to make extra money) and even tho I went to a lot of weddings of my older cousins, I didn’t grow up dreaming of my “special day.” I suppose it might have been different if I’d had a boyfriend in high school or had even dated in high school, but I was more focused on what I was going to do after graduation.
I don’t recall ever sitting around with my girlfriends discussing weddings, and I was never asked to be in anyone’s wedding, altho very few of my friends got married, now that I think of it. I wasn’t even in any of my sib’s weddings, but I did sing for one sister’s ceremony.
I know I’m not typical by any stretch of the imagination, and I don’t feel superior or anything because of it. I was simply musing over the differences between me in my teens and 20s and the woman cited in the OP.
Awesome video. Thanks.
(It’s times like this I wish there were a thumbs-up button on this board.)
I think the answer here is going to vary greatly, depending on community, class, and most of all, on individual inclination.
Girls and young women are exposed to a lot of ideas about weddings. Take a look at Netflix one day. There is an entire section of wedding-based romantic comedies, and another that is all about wedding related reality TV. As girls, we play with wedding Barbies and dress as brides for halloween. In our teens, we get prom magazines that are just baby wedding magazines. In our 20s and 30s, our more competitive friends may make a big deal of showing off their wedding plans. It’s something that’s always been a part of our reality and awareness of adulthood.
How seriously do we take all that? It depends. In some cultures, weddings are mostly about cementing a family’s importance, and the parents are the ones who call the shots. In these cases, it’s barely about the bride and groom at all, and more about cultivating business contacts and cementing your family’s place in the community.
Sometimes it’s just old fashioned conspicuous consumption, no different than the flashy car or McMansion. Some percentage of the population just likes spending money. Lots of spendy young women see it as a chance to show off their event planning skills, and really dive in to the challenge. It can get pretty competitive.
In other cases, some young women feel like their prospects in life are limited, but at the very least they can have a good wedding. They may view the wedding as the probable highlight of their life. In other cases, religion or culture actually does make it that this is the most important life event that a woman publicly celebrates.
And sometimes, otherwise level headed people get caught up in the hype and excitement, and they realize way too late that they’ve committed to way more than makes sense. If you want to a have a pretty normal wedding, with a selection of your friends and family, a meal, and something to drink, you are going to spend a good chunk of cash no matter what. When you are already spending that much money, it’s pretty easy to say “screw it, what’s a few thousand more dollars” here and there.
Of course, it’s a mix for everyone. My official wedding was a city hall affair, and we are hoping to save up to hold a larger celebration to bring together our friends and family. They are scattered pretty widely, so it would be pretty special to bring them together. My friends are hitting marrying age in their late 20s/early 30s, and most of them are having fairly modest weddings with all the expected things held in wedding halls, with maybe a splurge or two here and there. But I do work around people who get pretty obsessed with it, and can somehow spent two hours talking about different shades of green and the merits of cupcakes versus cake pops.
I agree that Pinterest is not a good place to judge. Pinterest makes it very easy to collect all kinds of stuff, and the goal is to sort of brainstorm around stuff you like. When I got my new apartment, I needed to buy furniture and I have slightly exotic tastes, so I was pinning everything from Bali resorts to Indian maharaja palaces. In the end, I mostly ended up with stuff from Ikea and decorated with a few throw pillows and curtains inspired by the looks I collected on Pinterest. Often people are pinning stuff based on their “vibe”, not necessarily because they want those objects themselves.