Weddings, Brides, and Vanity

Recent posts on the main page have shown what lengths brides will go to in order to make their wedding look perfect.  Since I’m planning a wedding for two months (and two days!) from now, I wanted to explore this issue.

Let’s first go back to an episode of Oprah where Katherine Heigl was interviewed as she promoted her movie and television show. Katherine Heigl is a beautiful woman.  In the words of her costar in Knocked Up , she’s definitely "prettier than me."  However, during the interview, she mentioned how hard she worked in order to fit into her wedding dress.  She’s a beautiful, young, movie star who has been on red carpets and award shows across the world, and she had never been so self-conscious about how she looked in a dress as she was about her wedding gown.  If Katherine Heigl was worried about how she looked in her wedding dress, where does that leave me?

I could write for pages about how our society and media set up impossible goals for women’s appearance in general in today’s society.  I’ve grown up in it; I’ve lived it.  I’ve come to recognize it and criticize it.  However, I feel myself being pulled back into self-doubt and scruitiny about my own body as I think about my upcoming wedding.

To make planning a wedding easier, I’ve joined some wedding planning message boards.  And while most of the other brides and brides-to-be are sweet and helpful, I’ve noticed that, in general, they seem less aware of how society and tradition steer most weddings and marraiges, and completely buy in to much of the unnecessary hoopla found in the wedding industrial complex.  Essentially, they are buying into the dream that the best wedding is a picture perfect wedding.

My wedding message boards have entire posts regarding how to get all of the "right" colors and dresses and tuxes and whatever in order to produce the best pictures.  Wedding photographers charge thousands and thousands of dollars in order for the happy couple to have beautiful documentation of the day.

A small part of me doesn’t see a big problem with this.  Brides know what they want their ceremony and reception to look like, and do what they can to acheive their dream.  They want things to look nice and for the memories of the event to be beautiful.  As the bride, many of the pictures will be of me, and wanting to look pretty in the pictures is natural, right?

But then the other part of me starts screaming that so much is wrong with this desire for the "dream wedding." It ignores the human part of the day.  When people want to look back and see beauty and perfection, they lose being able to look back and see the flaws that make us (brides, grooms, parents, guests) unique and loved.  Why am I (and so many others, including Katherine Heigl) stressing out about getting thinner for one day?  Yes, if I lose 10 pounds or whatever, I’ll be able to look back and see a thinner version of myself, but then what?  It won’t document how I really looked at this time in my life when I’m happy and in love and willing to commit to spending my life with someone.  It will just be a reminder of how I submitted my body and my health to the unrealistic beauty standards of the day.  This is not what I want to do.

There is so much wrong with the wedding industry: the reliance on tradition for almost every option, charging more for weddings than for other types of parties, pressure for perfection, etc.  I’m willing to put up with a lot because I want to make it an event my friends and family will enjoy.  However, it’s the blatant quest for wedding perfection that I will not get sucked into.  So for my wedding,  bridesmaids can wear whatevery they want!  My mom can pick out the flowers on her own!  And I can weigh exactly what my body needs to weigh as I walk down that aisle!  To Hell with vanity and societal notions of beauty!

It’s just one day.  But the struggle not to fall into vanity and trying to achieve what is "beautiful" is ongoing.