Jezebel
Despite the terrible exchange rate and horrendously expensive air fares, I am currently in Europe celebrating the wedding of one of my closest friends — we participated in a high school exchange together in 1994 and have been friends ever since. I have heard a lot about how wedding traditions differ here, from having to be married twice if you want a religious ceremony to the relative simplicity of the festivities in comparison to the "average" $27,000 American wedding. But, folks, let me tell you: the Wedding Industrial Complex cannot be sated with the domination of American bridal traditions. Like an airborne virus, it is making its way through Europe and it cannot and will not be stopped. Some of the imported excesses from my eyes, after the jump.
Now, let me say for the record, my dear friend (who prefers her name not be mentioned, so we'll call her A.) was far from a Bridezilla, not that I could really translate that into German anyway. She and her now-husband have been together for 6 years and lived together for almost 2 and so she was ready to eschew some of the grander absurdities of wedding traditions — including letting her poor blogger friend crash in her living room for a week. But there is a fully functioning bridal magazine business attempting to sell more expensive dresses, bigger parties, larger cakes and the full range of pre- and post-nuptial activities for which American weddings have come to be known. There might not be wedding rehearsals, but they'll tell you how to have a rehearsal dinner. In a hilarious mistranslation in the "biggest" wedding planning book, Der Perfekte Hochzeitsplaner, the author tells brides that their dresses should match their mothers' (as opposed to matching the "colors" of the wedding or whatever horseshit they're pedaling in the States these days). The car that drove my friend and her new husband from the church on Saturday even came equipped with a "Just Married" sign...in English! There are gift registries (though hardly anyone actually uses them, since most people these days seemingly live together before marriage) table gifts and wedding cakes — and, as in America, literally everything that has "bridal" before it costs twice as much as the same thing for a normal party.
On the other hand, my German friends were shocked that anyone would have an afternoon reception that ends before dinner (as my sister has planned for the fall); my friend and her husband attended a wedding last year in which the ceremony started at 8:30 in the morning... and the reception went until 8:30 the next morning. There is no rest (or sex) for the wicked, and their reception went until 4:30 am on Sunday morning. Thankfully, such parties leave no time or energy for "official" brunches, but if they keep importing our made-up, WIC-propagated traditions, there are going to be a lot more unhappy, hungover Germans cursing American culture, let me tell you.
