Big-Ass, Over-the-Top Weddings Are Back With a Vengeance

The wedding is baaaaack! Gone are the years where “forward thinking” people snub the idea of marriage or, at the very least, act “reasonable” and consider “scaling back” — no way. Now folks are really going for it. Let’s hear it for ballooning marital debt, er, bliss.

According to the New York Times, big, pricey ceremonies are back on the table and a new memoir called Save the Date by author Jen Doll details how weddings will continue to happen whether the guests — or the couple — like it or not. She describes the event as sort an adult prom where grown-ups get a chance to parse out friends, enemies and acquaintances the bride or groom may not like enough to pay for them to eat.

“Through it we see what we want, what we don’t want, what we think we want, and sometimes, dangerously, that we have no idea what we want. Each wedding we attend, in whatever role we uphold, will highlight some aspect of our own lives, reflecting and reframing the way in which we look at ourselves.”

Elsewhere in Eimear Lynch’s book Bridemaids, which shares stories from eighty women who’ve been the bride’s enslaved helper, she writes that brides are now fighting the patriarchy by questioning traditional roles themselves. In addition, couple’s are bending traditional wedding etiquette, like letting their bridesmaids wear whatever they want. (I did this and it’s not as easy as you think, I suggest a small bit of order in that area.)

The rising popularity of weddings is also part and parcel of the marriage equality movement. It’s hard to intellectually crap all over a person’s ceremony if they were just granted the legal right to marry or divorce their partner. And honestly, who are we kidding? A wedding is really just an excuse to party, drink and overeat and who wants to throw that golden opportunity away?