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Beware Bridezia - part 1 of 1

Published 01/08/2007

Stop Before the Altar of Consumerism

The Guardian Weekend of 9 July this year contained a feature entitled 'The True Cost of Love', a six-page abstraction from a book by Rebecca Mead, entitled One perfect Day - the selling of the American wedding. By the time I had reached the end of the article I was already at my PC, ordering the whole book from Amazon. This is not recommended reading for the wedding professional - this is compulsory!

Mead's starting premise is that the American wedding industry has spawned a horrific monster of a bride, a Bridezilla, defined as, 'a young woman who, upon becoming engaged, had been transformed from a person of reason and moderation into a self-absorbed monster, obsessed with her plans to stage the perfect wedding, an event of spectacular production values and flawless execution, with herself as the star of the show'. Mead discusses at length the evolution of the species, a product of the American bridal magazine market and debates if the whole thing has got out of hand. It seems that it has, that it has also crossed the Atlantic if the television series Wedding Stories is anything to go by. The two programmes I endured had on display a varied collection of tasteless freaks with more money than style, a legacy perhaps that stretches all the way back to the Beckham's wedding, from their enthroned perches. More is inevitably to follow with John Terry, Michael Carrick, Steven Gerrard and Gary Neville marrying the week this article was being put together. It was rumoured that both Neville and Terry had each spent over a million, the others a more modest threequarters of a million. Terry hired Blenheim Palace for an event masterminded by Old Etonian party organiser, Peregrine Armstrong-Jones, who was responsible for the Beckham affair - the wedding will mean that Terry has now scored twice this year (sorry blues, as Liverpool supporters we could not resist the jibe)

The statistics involved are quite staggering and worthy of some thought for their implications to the business of photographing this out-of-control fantasy. The US has 2.3 million weddings per year which springboards to a spending of $120,000,000,000 (we spelled it out longhand to emphasise the enormity of the sum!). Of this the wedding itself totals about $50bn broken down as follows:

Engagement rings 14,000,000,000
Gowns and attire 7,000,000,000
Gifts 9,000,000,000
Wedding day expenses 39,000,000,000
Honeymoon including travel 8,500,000,000

In addition, the post-wedding spending spree typically includes:

A new car 42,000,000,000
Insurance 20,000,000,000
Financial services 15,000,000,000
Tableware, etc 4,000,000,000

This little lot comes to $750,000,000 every weekend. The average wedding costs $27,850, the equivalent of seven and a half months' salary for the average American.

The Guardian kindly looked out the figures for the UK, which tell a similar tale. A total of 280,000 couples are married each year spending £5bn, which computes to £17,667 per couple.

Like all such statistics you have to understand where they are coming from. They are provided by the magazine industry as inducements to advertisers to spend money with them. Where a figure is best displayed that way, it is not corrected for inflation. Hence the growth in spend is stated in billions of dollars whereas relative to inflation it has not grown that much. Despite this reservation there was a $40 increase during the three years Mead researched her book. In truth the number of weddings has fallen from 10.5 per thousand population in 1984 to 7.6 per thousand in 2004. Once the bride has become a fiance the stores have on average 16 months to extract every penny, pound or dollar they can. The gown market, as an example, is totally inelastic - you can only sell bridal gowns to brides! They try to claw back by selling tiaras and shoes of equal value to the gown as extras. This has led to a number of 'traditional' accoutrements, which are far from traditional (including, by the way, both the engagement ring and the white gown itself - neither has any real tradition whatsoever!). The photography market is equally inelastic and our add-ons are things such as DVDs, parents' albums and wall portraits to go with an album. However, like a New York store and its bride register, if a photographer gets the loyalty of their bride early on, she is likely to revisit them for other picture needs in the fullness of time - although today you might already be too late for the baby pictures, the babies are as likely to be walking alongside their mother as a twinkle in their father's eye!

"...the first product the bride buys is the dress, typically seven months ahead of the wedding..."

Photography is relegated to chapter eight by Mead and even there it loses 14:7 to the videographer in page count. Mead has some sage words about the rivalry between the two factions. Some of the tales recounted will be familiar, including the one in which the camera-toting professionals had nothing to do at the evening session. They had put up a monitor displaying the video of the afternoon's events and had nothing else to photograph as the assembled masses jostled for a look at themselves in the 'big movie'. This, of course, is the ultimate irony. The bride wishes to be the film star for the day and fails to be filmed for the final act because she is watching the rushes from earlier in the day.

"...the services of 43 businesses may be brought to bear on a modern-day wedding"

Mead has some interesting insights into the part played by the wedding planner, little of which could be considered complimentary - indeed she quotes a paper by The Liturgical Commission of the Episcopal Diocese of New York with it directive that professional wedding planners should be 'forbidden from attending the rehearsals and that under no circumstances may questions about the liturgy be referred to them'. The clergy also had scathing regard for the use of Mendelssohn's Wedding March, drawn as it is from an operatic context and the wedding between an ox and an ass.

Talking of clergy the statistics on venues are interesting. In 1991, about half of all weddings in the UK were conducted in churches, with the other half being held in register offices. By 2005, 65% of all wedding ceremonies in the UK were civil ones, with more than a third taking place in venues that had been licensed over the previous decade. The desire to have a fairytale wedding has reinforced (and in many cases saved) the fabric of many a stately home or castle. There is a widening gap between marriage as a sacramental process and the throwing of the biggest party the couple will ever attempt - the reception party has migrated out of the evening, back to the middle of the day when the civil or religious bits are conducted. This is very much not to the taste of the clergy who complain that their services are hired in from a long checklist that includes florist, caterer, photographer, etc. Mead reckons that the services of 43 businesses may be brought to bear on a modern-day wedding. At a stroke, the 1994 deregulation in regard to places licensed to conduct marriages, pulled the rug from under those churches with particularly pretty surroundings, couples with no allegiance to the church simply go elsewhere and the surroundings of the hotel/castle/ stately home have become one of the most important criteria in the selection process. This is one of the few things that has worked in the photographer's favour.

"The convention that a man should spend two months' salary on his bride's ring was also created by the jewellery industry"

There are may reasons why a wedding photographer should read this book. It is inconceivable that you would not learn something or add a new perspective to what you do, what you contribute to, and at least examine the part that you might be playing in the whole Bridezilla thing. And it is not just the couple and their relatives who misbehave. A few years ago some friends were turned away by a Welsh, wedding venue because, as Plymouth Brethren, they would not be spending any money over the bar (on alcohol). It would be interesting to see how that attitude stacked up in these days of improved racial and religious tolerance!

One Perfect Day by Rebecca Mead. 245 pages. Published by Penguin at $25.95. ISBN 978-1-59420-088-5.

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1st Published 01/08/2007
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