It's All in the Family: Wedding Dress Shopping

Just a little disclaimer here before I start this: I understand that media is sensationalized and often times, extreme examples and types of people are shown. However, I still think it is important to analyze what kinds of perspectives these shows portray and whether they do so in a negative or positive light.

Most of us went shopping with our parents when we were kids. And man was it BORING (it was for me anyways, unless it was a trip to the toy store). I can't even imagine what bringing family to something like a wedding dress appointment would be like.

There are usually two types of brides portrayed on wedding gown shows. The ones who, if you don't like the dress are:

And there are brides who seek their entourage's approval and will not buy the dress unless they like it, and if they don't like it:

Women who shop for wedding dresses usually bring some sort of entourage with them, a majority being family members.

On Say Yes to the Dress, the portrayal of the family goes either two ways, they support the bride and let her decide, or they are super critical and have to deem approval on the dress before she can buy it. Also known as "the overbearing family." Stella on Say Yes to the Dress brought her sisters, mother and father to her appointment. Here is a clip from the episode.

Her sisters are very critical and blunt about every dress she tries on. That may be a good thing or bad thing depending on if you care what your family thinks. Along with the bride, the bridal consultant is also frustrated because she has to please multiple people to make the sale. It's also important to note the bride's cultural background. In the episode she tells the consultant she is having a huge Greek wedding and that her family's opinion matters very much to her. Other brides on the show who come from collectivist cultures with high value on family, value their opinion and often do not buy the dress they love because their family doesn't approve. I've seen many episodes where the bride walks away from the dress she likes because of others' opinions; especially the mother's opinion. 

Here is a clip of a non-traditional family going dress shopping. There are a few reasons why this bridal appointment is non-traditional according to the norms seen on previous episodes of Say Yes to the Dress. This is the bride's second marriage, her future husband is at the appointment to give his input on the gown (despite the superstition of bad luck if the groom sees the gown), and they are a family consisting of step-children. 

In this example, all of the kids end up loving the dress, except the groom. Although their family structure isn't traditional according to nuclear family standards, the same problems of differing tastes and approval still arise as they did with other more "traditional" families.

This next clip is a "best of the worst" wedding dress shopping entourages from Say Yes to the Dress: Atlanta. It reveals a lot of different reasons for familial tension in a wedding ritual like this. Culture, familial relation, morals and values all play a part in dress selection. What I found interesting was how the "comical" parts of the clip had to do with when male family members tried contributing their opinions. It perpetuates this idea that males do not know about fashion and shouldn't know, and that the wedding dress shopping is almost exclusively a woman's area. The exception to this rule is usually the father of the bride, one of the few males that are seen as acceptable people to invite dressing shopping. The bridal shop owner of Say Yes to the Dress:Atlanta, Lori, absolutely hates when grooms come to the bridal appointment. She charmingly refers that to having "foxes in her henhouse."

While doing some Google searching, I came across this photo below. I completely forgot about this TLC show that came out last year. It is actually a great example of how tradition gets put against individualism. The premise of Something Borrowed, Something New is that a bride chooses between a re-purposing of her mother's wedding dress and a new dress. Usually the mother roots for the daughter to wear her dress, which again perpetuates the idea of tradition being important in weddings and how much of an influence family has in rites of passages like weddings. 

I also think that for a lot of mother's on this show and other wedding shows, feel as if they can re-live their own wedding, and possibly live out her dreams through her daughter. I remember watching an episode of Say Yes to the Dress where a bride went to a dress fitting with her mother. Her mother kept pushing her to wear a tiara and veil because she didn't wear one when she got married and regretted that decision. 

To bring up a personal example of family influence, I was put in piano lessons as a child. I hated practicing, and I was put in lessons because both my mom and dad also took piano when they were younger. My mom always talked about how she regretted quitting as a child and pushed me to keep practicing because she thinks I would regret it later like she did. 

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Not all family members always root for the tradition of wearing the mother's dress. In this next clip, the bride's "something borrowed" is actually her grandmother's dress that her mother also wore. The grandmother just wants her granddaughter to pick something to make her happy and just the thought of possibly wearing the dress was enough for her. The mother on the other hand is not keen on the idea of a new dress for the bride at all. 

Cultural heritage and upbringing determines what family values someone may have. If someone was raised in a family with a collectivist mindset, and they are exposed to very individualistic ideals through media, this can cause some tension and divide in a bride's mind, which I think the show Something Borrowed, Something New portrays fairly well. 

How much do you value your family's opinion? Are you one to please your family? Or are you one to make yourself happy and hope that your family is accepting of whatever decisions you make? If you are planning on getting married what role do you anticipate or expect your family to play and why? Or if you've already been married and had a wedding, did your family influence any decisions you made?

Thank you as always for reading, and share your thoughts below!

I do. But why?

So something has been on my mind all day today and I wanted to write about it because I think it's important to think about. So much so that I ditched my last class to come home and write (shhh).
Why.

I am a sociology major. I study society, social structure, groups,systems and how they work to create social order, etc. I understand that media manipulates messages to make society believe and desire specific things. For the most part, I consider myself as understanding the social construct of things around me pretty well.
So why do I still have these desires to have a wedding? I want to be married someday and I also still want to have some kind of ceremony acknowledging that.
I watch wedding television shows in part to mock, but also because something draws me in to them.

Although I get mad and say these women are stupid for spending so much money, I still partially envy them. And I think that is very telling to how media portrays romance and marriage to our culture.

For me personally, I've narrowed it down to a few reasons.
I want the social validation that I am in a committed relationship. By having some kind of ceremony, it might give me the sense that others acknowledge the validity of the relationship I'm in. I do not know if this is true, I am not married, but this is what I would want to come out of the situation.

A more shallow reason to why I want a wedding is that I enjoy dressing up. Wearing makeup and clothing that make me feel my best feels good and I enjoy feeling dressed up (I also have a love affair with sweatpants too and that's okay). As I've explained before, for women, wedding dresses are socialized to be the most important dress of your life. And hell, some people love a good party, so it's an excuse to look great and get dolled up and have some fun. That is something that I enjoy and is a small personal reason as to why I would have a wedding.

Part of my reasons are also cultural. On my mother's side, her parents did not have a wedding, they married at a courthouse. My parents also did the same thing, but later on had a church ceremony (probably for cultural reasons. That and to appease my grandmother).  My father's parents had a church ceremony. My family is important to me and I value their approval and do not enjoy disappointing them. That is not to say I always do things they like (like dying parts of my hair blue, or getting tattoos that they have no idea about). I usually hide things like that.

The last reason that I thought about was that I believe the title of being married equates to a sense of a stronger commitment. I know there are many examples of women who never marry their partners and still are strongly committed to the relationship. There are same-sex couples who cannot legally be married and are strongly committed to each other. So what I still have to explore within myself is why do I think that marriage strengthens the commitment in a relationship? The title of wife holds more serious social rank than girlfriend in our culture, and I suppose you could say I succumb to that belief. The marriage is a contract. There are legal benefits like insurance, visitation rights at hospitals and inheritance that I feel are important. And as my boyfriend and I have talked about many times before, we both feel that being married is important to us, as far as defining our relationship and also having legal benefits in the future.

I realize that my boyfriend and I do have a choice whether we want to have a wedding or not. If we don't it's a matter of dealing with the stigma that comes along with not going with the social norms. And at this time I don't feel like I am strong enough to deal with that to just not have a wedding. I do have my own (in my opinion) positive reasons why I want one, but tradition and familial pressure is definitely a reason too.

If you plan on getting married in the future, why do you feel it is important?

If you plan on getting married, will you have a wedding ceremony? Why?

If you are already married, did you have a wedding? What was the experience like? Planning? Why did you have one/want one?

This wasn't a planned post, so this is a bit of word vomit. Thank you for reading! Tell me your thoughts below!

The Most Important Dress of Your Life: Say Yes to Putting an Article of Clothing on a Cultural Pedestal

This will be the first post in a mini-series about wedding dresses and wedding culture. There are a lot of segments I want to talk about, but I don't want to write one endless post about it, so I'll break it up for your sake for my own too.

Now then, onto the subject matter. Wedding dresses. Something that some women have dreamed about since they were little girls. Things like bridal Barbies and Disney princess movies perpetuate the bridal fantasy for many little girls in Western culture. They romanticize weddings as the moment when you will find your Prince Charming and live happily ever after. 

We don't ever see movies about life after the "I Do's" for these princesses, although here is a photographer's perception of what that might look like.

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Cinderella's wedding (top) and a photographer Dina Goldstein's idea on what happened after "happily ever after" (above)

There is so much focus on the bridal gown in Western wedding culture. This is largely due to weddings themselves being very bride-centered. Grooms will usually wear a suit or tuxedo, which you can spice up with different colored ties or vests, but there's only so much variation you can do with those options. Wedding gowns on the other hand seem to have endless options. Well, endless as long as it's white. (There will be a separate post coming later about "non-traditional" brides and their obstacles in dress shopping). 

The TLC network has numerous programs centered on weddings. Say Yes to the Dress, Say Yes to the Dress: Atlanta, Say Yes to the Dress: Big Bliss, I Found the Gown, and Randy to the Rescue are all shows centered on the wedding dress selection alone. I am a guilty watcher of all of these. Part of me just loves trashy reality TV, and the other part of me is fascinated with how outrageous some of these gowns, brides and families are.

"Say Yes to the Dress" is now a cultural catchphrase. In the show, when the consultants are trying to close the sale, they always ask the bride "Are you saying yes to this dress?" The fact that this phrase is now culturally popular, it gives more cultural appeal to shop for a wedding gown, because many women want to be asked that question and go to this bridal salon to experience "the magic bridal moment" they saw on television. Many brides in later seasons of the show have talked about how they wanted to go to Kleinfeld Bridal because of the popularity of the show. Many have traveled across the country, and some even across the glove to visit this salon, as described in this article here. 

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Hundreds of brides lineup outside of Kleinfeld, the salon popularized by Say Yes to the Dress

The show portrays many different types of people. Brides with modest budgets, brides with unlimited budgets, brides with pushy families and strict cultural norms, same-sex brides, and various brides they call "nontraditional." And of course a majority of brides that are looking for the "traditional" bridal look. 

Traditional bridal gowns are white (traditionally to symbolize virginity and purity), floor length, and do not reveal a lot of skin. Modern traditional gowns on these shows also now are described as having the perfect mix of class and sex appeal, but it can't be too sexy otherwise people will wonder why on earth you're wearing white. 

So what is the craze about wedding dresses? Many brides on these shows describe wedding gowns as being the most important dress in their lives and how it symbolizes the ultimate form of themselves. They want to be beautiful, and the center of attention. They don't say it directly like that, but phrases like "I want people to be in awe when I walk in, and I want all heads to turn when I walk in the room" imply just as much.

 For same-sex brides on the show that choose to both wear a gown, the consultants usually feel overwhelemed because the attention is split between two brides, and they want to find gowns that often complement each other's gowns and their own personalities. Here is a clip of a same-sex couple shopping for bridal gowns at Kleinfeld. In this scenario, her partner already found her dress. 

The first aspect of dresses I want to focus on is the cost of bridal gowns. The following clip is an extreme example, but nonetheless it is an example of how much some brides will spend on this dress that they will wear "the big day." 

Kelly Dooley, the bride in the clip, wants a one of a kind dress. The dress she is in love with is $34,000. I have no words. Being a college student, I often equate the cost of things to "how many semesters of school does this pay for?" Her mother is paying for the gown. As well as for most of the wedding. If you are curious about her wedding, I will link her episode here. She ended up having her own episode special about her wedding and wedding gown experience. 

The "big budget brides" are treated exceptionally at the bridal salon. They have a high, or endless budget, so the consultants pull out all their ammo in the bridal arsenal to make them happy. This is not to say that they treat other brides as sub-par or terribly,  just that they want to meet the demands of the lavish bride to make the sale.

Here is a clip of another bride, Liza, looking for a second bridal gown. One for her wedding in Nigeria, the other for her wedding in Toronto. What is interesting about her story is that she says the Nigerian wedding is for her parents, and the Toronto wedding is "her" wedding. It is not always the bride who wants to spend lavishly. As seen in this example, Liza is succumbing to cultural demands from her family. 

My own aunt had a similar experience. She and my uncle had two wedding cermonies, one Catholic, the other Russian Orthodox, to make both sides of the family happy. 

The average budget for a bride at Kleinfeld that I observed was in the $2,000-$4,000 range. TLC came out with a show last year called "I Found the Gown" which is a television show similar to Say Yes to the Dress, except the salon is a discount bridal warehouse, where top designer gowns are exceptionally marked down, and therefore more affordable than the full-price gowns seen on Say Yes to the Dress. I feel that this show is more relateable to many women who cannot afford expensive gowns, but it gives them hope that they can find one because of discount retailers like the one seen on "I Found the Gown." 

What are your thoughts on wedding dresses? Do you feel the symbolism behind them is still relevant in today's culture? 

If you are woman, did you ever dream about your perfect dress? I will be honest and say that I definitely have (*frantically closes Pinterest tab*) Men what are your thoughts on wedding gowns? Do you find them to be important?

How do you feel about people who spend thousands on gowns? Would you spend that much if you had the money?

Why do you think there is such a large focus on wedding dresses in Western wedding culture?

Please comment below! 

Popping the Question: Engagement Rings, Status, and the Ultimate Symbol of Love (...?)

Before I start this, I want to put a disclaimer. My intention is not to shame anyone who believes in and likes these traditions. My goal is to get people thinking about why traditions are in place and why people believe in them.

We all know that traditionally, the beginning of a marriage starts with the proposal. Your perfect man proposes with the perfect ring. Famous phrases like "Diamonds are a girl's best friend" and DeBeers famous slogan (pictured below) perpetuate the idea that diamonds are the ultimate symbol of love and commitment.

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This DeBeers diamond commercial is a great example of showing how diamonds are marketed as a symbol of eternal love by portraying an elderly couple and a younger couple together. New love and lifelong love, the ideal relationship is one where one turns into the other.

Often, after a woman is proposed to, the first thing people ask is to see the ring, and then they offer their congratulations.  When someone on Facebook changes to their status to engaged, almost instantaneously questions and congratulations come flooding in. "Where is the ring?" Or when they change their status to engaged, a picture of the ring is included in the post.

Chrys Ingraham, author of White Weddings: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture, wrote in 1999 that a man is expected to buy an engagement ring worth two month's salary, and spending anything less is deemed unacceptable by Western society's standards. I asked a few of my friends and family what they would say the expected cost of an engagement ring today is, and their estimations are that now the expectation is to save up three months' salary.

Not only is the man expected to spend the right amount, the ring is also supposed to perfectly represent the bride's personality and style. Someone who describes them self as quirky and unique may opt for something non-traditional, like a heart shaped diamond.

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Singer Sherri Bemis of Eisley describes her style as whimsical and wanted her engagement ring to match her personality. (I adore her and she is one of my favorite singers, so in no way am I smack talking her *insert fangirl shriek* I LOVE YOU). 

In the season 5 premiere of TLC's show Say Yes to the Dress, bride Sarah Kennedy was going shopping for a bridal gown, before she was proposed to. Little did she know, her boyfriend was waiting in the dressing room with her "perfect ring." In the interview segments of the show, she says that she has been waiting a long time for this ring, and how glad she is that it's finally here.

Bride Sarah Kennedy is shown shopping for her bridal gown, minutes after the proposal

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It's interesting to note how she talks about "it" and not "him." This next clip is of one of the bridal consultants reflecting on the in-store proposal. The proposal was unexpected because the couple did not think they could afford a ring, so it was a shock to her and the family.

 For most women and Western society as a whole, the engagement ring is the marker for the beginning of a marriage. Sarah from Say Yes to the Dress talked about how her ring was the pivotal piece of the puzzle she was waiting for before she would get married to her boyfriend.

Engagement rings, and the expected cost of them, put a lot of pressure on heterosexual males to live up to a certain societal expectation. The engagement ring is a symbol that shows that you can provide for her, and you can live up to the expectation of the traditional male breadwinner.

In one of my classes, there is a girl who sits in front of me who is recently engaged. Many in our class noticed her ring and asked her about ring shopping and the proposal. In a joking tone, she said that she told her fiancee that she wanted a carat for each year they have been together. If you saw the size of that thing, you would know that she wasn't joking at all. (I jokingly kept thinking to myself, how does she lift her hand?)

Celebrity engagement rings are the perfect example of how "love" is shown through status and money. As soon as news breaks of a celebrity's engagement, then the reports on how much the ring cost almost immediately follow. Kim Kardashian recently became engaged to Kanye West. The LA Times reports the ring at $3 million dollars and weighing in at 15 carats.

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This makes Kim's former fiance's $2 million dollar ring seem pretty lame compared to what Kanye shelled out for her don't you think? (insert sarcasm) In the celebrity world, the engagement ring is the ultimate symbol of status and of "love" (I put air quotes because 72 day marriages are totally reflective of true love. I really wish there was a font for sarcasm) The richer they are, the bigger the ring has to be. This is especially true if it isn't their bride-to-be's first go around. He has to show that he is better than what she had before. If you love her more than he did, the ring has to be bigger, right? My mom made the comment that her ring looks like it came out of a gum-ball machine it's so ridiculous looking.

Engagement rings are an ingrained part of the marriage tradition. The average middle class man is expected to shell out three month's salary to prove to society and to her that he loves her. So I want to pose a few questions. Is it fair to expect a man to invest in a gift such as jewelry as a symbol of love? Why doesn't the male also receive some sort of gift for a rite of passage such as an engagement? Do women feel a sense of entitlement to receiving an engagement ring and why?

Also, since it is often expected for man to buy a ring for a woman, how would this tradition play out in a same-sex relationship? Would they feel pressured to conform to the hetero normative tradition and assign traditional roles to each other, or both get rings? (Let alone the fact if they can even legally get married).

If you are female, do you expect to receive an engagement ring? Why?

If you are male I ask, do you feel pressure or do you feel expected to buy an engagement ring if you plan on getting married? If so, where do you feel this pressure and expectation comes from?

Again I am not condemning anyone who plans to follow or has followed these traditions. I myself would still like an engagement ring, but I don't want my boyfriend to sell his soul or promise our first born child in exchange for one, or equate one to the cost to the massive amounts of student debt we are in ( har har *runs away and cries in corner because of the reality of debt*)

I'd love to hear your thoughts! Please feel free to comment below and start some discussion!