But what caught my attention was a newspaper story about weddings -- I’m sure editors everywhere were clearing their shelves of material to substitute for Jenna’s marriage in Texas, since they weren’t invited. In the late Sixties hip brides wore cotton peasant clothes -- real or faux -- and were married in meadows. In the Seventies there were nude weddings not in nudist colonies. Briefly there were paper wedding dresses, which everyone thought meant that weddings were ephemeral and about to become obsolete. By the Eighties and Nineties, couples weren’t marrying until their children (some of which were produced by previous relationships) demanded that they be legalized. That’s the bottom line -- legalizing children for the purposes of economics: who picks up the bill. With the advent of DNA testing, the “real” father -- if he could be found -- was held responsible economically, but many had an increasing realization of the emotional need for fathers.
The religio-ceremonial linking of family, prestige and dynasty that we all admired with Trisha Nixon and Princess Diana are not just passé, but nearly jinxed. Anyway, the wedding was no longer linked to sex. No more need to fear the wedding night. The couple knows all about going to bed -- probably much less about raising children.
Someone remarked at some earlier event that the Bush twins dressed more like movie starlets than debutantes. Anyway, the Victorian debut is supposed to be “coming out” to society, while the twins have made it clear that they intend to “go in” to privacy. But then, starlets work for a living and debutantes do not. So Jenna’s dress -- described as “simple” Oscar de la Renta was encrusted with embroidery -- but no more bare than any Texas sundress and on the demure side: no rhinestones. Her twin’s dress was even simpler. Laura seemed a bit more matronly than usual and Bush was his usual boy-toy self. The groom rather reminded me of Al Gore.
But these details were not really what set me thinking. It was a newspaper story about young brides who routinely and with mischief aforethought trash their wedding dresses. Partly this seems to be the product of youth, partly rebellion against boredom, and partly a deliberate transgression against the bridal purity of a white dress. Probably they don’t realize fancy white dresses -- that no one ever wears again anyway -- was a phenomenon of the Victoria Era when prosperity and embellishment nearly strangled a generation. Before the Victorian upper classes, people wore their Sunday-best BLACK dress, or, with luck, a NEW Sunday-best black dress. The fancy white dress became a symbol of prosperity and prestige, though the cover theory was that it symbolized virginity, purity, and a last flowering of daddy’s little girl before she began the hard work of running a household. (And it WAS hard work in those days.)
Once I was asked to perform a wedding between a liberal Jewish boy and a charming Unitarian woman. They were both Ph.D. holders, humorous, good-looking, and already launched on bright futures. They wanted to somehow blend the traditional with some new understanding of their commitment, which was quite real. One element that the groom’s grandfather INSISTED on was the act of the groom stomping on a fragile wine glass. (I had learned to put a piece of plywood on the carpet, then the wineglass wrapped in a napkin or, better, a small throw rug over it. I was paranoid that some groom, in spite of wearing shoes, would get badly cut.) The groom said he’d like to include this but to please make sure that I didn’t refer to the bride’s hymen, which the traditional Jewish liturgy does. (Less subtle than thrusting a finger through a circle of gold.) So I wrote something about this symbolizing the shattering of an old life and the beginning of a new. Somehow in saying it, the breaking of the hymen snuck back in, to much laughter. They forgave me. But the lesson to me was that these old metaphors are strong and deep. So symbolisms change up to a point, depending on the context, tradition and economics -- but their essence stays.
Photographers have been the guerillas in the dismantling of the pristine white dress as the essence of bridedom. A few years back I ran across a series of brides photographed underwater -- Ondines. Their veils floated like delicate sea membranes. Water, that old symbol of life and fertility! The newspaper story declares that so many brides in wedding dresses have plunged into fountains that it’s almost a cliche. Taking a transgressive tack, the happy couple might be portrayed in a junkyard or a back alley with a dumpster instead of an altar. Perhaps the most extreme was the photo of the bride’s feet sticking out her dress in a half-closed car trunk with a shovel alongside. But it's hard to beat the photo of a bride on fire! (It was a Photoshop trick.)
And then there was the pictured couple who played paintball with the bride in her strapless bouffant dress. The groom wears athletic gear as he kneels alongside. Her paintball gun has a long barrel and her arm is over him. One could say she was dominant. But his expression is sly and potent. Is that a “soul patch” under his lower lip? The bride is without protective gear. Think about THAT!
My niece and her groom played paintball the night BEFORE the wedding, properly protected. Married on the home farm with a long wide lawn, they played running games all afternoon. The bride was barefoot in the grass and said it was certainly a good thing her dress had a deep, green satin hem. The imagery was pastoral, free, energetic and unpretentious, like the couple.
My cousin’s daughter wore my cousin’s wedding dress, which was entirely traditional, but revised it into a Renaissance gown through many additions like long sleeves and a wreath of field flowers on her head. The groom also dressed according to the fashion of the Society of Creative Anachronism. It was another outdoor wedding.
The spirit of play, when it is brought into religious liturgy, should not be mistaken for a lack of seriousness. Indeed, it signs renewal, reinvention, and a refusal to be locked into precedence. Nowadays, it seems the bride’s makeup kit should include a bottle of Bullfrog sunscreen. New demands, new responses. But often within a familiar cycle. Re-cycling. Still, as subconsciousnesses will do, sometimes a bit of the sinister creeps in -- just as it does in marriage. In life.
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