I was disappointed to find that there was not much written about bridal magazines in a scholarly format or one of public consumption. There has been quite a bit written about the affect/effect of magazines on both the female and male gender, but little to nothing has been focused on bridal magazines. I was surprised as this is one area of magazines not only geared to women, but one in which the Cinderella Myth is perpetuated.

What I did find focused primarily on the wedding itself. Although none of the pieces spoke to bridal magazines per se, they have provided a platform from which to explore the messages bridal magazines send to potential brides. There was one message that could be found in each piece, the admonishment to make the wedding day your own. It appears, though, that the personalized wedding has become a multimillion dollar industry. In 1995, "Americans spent $34.9 billion on weddings" averaging $15,000 per wedding (About Women & Marketing, 1996). While weddings have become increasingly more expensive, are they really becomimg more personalized or is the industry simply repackaging the same traditions?

Bridal registries are diversifying. Theme weddings are growing in popularity. Doing something different, like getting married in Disney World, seems to be the trend (Marketing to Women, 1995). What does all of this mean? Bridal registries can be found everywhere from Ross Simmons to Dillards to Target. They may have diversified as far as where one can register, but you are limited to what the store offers. Getting married in Disney World cannot be all that different since they have built a chapel for these very unique weddings. Of course, I am not saying that there is anything particularly wrong with these things. I simply question how these things are being advertised as so unique.

We are taught from birth that some day our prince will come and we will live happily-ever-after. When Lady Diana married Prince Charles, all of our dreams and ideals were realized. Now, she could live happily-ever-after and so could we through her. How many times have we entered into relationships to shortly find ourselves disillusioned? What happened to our prince? Why weren't we told that he could turn back into a toad at any moment? "Because Diana had made the fairy tale real, her exposure of its unreality was all the more damning ..." (Le-Blanc, p2). So why marry if not for love?

This speaks to the heart of what a wedding is really all about. It has become nothing more than a show of how much money one has, perfectly choreographed, with every strand perfectly placed. "... [T]oday, only 18% feel that ... love and romance were the most important factors in marraige" (About Women & Marketing, 1996). Diana's marraige proved that "the romance of the romance narrative had been a lie" (Le-Blanc, p2). "... [T]he white woman imagined by the abstraction of white womanhood" is "... concurrently a trap and an access to power" (Le-Blanc, p2). A trap for women of all colors, races and classes. It is an access to power for men of all colors, races and classes. Rather than burrying deeper into the image of Miss Mary Wife, women have "rent this veil despite the opposition of her own identity and desires" (Le-Blanc, p3).

So why is it that we still find magazines devoted to the perpetuation of these lies and myths? Why do we still spend thousands of dollars and hours planning an event that at least half the time leads another expensive event, only this one more painful and choregraphed by lawyers and judges? What is the ultimate purpose of the wedding?

A wedding is nothing more than society's way of condoning that two people are having sex. Even today, that notion still holds up as the norm. Why isn't there more representation of lesbian and gay weddings in the mass media? Simply put, their form of sex is taboo and has yet to be sanctioned by society as a whole. When we find out that some celebrity has just married or is about to marry, the media goes out of its way to capture it on film, even going so far as to fly helicopters overhead hoping to catch at least one picture of the beaming couple. So the wedding is less about the two people vowing to love and remain devoted to one another throughout all of the good and bad times life will bring their way, but more about the views and acceptance of others. And who is at the focal point of all this attention? The bride.

No other cermony or rite of passage in her life will compare to this one; there will be no comparable expenditure of mney, no similar outpuring of gifts and emotion, no other moment at which she is the focal point of so many people's attention. (Geller, p3)

The wedding codifies our notions of sexual identity, enshrining an image of the contemporary woman as domestic, delicate, sexually coy, romance-driven and maternal. (Geller, p4)

And people wonder why there is such a high divorce rate. As we continue to be bombarded by the ideals from fairytales as children and from the mass media and Hollywood as adults, we continue to have less than satisfying relationships. "There's no scene in Cinderella where the prince drings too many martinis at the party, or where she wonders, "Did I marry the right guy?"" (Kingsbury, p95). What proves time and again to be the biggest problem? Communication, or rather the lack of it. Kingsbury finds that Romeo and Juliet continue to be noted as the most romantic of all couples. Why? They kill themselves. Why? Well, some wires got crossed and each did not receive the other's message. Why do we continue to allow these myths and idealizations create these unrealistic rules by which we are expected to live? How do these unrealistic rules continue to be perpetuated?