One Perfect Day: What a Wedding Represents

Another quotation from Rebecca Mead, One Perfect Day, on the most important sales item for the wedding industry:

“The most significant thing that the wedding industry is selling is fantasy, about the wedding day itself and about the marriage that follows it. The foremost product peddled by the wedding industry is the notion that a wedding, if done right, will provide fulfillment of a hitherto unimagined degree, and will herald a similarly flawless marriage and a subsequent life of domestic contentment. From this perspective, naturally, doing a wedding right means doing it according to the wedding-industry playbook, with no expense spared and no bridal trifle uncoveted. If a bride buys into the wedding industry, she is promised the happily-ever-after that she, in her big white dress and tiara, deserves.

With the prevalence of both high levels of divorce and indebtedness in the United States today, it’s probably high time for someone to call the wedding industry on this massive falsehood. As a theologian, the self-centeredness, to the point of idolatry, of this statement is front and center.