Why Can’t We Quit Weddings?
A lot of marriages in the U.S. today are radical by grandparent standards. Women as breadwinners. Stay-at-home dads. Gay marriages. Polyamorous marriages! Yet despite all these evolutions, the ritual that ushers in those marriages—the American wedding—has hardly changed at all. Weddings are constantly evolving, but often in the direction of more elaborate, more luxe, more wedding-like. Why are we obsessed with perfecting what is essentially a 19th-century artifact?
In this episode, we talk to Xochitl Gonzalez, who wrote a confessional for The Atlantic about her years as a luxury wedding planner, and authored Olga Dies Dreaming, a bestselling novel about a luxury wedding planner and a cast of obnoxious clients. Gonzalez tells us about the out-there demands of the uber rich. (Preview: monks; pizza; an orchid bear.) We talk about how those demands trickle down to the average couple, with delusions of a celebrity-style wedding, done on the cheap. And we puzzle over the big question: Why are we so fixated on this grand old tradition?
Listen to the conversation here:
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The following is a transcript of the episode:
Hanna Rosin: I watched The Wedding Planner last night. Just, I was like: Oh my God.
Xochitl Gonzalez: Can we talk about it? Because I know that movie like the back of my hand.
Rosin: I mean, I love J. Lo, but I have not dipped into a rom-com from that era in a while. Every moment of it felt kind of manufactured and awkward.
Gonzalez: Oh, so completely. That is like the era of the cultural stereotype.
Rosin: Yes. Yes!
Gonzalez: Of shorthand, right? Like one trope after another. Although there’s a great line when the boss of her little wedding-planning operation is like: “I’ve done things no innocent planner should ever have to.”
[Laughter.]
Rosin: Right. I did think of you when I heard that line.
Gonzalez: Right. It’s a good line. That’s actually a good line.
[MUSIC]
Rosin: I’m Hanna Rosin. This is Radio Atlantic. If you’re getting married this summer, I pity you. Not because of the marriage. I’m sure that’ll be fine. But because of the wedding. Social media seems to have changed the game for the average couple. Every wedding is now supposed to look like a luxury wedding and yet somehow cost a lot less than an actual luxury wedding.
But the weirdest thing for me is that weddings still exist at all. Marriage is totally different than it used to be. Women’s roles are totally different. And yet the wedding just keeps getting more … wedding-y.
Why do we keep innovating and improving on what is basically an artifact from the early 19th century?
So because surely some of you out there are attending a wedding or 15 this summer, we are going to talk about weddings with someone who has lived through many, many of them: writer Xochitl Gonzalez. She just wrote a confessional for the magazine about her years running a luxury wedding business. And before that she wrote an exceptional novel called about a wedding planner, that was way more intense about the class and race
