Weddings have taken over social media. The label #wedding (wedding, in English) accumulates 35.7 million publications on Instagram, and another 15.4 million on TikTok. The same as all its subvariants: wedding ideas, wedding planning, wedding dresses, wedding rings or wedding decor; as well as numerous content microtrends that go viral, such as “my wedding rules,” where each future bride—always starring women—explains the rules they have agreed upon for the wedding day. Issues such as whether children can attend the celebration, whether something will be given to the attendees or the dress code of the guests are debated in the numerous comments that accumulate on the publications.
All of these videos, which receive millions of views around the world every day (mostly from women), show snapshots of what many define as “the best day of their life,” as well as each of the phases of preparation. of the wedding, and the learning they have obtained from the process, so that others like them can carry them out in their own weddings.
However, it is contradictory how in many of these videos, love and the couple seem to be relegated to the background, and what becomes important is the wedding itself as a social event, which has become a spectacle in search of like. Although weddings have been present in our lives for centuries, social networks have given new meaning to this form of historical union that has evolved over the years.
From the banquet to the fever of content
In ancient Greek and Roman times, marriage was a contractual matter used for men to ensure the transmission of their property and lineage, and this was often celebrated with a banquet. Later, during the Late Middle Ages, Christianity converted it into a sacrament, adopted it as a public representation of the spiritual relationship with God, and was accompanied by a celebration that, in addition to being a family event, also served to consolidate alliances. political and economic. It was not until the 18th and 19th centuries when people began to marry “for love” and the reason for the celebration was the union of the two spouses.
Despite all the transformations that have occurred over the centuries in marriages—always heterosexual—one thing that has remained is that the figure of the woman has been subordinated to that of the man. Whether by acting as a simple “vessel” to ensure the inheritance, by assigning her the role of mother-wife, caretaker of her husband and children, or by making her believe that the promise of happiness lay in the fact of marrying and converting. in mothers.
Many writers and thinkers of recent centuries have reflected, theorized and warned us about how the institution of marriage and love are two independent things, especially where women are concerned. In 1910, Lithuanian anarchist Emma Goldman wrote that “marriage and love have nothing in common. There is no doubt that some marriages were made out of love; But rather these are the few people who were able to remain unscathed by the contact of conventions.”
In many of these videos, love and the couple seem to be relegated to the background, and what becomes important is the wedding itself as a social event.
In 1936, the writer Irène Némirovsky—born in the former Russian Empire—wrote in her novel Two that “marital happiness is as little like happiness without adjectives as marital love is like love without more.” And already in the eighties, the Catalan Montserrat Roig blamed cinema for uniting the institution of marriage with love, causing “marriage to be thought of as an absolute relationship” and, therefore, that “its success and failure will also be absolute.”
However, despite all these warnings throughout history, getting married is still “every girl’s dream.” This is what Ashley assures her boyfriend Tyler, one of the main couples of the last season of the blind date show Love is Blind USAreleased this last month on Netflix. A statement that is repeated throughout the seven seasons of the American version of this reality, in which the participants sign up with the goal of getting married, and which culminates in the celebration of their wedding, where they decide if they are finally going to say “I do.” Because the truth is that, although the religious issue, that of inheritance and lineage have lost strength in contemporary society, the connection between love, wedding and marriage is still very present in people’s lives. And this is, to a large extent, thanks to the representation that is being made of it on social networks.
The photographer specialized in weddings Cecilia Álvarez-Hevia Arias, co-founder of the company Días de vino y rosas (with 51,000 followers on Instagram), assures that social networks have had a great impact in the fifteen years she has been dedicating herself to this profession, and that, “unfortunately, there are more and more people who turn weddings into a mere social event focused on publishing it on the networks, rather than a celebration of their love.” However, the “trap” of social networks is that, even though it is often the former (a spectacle), they manage to create a fiction of happiness that makes you think it is the latter (a demonstration). sincere of love). The weddings instagrammable They create a false illusion of aspirational happiness, just as the “we will be happy and eat partridges” in Disney movies did.
‘Instagrammable’ weddings create a false illusion of aspirational happiness, just like the ‘we’ll be happy and eat partridges’ from Disney movies did.
This spectacularization of weddings and happiness on social networks ends up generating a need in their followers in the same way that a man would. haul of clothes and shoes, which means that the dynamics of desire end up reversing. Instead of thinking “because I’m in love with you, I want to marry you,” many people now think “because I know how happy I’ll be when I get married, I want to fall in love.” A thought very similar to that shared by women a few decades ago but, while they firmly believed that this was the destiny of women, it is now a desire infiltrated by capitalism and consumption.
In relation to this, Álvarez-Hevia realizes – thanks to the numerous weddings he has attended in all these years – that “more than the meaning that can be given to certain traditional marriage rituals, now people pay attention to in the trends that become fashionable on social networks”, whether it is a party with a photocall full of decoration with mustaches – associated with the Tumblr aesthetic -, a tower of champagne glasses, a 360º video booth or, one of the latest developments that is now arriving in Spain from the United States, the figure of the wedding content creatorwhich is responsible for generating exclusive wedding content for social networks.
One of the clearest examples of the extent to which a wedding can become an opportunity to create content is that of the influencer Marta Sierra who, in addition to the classic photographs and videos to remember the event, also published numerous reels designed specifically for networks, from a lypsinc that united several moments of the wedding, humorous videos or an improvised catwalk with her friends.
More weddings instagrammablemore conservative values?
The fact that content related to weddings – and here we can also include celebrities gender reveal (parties in which the sex of a baby is revealed) – acquire so much virality on networks, are conceived as something positive and become something aspirational makes us question the extent to which we are reinforcing something – the family and marriage as an institution – that It has been questioned for many years by the feminist struggle. No one is immune to the impacts of capitalist society continually present on social networks or to the cultural heritage that drives women to see marriage as something desirable and significant in their lives. We are part of the society in which we live, and each woman is free to marry or not, in the same way that she is free to be a mother or not. However, it is important to know the origins of the traditions we have inherited and, if necessary, question them.
More than the meaning that can be given to certain traditional marriage rituals, people now pay attention to the trends that are becoming fashionable on social networks.
Cecilia Alvarez-Hevia
— wedding photographer
This is what Miriam Jiménez Lastra, writer, sociologist and political scientist, did a few weeks ago in a video in which she explained the 5 things I don’t want at my weddingwhere he criticized some of the marriage rituals with a misogynistic symbolic value that we still reproduce, such as the proposal for a hand, which implies that women have been private property that has passed from parents to husbands; the use of the white dress as a symbol of purity; or that the groom waits for the bride at the altar, since it is an example of the woman who has historically been “delivered.” This video, which reached one and a half million views, was strongly criticized, and Jiménez Lastra received a large avalanche of haters in their networks.
The sociologist believes that the origin of this hatred is that the idea of wedding and marriage is one of those “personal desires deeply embedded in the most primary socialization of people. A 10-year-old boy or girl already knows that people study, find a partner, get married, have children, buy a house, etc. So when you attack that, the reaction is very harsh.”
Although Jiménez Lastra was not even criticizing people getting married, but rather questioning the rituals that we replicate out of inertia—many of which we regularly see at weddings influencers—, the response was highly misogynistic. Although the informative intention of the video was clear, Miriam uploaded another subsequent video – which had much less scope – where she offered alternatives to these rituals, since, for her, the important thing is “to find new ways of doing things, instead of stripping of meaning to ancient traditions, something characteristic of postmodern societies.”
In any case, it is evident that weddings and the idea of marriage still have a long way to go, but perhaps it would be interesting to begin to develop—as Jiménez Lastra does—a deeper reflection on the decisions that lead us to get married: Do we want to continue reproducing traditions that we don’t even know what they mean? Are we going to continue dedicating so much effort and money to (de)showing our love on social networks in exchange for a handful of likes? Or perhaps there will come a day when we will stop getting married when someone ‘uncovers the elephant in the room’ and we generally recognize that receiving a wedding invitation puts you in an—most of the time—undesirable commitment?
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