Dhe bride wears a backless, simple dress that hugs her body, which has been starved for the occasion, the groom beams at her – and she throws her head back and whinnies, showing off her sparkling white teeth. The best thing to do with this is “Perfect” by Ed Sheeran, in a string version, and everyone is blown away: a dream princess, all in virgin white and real, and her Ken, who is there on this day just to make her even better and to make you look happier (so that all the planning and all the money wasn’t in vain).
One thing first: weddings and wedding celebrations are something wonderful! What could be better than celebrating the love of two people for each other, with friends, family, loved ones? Add to that good food, music, dancing, ideally just a few interludes and speeches – and you have a day you’ll remember fondly.
But for many couples that no longer seems to be enough. They want to get married like all the other power couples on Instagram – in Kaviar Gauche, in bright sunshine – and ideally somewhere in Tuscany. The hall in your own town is no longer enough, you need Italian flair or a small farm in Provence, surrounded by lavender fields, where you can conveniently have a particularly good photo taken by that one photographer who obviously attends every wedding of the younger ones History has photographed, because the pictures all look the same.
Great fun in Italy!
Brides and grooms are welcome to do that too, find it beautiful, love each other in the lavender field, whatever. They should let 100 or 200 guests fly to Tuscany if it’s so important to them! Great fun in Italy! However, they usually don’t invite everyone. Anyone who only socializes in filthy rich circles with endless vacation days shouldn’t have a guilty conscience. But recently, average normal people have been inviting half of their circle of friends to please take three or four days off, book a hotel room in the far south and take care of flights that guarantee the presence of the guests even if they are delayed.
Of course, a wedding party is expensive for the bride and groom, which is why they often want gifts of money and no more bread baking machines. It cannot additionally pay for accommodation and flights for all guests – the guests then have to do it themselves. This is expensive fun for those who perhaps have to shell out the 100 euros for the gift card because they have children or earn less than the Tuscan sweethearts. It’s also a bit much to ask your friends, who usually only have a limited number of vacation days, to take such a break – just because you’re so pretty in the center of Tuscany. Not to mention the ecological collateral damage that such a wedding causes with all of its guests arriving by plane.
Addressing the extreme decadence of such an event is naturally difficult – everyone treats their friends to a nice party, no one wants to be a spoilsport, no matter what the costs are. The couple often doesn’t seem to fully understand this quixotic undertaking. An acquaintance, for example, who is invited to a big wedding event abroad, reports the bride’s serious concerns: she gives people who don’t have that much money earlier appointments. “Then they can book cheaper flights.” Benefactor of the year! Another reported on Instagram that even at her dream wedding, not everything went perfectly: “Some flights were canceled.” End of the world!
And this is also part of the story: a wedding in Tuscany or in another romantic setting is no longer terribly special anymore. Wedding Scenario A, B, C, they have all taken place somewhere exactly the same way a thousand times.
Decals of dreams
They are reflections of dreams that are lived and retold – this is evident from the fact that the tradition of the pure white dress persists, even if most brides today no longer dance virginally into their wedding night (thankfully). Now it’s not a bad thing and can even be very nice to maintain a tradition such as marriage, while following rites such as dress code. However, this is apparently not done for reasons of faith or awareness of tradition, but for the purpose of self-aggrandizement and self-promotion.
There are hundreds of thousands of photos on social media of couples who got married somewhere in paradise – and were properly photographed after, before and in between. The pictures follow Scheme F. They’re often in black and white, sometimes from a distance, like they’re looking at each other in the lavender field, completely unposed, of course, that’s what you do as a couple all the time – of course. Or how the bride runs along the field towards the gently setting sun, playfully holds the groom’s hand, turns around beaming and pulls him with her. (Where? To the haven of marriage? To the end of the world? To the scorching sunset? We don’t know.) In the end, all weddings somehow look the same. (Terrible? Beautiful? Something in between!) Character is not the issue here. The lavender field also looks the same everywhere.
#Wedding #decadent