A public period of buy-in for a couple's relationship begins whenever an engagement is announced. A community of people begins to emerge, one that will support the man and woman throughout the engagement, at the wedding and hopefully, into the marriage. But weddings are also planned around the notion that the bride is going to be a princess that day, living a lavish dream far from her usual self. As if they had won a great contest, or done something very difficult or courageous, rather than merely falling in love, many brides approach the wedding day expecting to be treated by the world as a fairy-tale princess or Miss America. What deeds justify such entitlement? Such details are hardly considered in a modern wedding process. Yet we go to great lengths to create this dream experience and even greater lengths to ensure it is captured for posterity and impressed on the minds of as many guests as possible.

Statement and Spectacle

Many a bride will spend a year or more of her life creating the wedding experience she's either dreamed for herself or been told she ought to have. A great spectacle is provided for the camera, constructed as a multimedia experience, tailored to reproduce on a television screen at home. Whether for the eye of the guests, the eye of the camera or both, many weddings become an opportunity for showmanship. This move toward theater weddings has become a powerful economic force. Hand in hand with being a fairytale heroine comes the justification to spend heroic quantities of money. A lucrative industry is built around these desires to have one - just one? - perfect day in life.

Weddings have long represented a significant statement about social position, wealth and power. The gaze of the audience is focused not only on the beauty of the bride, but on the good taste and hospitality of her family. The expense of the ring, flowers, music, food, clothes and other ceremonial trappings are to this day a complex socio-economic declaration about the people throwing the party. Echoes of would-be aristocracy permeate wedding traditions even in small communities. Many experience shame and guilt when confronted with financial choices that require nontraditional trade-offs in the construction of a small and straightforward wedding.

Of course, the wedding industry sells the idea that it is fitting and expected that people stage an elaborate wedding day, a day with everything in it, a day that comes off just as you wish. The expenditure is presented as a healthy way to start a new life. But does a self-indulgent beginning set a stable foundation of values for the long and difficult project of marriage? Hardly. The bride and groom will discover that their wedding day is also a grown-up version of Christmas: a reminder that no day on earth can be entirely complete in joy. Neither spending lots of money nor hiring lots of expert help can buttress the day against annoyance. A few photos may achieve the image of perfection. But the fact that most don't earn a place in the final display is testament to the imperfections of the day and of the people involved. No human endeavor could be otherwise. This evidence of flawed reality portends the future for every couple whether they realize it or not.

Since it really won't be a perfect day and the bride probably isn't Miss America, what are we left with? Are there other reasons to bother with a wedding?

Possibility and Potential

A wedding is a training run for family togetherness that begins as the project planning commences. In theory, both families (and both sets of friends) are happy about the impending marriage. If they aren't, then the time leading up to it serves to lay foundations for acceptance of the coming union. The project of planning a wedding will involve all of them. It is a useful time for the couple to experience differences in the ways in which their families operate, build consensus with the in-laws and discuss what will be different about the family they are going to create together.

A wedding is an appeal to friends and neighbors to support a decision that will ultimately affect the entire community for better or worse. Marriage is one of many participations in that community. Staying married and weathering life's problems together takes the mutual commitment of a lot of different people. But a wedding is not just a last call for objections. It involves people in tangible ways of saying, "Yes, we agree you should be together and we want to be with you as this happens." The experienced community is aware that only every tenth or every thousandth moment of a wedding or a marriage will match the initial press releases. The rest are to be appreciated as part of a larger life, less glamorous that the glossy images in the photo album, but greater than the sum of them.

A wedding is an intimate celebration of a sacred commitment between two people. No matter how elegant or simple the wedding, how large or small, whether in keeping with tradition or in spite of it, people continue to follow dreams of love. By wedding, they move toward something greater than themselves. Committed love is stronger than all that pulls toward alienation and death in this world.

A wedding is to declare that two people will be forever limited - and by being limited, expanded - in desire and freedom by another human being. It is to believe that the limitations imposed on our complete freedom of personal choice is good. Embracing the limitation inherent in the commitment to another person frees us from ourselves. It expands our possibilities and gives us glimpses of heaven from the vantage point of earth. One of the great mysteries of life is that we are permitted to witness, and perhaps to enter into, such a declaration.