The 2009 filmBride Warsbegins innocently enough. After a youthful sighting of a wedding celebrated at New York City’s Plaza Hotel, best friends Liv (Kate Hudson) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) are smitten. They decide their weddings will be just as grand as the one they witnessed as girls. Childhood fantasy becomes adult expertise as they memorize and categorize the best in wedding styles, themes, and professionals. When the audience meets Liv and Emma as adults, they are attending a college friend’s wedding, dissecting the celebration, point by point. Their verdict: “It ain’t June, and it ain’t the Plaza.” When...

In the midst of the planning for Kay Banks’s 1948 wedding, her father Stanley mused to himself: “It should have been so simple. Boy and girl meet, fall in love, marry, have babies—who eventually grow up, meet other babies, fall in love, marry. Looked at from this angle, it was not only simple, it was positively monotonous. Why then must Kay’s wedding assume the organizational complexity of a major political campaign?”¹ Stanley’s bewilderment at the wedding process indicated the changing nature of the celebration in post–World War II America. Edward Streeter’sFather of the Bridechronicled the events...

The bride-to-be sat in the center of a circle of friends. The first of several wedding showers to come, this particular event was hosted by a close friend and bridesmaid. Most of the young women in attendance were close in age to the 19-year-old guest of honor. The year was 1966, and these young women had yet to embrace the increasingly casual style that soon would dominate American fashion. Dressed in knee-length shifts of various summer hues, the guests had spent time preparing for this party. Each woman’s hair was styled and her face made up. They looked like junior...

On June 29, 1971Lookmagazine, the general-interest American publication based in the tradition ofLifemagazine’s photo essay, published an article entitled “Marriage the New Natural Way.” In a multi-page spread,Look’s middle-class, middle-American readers were treated to a vibrant vision of a wedding celebrated on a daffodil farm in the Virginia countryside. While just a dry run put on for the benefit ofLook’s readers, the simulation replicated plans for the actual wedding day. A group of young, attractive men and women, bathed in sunlight, celebrated in a field full of trees and flowers. Dressed in colorful garments...

In 1978, a young Barnard College graduate began the process of planning her wedding. As the bride-to-be—a working woman and vocal feminist—filled out the paperwork for her wedding license, she was surprised to find that there was no place on the form for her occupation. When she asked the clerk at City Hall where she should provide that information, the woman responded, “Oh, we don’t ask the girls for their occupations.” The bride insisted her profession be recorded, and the kindly clerk willingly obliged. “Well, we’ve never done that before,” she said, “but … all right, sweetheart, what...

On October 10, 1987, nearly 7,000 people witnessed a wedding on the National Mall in Washington, DC. Men and women cheered and threw rice and confetti as family, friends, and community members took part in the largest mass wedding in American history. After the celebrants exchanged rings and were pronounced newlywed, guests released hundreds of balloons into the air. Brides and grooms, dressed in formal wedding attire, cried and embraced after an “emotional and festive” ceremony. Like so many brides and grooms, participants identified the wedding day as one of the happiest, most meaningful days of their lives.

But this...

On April 29, 2011, Prince William of Wales married Catherine Middleton. Before approximately 1,900 congregants, the wedding took place in Westminster Abbey, site of every royal coronation since 1066. Guests ranged from members of the British Royal Family to international superstars Elton John and David Beckham. The Prince wore a scarlet Irish Guards colonel’s uniform, while Middleton emerged from the queen’s 1977 Rolls Royce Phantom VI in a “lacy, long-sleeved, sweetheart-neckline gown with lace overlay” designed by Sarah Burton, creative director of the British label Alexander McQueen. The ceremony inside the church was broadcast worldwide. Those watching at home heard...