MONICA CORSTON-OLIVER

moliver@socrates.berkeley.edu

The 'white wedding' is an essential part of American culture. It carries with it ritual words, music, dress, symbolic acts, and contains, as an almost essential ingredient, explicit or implicit reference to religion (typically, Christianity). It is a ritual which gains power both from the church and the state. Like all rituals, though, it gains most of its power through individuals who carry it on; by carrying out the ritual "the way it is supposed to be," we pass it on to the next generation of observers. And, like all rituals, it is bigger than ourselves; we participate in it, but we do not form it. While we can control, on an individual level, the exact ways in which our own weddings are realized, the mechanisms of the ritual are maintained or changed only on the cultural level.

Several inter-related factors encourage the continuation of the traditional wedding ritual. First, there is inherent symbolism in the wedding itself. The wedding - an event - is metaphorically or metonymically related to marriage - a state. Even the word "marriage" itself is polysemous in that it can refer either to the wedding or to the resulting union; for example, consider the traditional wording of the invitation: "Mr. and Mrs. Smith request the honor of your presence at the marriage of their daughter ..." Because of this metaphorical connection between the wedding (event) and the marriage (state), the desired properties of the marriage become the desired properties of the wedding. This metaphorical mapping between wedding and marriage is found in the culture as a whole, but is systematically strengthened by the advertisers of wedding-related products.

Secondly, the wedding combines with notions of feminine beauty to make a powerful statement about feminine identity. It is not by accident that these are "bridal" magazines, not "wedding" magazines. There are no comparable magazines for men, and men-including the groom-do not appear except insofar as they act as appear as props or backdrops against which the BRIDE is seen, or as a representation of the male gaze which watches her. As in other kinds of advertising (e.g. Barthel 1988; Massé and Rosenblum 1988; Shields 1997) the woman is placed in the role of "object of attention," especially as the object of the male gaze; the focus of the wedding is on her, her role as BRIDE, and her changing identity.

Wedding magazines seem, at first glance, to be almost indistinguishable from fashion magazines; indeed, many of them are published by the same companies. This is not surprising; as fashion magazines sell clothing and makeup by invoking the myth of feminine beauty, wedding magazines appeal to the belief that BRIDEhood is the ultimate moment of femininity. Fashion magazines and other purveyors of the "beauty myth" (Wolf 1991) would like us to believe that woman's goal is to attract a man; in participating in a wedding, the BRIDE is publicly demonstrating that she has achieved her purpose; the wedding is her crowning moment of victory. As she dons her packaging - the dress and veil - the Female Wedding Participant (FWP) is transformed from an individual into a cultural icon - the BRIDE.

Finally, the wedding industry has commodified certain parts of the traditions associated with the wedding. Weddings are big business; according to a 1996 survey in Bride's Magazine, the wedding industry was worth $34.9 billion that year ("Getting married" 1996). Because the editorial content of the magazines reinforces the thinking in the appeals and the importance of the products, the magazine might best be thought of as packaging for the advertisements. For the reader, the editorial content and advertising form a unified text, with the lines between content and ads often blurring. For the magazines, the content is heavily constrained by the needs of the advertisers (e.g. Clark 1988; Steinem 1992).

Considering the images from the media, the cultural concepts which make the success or failure of her wedding metaphorically equivalent to the success or failure of her marriage, the extent to which her feminine identity hangs in the balance, and pressures from her family and fiance to also address their needs, it is not surprising that comments like the following (from Currie 1993) are common: "If I'd had my way, it would have just been really small and simple. I just felt caught up in this big thing that I didn't have any control over. I was under a lot of stress."

Clearly, there is some kind of cultural model which makes up the "white wedding" (WEDDING). This model is a structured schema containing different types of elements. Most important is the PROTOTYPE: the cultural vision of the ideal wedding, held up as the yardstick by which all weddings are measured. This prototype includes ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS, including, but not limited to: a) ritual objects (cake, rings, wedding dress, garter belt), b) cultural roles (bride, groom, bridesmaid), c) m odes of behavior (ritual acts, ritual language, traditional "perfect" etiquette), and d) PROPERTIES of the ideal wedding (timeless, perfect, traditional, personal, effortful). In addition, these belief systems give rise to a system of metaphors (ring = commitment; white = purity) which explain and create the other aspects of the model.

Some aspects of the model are either directly or indirectly commodifiable. Ritual objects, obviously, can be purchased; cultural roles require appropriate dress (wedding dress, tuxedo, bridesmaid's gowns); ritual actions may require props, or at least books which can be purchased as instruction. However, the underlying belief systems, and properties and metaphors which are derived from them, are not directly saleable. Instead, many are used in the media as "advertising appeals"; they appeal to the FWP's understanding of the cultural model of the wedding, thereby investing the other objects with even more significance. In order to discover these belief systems, I began by analyzing the ads in three popular wedding magazines (appendix 1).

Further evidence for each appeal as part of the greater concept of "wedding" is given, both from the editorial content of the magazines, and from statements made by FWP's in interviews (Currie 1993) and on internet discussion groups .

Both PROTOTYPE and ESSENTIAL are "meta-concepts" in that they inform upon many of the other belief systems below. For example, it is assumed that the FWP will want her wedding to be "perfect," "personal," "traditional," etc. because those are part of her (assumed) ideal prototype.

The "prototype" wedding. Ads showing the "prototype" appeal made some reference to the BRIDE's idea of an ideal or prototypical wedding. There may be direct appeals to one's childhood images of the wedding, or references to royalty, especially the "fairy-princess" (a childhood icon of femininity), as in the following captions from an advertising spread: "an ivy-league enchantress," "a true princess bride," "the picture of courtly love." Advertisers, then, by reinforcing or even retroactively creating a childhood prototype of marriage, help to emphasize the abstract and de-emphasize the concrete. By focusing on romance, beauty, magic, fantasy, and most of all, BRIDE, advertisers may temporarily distract the consumers from the concrete realities of marriage, including that least romantic of all terms, which I discovered not even once in my readings of over 1500 pages of bridal magazines, WIFE. In addition, this model of the wedding is so strongly ingrained that we are supposed to have held this prototype since the moment we became sentient members of the culture.

As the ads and editorial content of the magazines make assumptions about women's "fantasy" weddings, they imply that it is normal and natural for women to have had childhood fantasies about the actual wedding day, or to have been planning for a wedding long before actually thinking about marriage. However, the ads indexed as "prototype" are only those which make this assumption explicit. In many other ads, and elsewhere in the discourse of weddings, the existence of a prototype is simply presupposed.

These presuppositions are so strong, both in the media and in the culture in general, that some women may actually feel as though something is wrong with them if they do NOT have strong feeling about the wedding event itself. Beginning a thread entitled "reluctant brides" (many of the responses to which were of a "me too" nature), a participant on alt.wedding wrote the following:

The author is grappling with issues directly related to her feminine identity. She immediately points out that she thinks her feelings are more typical of men than of women, and she notes that "everybody" considers an interest in the wedding event to be in the nature of women. It is clear that the prototype appeal is specifically directed at women; while men may also want their weddings to be perfect (as the fiance above), or have an idea that certain parts of the ritual are essential for a "real" wedding, the prototype appeal is not even marginally symmetric; it is hard to imagine any advertiser planning a campaign around the assumption that the wedding is, for a man, "the day he has always dreamed of."

In addition, as the author above points out when she refers to making herself "look the best...ever," the beauty of the BRIDE herself and her role as center of attention and object of gaze, are a crucial part of the prototype of the wedding. While effort is spent on the entire event, the focus in the magazines is on the dress and other accoutrements which transform FWP into BRIDE. The FWP must participate in her own objectification, focusing most of all on those articles of dress which strip her of individuality and cast her in the role of the BRIDE. Ironically, since the folk wisdom is that "all brides are beautiful," the beauty which she has tried to hard to attain comes not from within but from her symbolic value. Even so, the tone of the ads and editorial content strikes one as unabashedly narcissistic:

This narcissism is noted on the discussion groups both in positive and negative ways. One participant on soc.couple.weddings encourages it, in a posting entitled "How to enjoy your wedding day." She writes, "... Most of all, remember that this is YOUR day. Let yourself be pampered." This is, however, an area in which FWP's are subject to criticism; those who take things too far are in danger of being labeled "Bride-zillas." This term (used freely in internet discussion groups) is one aspect of BRIDE: she may be so invested in making her wedding fit her prototype that she loses perspective and perhaps rationality. This is suggested by the newsgroup participant who writes (after advising another FWP to take back some shoes that she was dissatisfied with), "I'm not being a 'my-wedding-day-must-be-perfect' Bride-zilla here, but..." Thus, while the media makes the implicit assumption that the prototype should take precedence over all other considerations, in reality, FWP's may reject this assumption in favor of a more balanced approach.

Essential Elements. This appeal was indexed for ads containing words like "essential," "need(s)," or "be sure to (do X)." At first, it seems surprising that this appeal is not found particularly often in the lexical choices of advertisements themselves. However, like with "prototype" above, that the product is essential is so strongly presupposed that it need not be declared (e.g., "Find everything you need in one big catalog"; "Crane offers a full complement of wedding essential s"). The presupposition may be even more subtle; for example, an ad which says, "Why send an ordinary wedding invitation?" begs the question of why one should send a paper invitation at all (as opposed to say, choosing the easier and less expensive option s of issuing invitations by fax, email, telephone, or word-of-mouth).

The editorial content of the magazines is much less subtle, using imperative forms and declaring, rather than presupposing, that the products are essential. For example, checklist articles are a staple of bridal magazines. An article entitled "I do's and don'ts: 25 rules every bride should know... a must-have guide to avoiding the most common faux pas" included such rules as "Do have a receiving line. Even if your ceremony and reception are just 60 minutes apart ... you must have a receiving line" and "Don't wear everyday leather pumps. They're far too casual with a formal wedding gown."

There is a belief that the advertising and magazines creates this concept. For example, one participant on www.ibride.com, in discussing why she had stopped reading bridal magazines, said that they upset her, because "they kept saying, you must do this and you must do that." However, while advertisers have an interest in reinforcing this belief, they do not create it from nowhere; again, we must only look at our own prototypes to see that there are elements of the wedding which are "essential" to us. In this way "essential element" is also a "meta-concept"; like "prototype," it is evaluative, giving us a yardstick of ideals against which we can measure our own realities. (Eve Sweetser, p.c.)

Traditional advertising analysis discusses the use of "voices of authority" in advertising -- we are told what to do or think, as if by someone in control or authority. Roland Barthes speaks of this as the "passive imperative" voice (cited in Barthel 1988). Barthel (1988:163) extends this, when marriage is involved, by invoking the anthropological concept of "adepts" -- older people, familiar with a certain ceremony or ritual, who pass on to the younger generation the knowledge of how the ceremony should be performed. Here, it seems, the bridal magazines take on the role of the "adepts," as they are sought out by the FWP's to dispense wisdom.

What is essential is, of course, relative. Any one decision about the nature of the wedding - the style of dress, time of day, locale, number of bridesmaids etc. informs upon the others by forcing the wedding into a category of "formality." The magazines make much of the integration of the elements of the wedding into a gestalt concept, which then must be filled out with all of the other elements. One FWP on alt.weddings, in a thread entitled "Snowball effect with costs," notes this, saying:

Another discussion group participant (on soc.couples.wedding) comments: "When I first made up my budget I thought it had EVERYTHING on it but every time I open up Excel to enter a deposit or something I notice[d] that I forgot yet another item...this morning it was a guestbook and pen." She goes on to note that her budget has doubled since she began the planning process. In deciding to have certain elements of a traditional wedding which are important to them, FWP's feel compelled to include the others which are not, since the lack of those marginal items makes the whole event feel less "wedding-y," and the major symbols (dress, cake, or whatever) lose some of their gleam when not presented in the context of the entire wedding concept, including minor symbols (guestbook and pen), which then themselves take on a mystical significance as part of the ritual as a whole.

Perfect. By far the most common appeal, its essence is that the wedding day must be perfect. In some ways, it resembles the "snob appeal" found in other kinds of advertising, in which the luxury, expense, or class-affiliation of a product are emphasized. However, I focused only on those ads which stated that the product was perfect or used other superlative forms in referring to the quality of the product. Certain lexical items recurred frequently, including: perfect, second to none, best, purest, finest, number one, etc.

While this appeal is found in other domains, it takes on special significance within the domain of marriage. Several reasons for its prevalence present themselves. The most obvious is that, since the wedding (event) is metaphorically associated with the marriage (state), it seems to follow that a perfect wedding is the symbolic equivalent of a perfect marriage. Even without a direct metaphorical association between the wedding and the marriage, the metaphorical structure of marriage itself may provide some answers. Quinn (1987) notes that "a marriage is a journey" is a common metaphor underlying statements made about marriage by couples whom she interviewed. Following from this comes the metaphor that "a wedding is the beginning of a journey." Because of this metaphor, FWP's have a desire to "begin it right" - in effect, setting the standard for the marriage through the wedding.

Perhaps another reason is, ironically, the fact that most FWP's are working within a limited budget. The desire to "splurge" on luxury, on this day of days, is encouraged; spending more money, or buying something more extravagant, is seen as a way to make the event more "special" and memorable. Anthropologist Georges Battaile (cited in Barthel 1988:34) notes the tension between "saving," which he defines as "rational action plotted by a rational person in pursuit of self-interest," and "expenditure," which "implies a letting loose, a spending of excess resources and energies in symbolic gestures." The effect, then, of spending rather than saving on the wedding day may be to deny the "rational" in what is ultimately an event based on one's emotional, rather than rational, needs.

The "perfect" appeal is also used in many advertisements for household products. In many of these cases, the household products are connected back to the wedding itself (e.g. "You don't need champagne to make the perfect toast. All you need is Sunbeam's Toast Logic toaster"). Again, the metaphorical connection is clear: perfect items in the home, acquired as gifts at a prototypical wedding, will create perfect domestic harmony in a prototypical marriage

Timeless. Ads with the "timeless" appeal referred to the permanence of the products, or the permanence of the associated memories. Common lexical items included: timeless, eternal, forever, lasting.

This appeal again speaks directly to the metaphorical connection between weddings and marriage. One desired result of marriage is that the relationship be permanent. Currie (1993:406) notes that "commitment " was the "most common theme concerning the meaning of marriage" in her interviews with wedding participants; similarly, Quinn (1985) cites "commitment" as the cornerstone of the cultural concept of marriage. This desire for the marriage to be permanent is transformed into a desire for the wedding to be "timeless" in some way. Although the state of BRIDEhood is a momentary event, it metaphorically becomes permanent through permanent symbols, especially the wedding rings, but also including photographs, knick-knacks and even the dress, which must be stored and preserved forever (Robin Lakoff, p.c.)

In a thread on alt.weddings entitled "My fiance's ring," one FWP asked for advice, saying that her fiance had chosen a ring for himself which she found to be unattractive; her concern was that she would "look at it on his hand for however many years and the only thing I'll be able to think is how much I hate it." One response included the statement, "The ring isn't important, it's what it symbolizes - your love and commitment." This response shows the explicit symbolic connection of the ring and the concept of "commitment," which most likely predates, but has been strongly reinforced by, the well-known De Beers "A diamond is forever" campaign. While the wedding jewelry is explicitly symbolic of commitment and permanence, this appeal is also used for items which are NOT explicitly symbolic, such as invitations and other peripherals. This attempt on the part of the advertisers to invest non-symbolic items with explicit symbolic content may actually reach a point of ludicrousness, as in this caption: "Romance ... in the way you look at each other, the promises you'll make, the invitations you'll send."

Personal. These ads suggest that the use of the associated product will make the wedding day more personal. Lexical items such as "personal," "personalized, " and "unique" were common, as were semantically equivalent phrases, such as "Choose the diamond ... in the design you really want."

Currie (1993) points out the irony of the commodification of the wedding ritual, given that many FWP's express a desire to make their wedding "their day." She writes, "it is a contradictory process in that it must appeal to what consumers have in common, while addressing their search for individuality" (418). As she notes, much of the "personalization" must be done outside of the realm of products, by the careful attention to the "little details." In addition, personalization can come from novel arrangement of the elements. With this in mind, the source of the anxiety expressed in the following newsgroup posting (cross-posted to soc.couples.wedding and alt.wedding) becomes clear:

Of the symbolic appeals, "personal" seems to be the one which most comes into conflict with the symbolic parts of WEDDING. It is inherently incompatible with the public nature of the ritual itself, with the temporary abandonment of her own identity necessary for the FWP to step into the role of BRIDE, and with the need for the wedding to contain those essential elements and conform to tradition. The conflicts may be on the emotional level, but they may also be pragmatic, as when FWP's try to fit their often non-prototypical family structures into the proscribed roles. I include it here as part of WEDDING, but it may in fact be part of a larger model about relationships and identity.

Traditional. Ads which appeal to "tradition" use words like "traditional" or "for X years." To participate in a wedding, is, after all, to participate in a cultural tradition, both in the ritual itself and also in the act of "getting married." In this sense, participation in a wedding is essentially a conservative act; it carries with it an acceptance of traditional cultural values about relationships, including the valuing of monogamous, permanent, heterosexual, two-participant relationships above other kinds of relationships.

Currie (1993) notes that many wedding participants mentioned the importance of "tradition" in their weddings. However, she does not differentiate between those statements which do and do not explicitly suggest the metaphorical connection between "traditional wedding" and "traditional marriage." For example, one FWP states, "For some reason, I didn't think it would a proper wedding if I didn't have the traditional [sic]." This suggests that, for this participant, the ritual itself must be traditional, presumably, in order to be invested with meaning. However, another wedding participant states, "Something's traditional ... because it has stood the test of time, and that's the whole idea about marriage." Here, the metaphor "wedding (event) = marriage (state)" is made explicit.

Two other appeals - Easy and Budget - were also indexed. These two appeals, which, respectively, are "Don't expend too much effort" and "Don't spend too much money" are present in the advertising, but are essentially non-symbolic and are not part of WEDDING. That is, it is coherent with our model of the prototypical wedding to say "Your wedding should be perfect," but not "Your wedding should be cheap." It may be worth noting in a relatively subjective way that "budget" ads are often non-symbolic in other ways; they may be published near the backs of magazines, and contain low-quality or no visual images. Even though these two appeals do not represent part of a greater wedding concept, they address two of the concerns which appear again and again in statements made by FWP's about sources of stress. It should also be noted that, while I call them "real-world" appeals, both "easy" and "budget" derive from models - which themselves are cognitively and culturally constructed - about valuable resources and the conservation thereof.

Product as Spouse. This appeal was almost without exception limited to ads for household products and furnishings. It suggests that the marriage will actually be between the woman and the product. For example, an ad for vacuum cleaners shows a woman in a wedding dress holding the (decidedly phallic) handle of an upright vacuum, with the caption "Extremely low divorce rate." Another ad (for various kitchen small appliances, several of which are depicted in a group) has the following copy: "Marrying into the right family definitely has its advantages. The number one name in non-stick is now the number one name to ask for in small appliances, too...Welcome to the family." This ad is particularly interesting in that it is based in assumptions about social class; we understand the ad because we understand the concept of "marrying up."

The advertising of household goods in these magazines seems somewhat anomalous. After all, most of the advertising de-emphasizes any concrete realities pertaining to the state of marriage. However, advertising for household products is made less mundane in several ways. First, of course, the "spouse" appeal suggests that the FWP is marrying the products; at a time when she is focused on permanence, connection, and commitment, the household, which she is primarily responsible for equipping, becomes the stage on which that commitment is solidified. In addition, it suggests, along with the prototype of the wedding (event), a prototype of a marriage (state), in which the FWP, by marrying, gains entrée into a world of perfect domesticity, including dinner parties for twelve (at which she serves on her Noritake china).

When seen in this way, the future domestic role of the wife is entirely compatible with her role as "hostess" of the wedding. The focus is on products for the serving of food (tableware, china), the production of food (small appliances), and items for the home (towels, linens) which, while they may be functional, are advertised based on their decorative value, as in the ad for towels which declares them to be "A perfect shade, no matter what your walls are presently wearing." So, the items which she is to be concerned with in the home are similar to those that she is to be concerned with at the wedding: those which display her taste in decoration and her skill as a hostess. The wedding is the FWP's debutante party as a hostess, after which she may settle down to her life as the head of a consumer household.

In addition, some parts of the belief system which are clearly part of WEDDING are not used as advertising appeals. One example of this is "effortful." Quinn (1987) notes a metaphor that "marriage is effortful," which is causally connected to "that which is effortful is enduring"; e.g., one of her interviewees described "what you actually need to learn and work through to make the marriage stick." She also notes the metaphor that "Marriage is an investment" i.e. something must be put into it in order to get a return; in the case of the wedding, that "something" is hard work. That the wedding itself is effortful is presupposed in bridal magazines; for example, an article in Modern Bride is entitled "100 tips to keep you from going crazy," and checklists of things to do (complete with year-long schedules) are requisite fare in the magazines. The newsgroups are filled with stories of FWP's engaged in what may be a several-year-long process of preparation; one woman reports that she quit both her job and graduate school in order to plan her wedding. However, this part of WEDDING is so incompatible with "real-world" concerns that it is not a possible source for an advertising appeal.

CONFLICT

Some of the appeals above, parts thereof, and other parts of WEDDING which are not necessarily commodifiable into advertising appeals, are not in accord with one another, or with other real-world concerns. Some examples are:

• Personal vs. Traditional
• Personal vs. Essential
• Personal (identity) vs. BRIDE (cultural icon)
• Personal (through "details") vs. Easy
• Timeless ("permanent") vs. Prototype ("special day")
• Perfect vs. Budget
• Easy vs. Effortful

The conflicting nature of these appeals does not necessarily cause dissonance; we can integrate both models into the gestalt of WEDDING. However, dissonance can arise, as noted in other anthropological contexts by Shore (1996) when a cultural model clashes with a "personal model." In this situation, Shore notes, extreme anxiety may be felt. Since the individual's personal beliefs are at odds with society, there may not even be a way to express source of the conflict . This conflict between different elements within the wedding model, or between elements of the model and parts of other cultural or personal models may be the source of a huge amount of "wedding stress" reported by FWP's on internet discussion groups.

It seems that the "personal" appeal attempts to suggest to FWP's a way to integrate these "personal" models into the entire wedding concept. By making "your wedding should be personal" a part of the wedding gestalt, advertisers attempt to overcome the dissonance created by the commodification of the wedding ritual as a whole. However, the solutions suggested by the advertising - to make the wedding personal by buying certain products - are inherently incoherent. The solutions suggested by the editorial content of the magazines and newsgroup participants - to make the wedding more personal by attending to hundreds of "details" oneself-may, ironically, lead to even greater conflict. The FWP's may find themselves becoming "Martha Stewart-ized," which may clash with both real-world concerns (e.g. in the case of the person who quit graduate school in order to plan her wedding) or one's belief system (as in (1) above).

Another conflict, between an essentially symbolic part of WEDDING (perfect) and an essentially non-symbolic real-world concern (budget) is partially caused by two possible interpretations of one metaphorical schema for the wedding. Quinn (1987) notes that "marriage is an journey" is a common metaphor underlying statements made about marriage by couples whom she interviewed. Following from this comes the metaphor that "a wedding is the beginning of a journey." This metaphor is coherent with two different kinds of behavior. One approach is to "begin it right" by having the "perfect" wedding - in effect, setting the standard for the marriage through the wedding. This is certainly the approach presupposed by the advertisers.

However, another approach is to "begin it right" financially; in other words, metaphorical schemas aside, FWP's are concerned about beginning their married life in debt from the wedding costs. The bridal magazines are also aware of, and nod in the direction of, this concern. The cover of one magazine promises a story about cost-cutting, with a teaser entitled "Paying for your wedding: Real couples share money-saving tips" (i.e. promising to follow the second behavioral pattern suggested by the metaphor). However, the article inside the magazine is actually entitled "How we saved $12,000 for our wedding in 6 months." The article notes that the couple in question had "no savings and a sizable credit card debt." The happy resolution of the article is the wedding, a "$5,000 Club Med Tahiti honeymoon," and eradication of the credit card debt, but, presumably, still no savings.

CONCLUSION

It is clear that the cultural model for weddings is immensely complex, subsuming at once our ideas about relationships, femininity, culture, and even domesticity. This model is prevalent in the culture, and is furthered by the needs of the advertisers and the companies which they represent. Even more so, the magazines themselves have an investment in the continuation of the belief in the whole concept. Each company typically has an interest in only one kind of product: dresses, invitations, etc. The magazines themselves, though, must sell the entire package, lest they lose their customer base. Once the FWP decides that she does not really need engraved invitations, the path down the slippery slope has begun, and she may decide that she also does not need monogrammed towels, table service for 12, or even a white sequined ballgown. Because the magazines are engaged in the "hard-sell," the FWP's may ascribe their feelings of dissonance to the wedding magazines themselves, as in the post (on soc.couples.wedding) from the FWP who described being "reduced to tears" after reading a wedding magazine on the night she became engaged, or the post from the FWP on alt.weddings entitled "Does anybody else out there detest Bride's Magazine?" The reality is that the magazines reflect the (often unspoken) models from the culture, but they do not create them.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

REFERENCES

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APPENDIX 1: ADVERTISING DATA

I analyzed all ads over one-quarter-page in size found in three popular wedding magazines in the same month. An ad which appeared multiple times was counted only once. In addition, I counted only those ads which contained linguistic information other than a brand name and/or contact information, as opposed to those which were purely visual. The ads can loosely be defined as falling into four categories: 1) ads related to the wedding and reception itself (133 ads); 2) ads related to household products and furnishings (75 ads); 3) ads related to the honeymoon (56 ads); and 4) ads not related to weddings at all (8 ads). In a very few cases, it was difficult to determine which category a given ad should fall into; for example, ads for wedding registry services might have been placed in either the "wedding" or "household" category, and ads for over-the-counter yeast infection medication might have been placed in either the "honeymoon" or "other" categories. The numbers refer to the number of ads linguistically representing that concept; some ads contained multiple appeals indexed, and some (45 ads) contain none.

In this paper, the discussion is limited to those 208 ads which contain linguistic information, and which were either for wedding items or household items.

TABLE 1. Number of advertising appeals found, by category