The Sanctity of Holy Matrimony - and Porn for the Whole Family

Will wedding nonsense ever cease? As if it's not silly enough that the average wedding costs $40,000, or that you can order/certify any old officiant online, or that most brides spend more than a year of their lives planning for a 4-hour event that often has little more communal significance than the number of gifts a couple receives.....

We now learn that even with all the necessary acoutrements of a $50K+ Martha Stewart wedding you haven't FULLY captured the perfect day unless your photographer gets a shot or two of the bride in her skivvies. That's right, according to the Wall Street Journal today, Brides Gone Wild: A booming nuptials business is catering to brides who want to document what they looked like getting dressed for the altar. Jon Weinbach on sultry wedding photos -- and the mother-in-law's reaction.

According to the article, "The multibillion-dollar wedding industry is offering a revealing new twist on the old bridal portrait. Catering to older and more independent brides -- and reflecting popular culture's turn toward the risqué and voyeuristic -- more photographers are setting up in dressing rooms to immortalize unguarded, preceremony moments. Wedding albums and public photographer Web sites alike are filling up with a different view of the bride -- daddy's little girl cavorting in lingerie, adjusting a bra or hiking her gown for a bathroom break."

Forbid the thought that a bride might not fully recollect what panties (or thigh-highs or boy pants or bustier) she was wearing on her wedding day when she flips through that album 25 years from now! Much better that her children and parents and in-laws should think her a total whore than risk the loss of that precious (and explicit) memory....

Or this, many independent-minded brides are poking fun at so many white bouquets and demure poses. "Being like a virgin is very different than being a virgin," says Julie Albright, a marriage therapist and sociology professor at the University of Southern California. For the many brides who have been living with their fiancés for years before taking the leap, mugging for risqué shots can be a way of playing up the irony of donning a traditional dress. "The white gown and veil is a kind of performance or drag -- like Madonna in her video for 'Like a Virgin.

I have to wonder if voyeurism and dressing in "drag" is REALLY part of the fairytale little girls dream about when they think of their wedding day. Seems unlikely. Most women I know, at least, strongly prefer that their fiancee's marry them for, oh, say, their mind or character and NOT primarily for their body, which will inevitably change as time and the womb and gravity all conspire against it. But maybe that's just my un-independent mind talking.

If only I had rememberd to get that bathroom break shot as part of my own album.... Darn.