Commodification, Consumption, and Identity in the Wedding Industry

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2020-08-21 The Ideologies of ‘I Do’: Commodification, Consumption, and Identity in the Wedding Industry

Hanslip, Lisa Marie

Hanslip, L. M. (2020). The Ideologies of ‘I Do’: Commodification, Consumption, and Identity in the Wedding Industry (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/112424 doctoral thesis

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The Ideologies of ‘I Do’: Commodification, Consumption, and Identity in the Wedding Industry

Lisa M. Hanslip

A THESIS

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE

CALGARY, ALBERTA

AUGUST, 2020

This dissertation investigated the relationship between identity, commodification, and conspicuous consumption in the wedding industry; as well as how these ideologies are promulgated through the media. The broad aim was to contribute to the analysis of the wedding industry within the larger context of how bridal media both informs and reflects its cultural context. Weddingbells was used as a proxy for the wedding industry in Canada; to examine how it engaged cultural ideologies as it advised, and how it exemplified a commodified amalgamation of performance and identity. Wedding magazines function as curators of wedding trends and therefore serve as an example of the voice of the wedding industry. At its core, this project is a historical look at how magazines portrayed the performance and communication elements of a wedding and how that was indicative of a broader societal context, as well as the sheer tenacity of the commodified white wedding. It also offers a historical background of the modern conception of the wedding and outlines the establishment of the wedding industrial complex to allow a good understanding of the power encompassed by the wedding industry in manufacturing, retail, and publishing to better understand the analysis. The development of the editorial curation over a 10-year period (2003-2012) in Weddingbells was analyzed using a critical textual analysis — primarily a content analysis with a look at the rhetorical appeals presented in some of the data — industry-centric rather than the psychology of the reader. The theoretical framework used the theory of conspicuous consumption, spectacle, and theory of identity. The findings offer a unique perspective from a researcher that spent more than a decade in the industry, as well as a theoretical construct in the elevation of the term “white wedding” to encapsulate many of the most important concepts in this dissertation. This research offers valuable insight into the wedding industry at large, as well as indicators of its impact on

ii Canadian culture. As a result, this study generates a new perspective on weddings as communication, what it means to commodify our identity, and weddings as an enactment of identity.

iii Acknowledgements

First, I would like to give my heartfelt thanks to my supervisor, Dr. Tania Smith. I so enjoyed working with you. Your guidance, encouragement, wisdom, and feedback were invaluable.

I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Scott Radford, Dr. Lisa Stowe,

Dr. Ronald Glasberg, and Dr. Erika Engstrom. Thank you so much for serving on my examination committee.

Thank you to my brother, Dr. Michael Hanslip, for giving me a supportive push when I needed it and for all the helpful insights.

Thank you to my father, Dr. Arthur Hanslip, for not letting me give up on my dream, and for being oh-so-excited about having three “Dr. Hanslips” in the family.

Many thanks to Lulu and Pebbles for keeping me company during all those many hundreds of hours of research and writing, and for the daily reminder of the importance of a nice long walk and a good afternoon nap.

Finally, thank you to my most wonderful husband, Andy Jakab. Your support was unwavering from the day I first suggested applying to the PhD program, until the day I submitted my final draft. This journey would not have been possible without you cheering me on.

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii Acknowledgements ...... iv Table of Contents ...... v List of Tables ...... vii List of Figures ...... viii

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ...... 1 My professional background as lens ...... 5 Weddingbells Magazine ...... 7 Justification ...... 9 Research Questions ...... 9 Overview of Thesis Chapters ...... 10

CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 12

CHAPTER THREE: THEORY ...... 44

CHAPTER FOUR: METHODOLOGY ...... 69 Methodological context ...... 70 Content analysis ...... 72 Rhetorical analysis ...... 72 Data selection ...... 73 Tips ...... 75 Letters ...... 76 Real weddings ...... 76 General overall impressions ...... 77 Chronological analysis ...... 79 Topical analysis ...... 81 Historical background analysis ...... 83

CHAPTER FIVE: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND ...... 84

CHAPTER SIX: ANALYSIS ...... 96 Quantitative results ...... 102 Qualitative results ...... 111 Chronological analysis ...... 112 S/S 2003 ...... 112 F/W 2003 ...... 115 S/S 2004 ...... 117 F/W 2004 ...... 121 S/S 2005 ...... 123 F/W 2005 ...... 125 S/S 2006 ...... 128

v F/W 2006 ...... 131 S/S 2007 ...... 135 F/W 2007 ...... 139 S/S 2008 ...... 141 F/W 2008 ...... 144 S/S 2009 ...... 146 F/W 2009 ...... 149 S/S 2010 ...... 152 F/W 2010 ...... 154 S/S 2011 ...... 158 F/W 2011 ...... 160 S/S 2012 ...... 162 F/W 2012 ...... 166 Topical analysis 1: According to Alison ...... 169 Topical analysis 2: Your Day, Your Way ...... 175 Topical analysis 3: Canadian-ness ...... 183

CHAPTER SEVEN: CONCLUSIONS ...... 186 Contributions ...... 193 Limitations and future directions ...... 193

REFERENCES ...... 196

vi List of Tables

Table 1 – Selection of categories from initial data analysis ...... 74

Table 2 – Canadian circulation figures ...... 98

Table 3 – Editorial content ...... 104

Table 4 – Wedding dress content ...... 107

vii List of Figures

Figure 1 – Relationship of theories used as framework ...... 45

Figure 2 – Snapshot of first whiteboard orientation/layout ...... 78

Figure 3 – Snapshot of second whiteboard orientation/layout ...... 80

Figure 4 – Cinderella still image ...... 91

Figure 5 – Average number of pages for each coding category ...... 103

Figure 6 – Trend of page count seasonally and over time ...... 106

Figure 7 – Trend of wedding dress content and editorial content ...... 108

Figure 8 – Trend of “real wedding” content and planning tip content ...... 110

Figure 9 – Cover detail ...... 113

Figure 10 – Hip list ...... 118

Figure 11 – Real wedding details...... 119

Figure 12 – Vivid bouquet detail ...... 121

Figure 13 – Cake detail ...... 122

Figure 14 – Four brides cover ...... 126

Figure 15 – The "un-Gatsby" details ...... 128

Figure 16 – Two brides and a dog cover ...... 129

Figure 17 – Real wedding details - crop ...... 130

Figure 18 – Cover ...... 132

Figure 19 – All white table linens ...... 134

Figure 20 – Bridal party dressed in white ...... 135

Figure 21 – Cover text with dimensions ...... 136

Figure 22 – Vintage-inspired wedding ...... 138

Figure 23 – Bridal attire detail ...... 139

Figure 24 – Toronto garden wedding ...... 142

viii Figure 25 – Chandelier and orchestra ...... 143

Figure 26 – Get the look...... 145

Figure 27 – Green details ...... 149

Figure 28 – Editor's wedding ...... 150

Figure 29 – Detail shots ...... 155

Figure 30 – Teal blue wedding dress ...... 156

Figure 31 – Vendor recommendations ...... 157

Figure 32 – Real wedding details...... 159

Figure 33 – Real wedding details...... 161

Figure 34 – Generic cover ...... 162

Figure 35 – DIY real wedding details ...... 165

Figure 36 – Focus on real wedding details ...... 168

Figure 37 – Wedding planner article next to wedding planner advertisement ...... 178

Figure 38 –“Your day, your way” variation ...... 179

Figure 39 – Appearances of the theme “your day, your way” ...... 181

Chapter One: Introduction

The wedding is a not only a key cultural ritual in our society, but also part of our cultural habitus. The magnitude of tradition and power of the ideology involved in this rite of passage is largely unexamined. To examine both the commodification of ritual and commodification of identity that pervade the modern wedding, one must also look to the silent persuasion of tradition that is endemic to, and maintained by, the wedding industry.

The wedding is a site of culturally sanctioned conspicuous consumption — which is most readily defined as the display of monetary expenditure on luxury items for the purpose of establishing or increasing one’s social prestige. The use of the wedding — whether conscious or unconscious — to establish or elevate social standing is ubiquitous, as is the depiction of weddings in popular culture. For most brides the notion of purchasing the most expensive garment in their lifetime to be worn on a single occasion is so firmly established in our society that it typically goes without debate. Spending 12 to 18 months planning the wedding day is the socially accepted norm, with the goal often being to announce to the world what defines the bride and groom as a couple, or at least to project what they aspire to be as a couple. The white wedding trope is so firmly entrenched in our socio-cultural lexicon that its ubiquity continues, largely unexamined. So, while today’s modern bride and groom might vehemently assert their desire for uniqueness in their wedding, it is, in the end, just a variation on a theme.

The primary focus for this project is to examine what scholars now refer to as the wedding industrial complex (WIC) — a term first coined by Chrys Ingraham (2008) — and specifically how the wedding media influence the wedding ritual as an enactment of identity, how wedding magazines construct the wedding ritual, and how these communications elicit a kind of performance of identity from its participants — particularly as they establish the bridal

identity as a type of brand: exemplifying a commodified amalgamation of performance and identity. As Cynthia Amnéus (2010) noted, the wedding ritual “has become for all women, not just the affluent, a moment of presentation and display — a theatrical performance preceded by a rehearsal” (p. 48). This project provides an indirect look at this wedding identity by examining how texts simultaneously construct and reflect the wedding branding through the presumptions and assumptions about the desires of the couple, which are presented in the editorial content. As

Erika Engstrom (2012) pointed out, bridal magazines serve “as guidebooks for the female Holy

Grail — the meticulously planned big, white wedding” (p. 1), as well as providing the “epitomic example of women’s culture” (p. 21). At its core this project is a look at how magazines portray the communication elements of a wedding and how that is culturally indicative when viewed in a broader societal context.

I chose to look only at the editorial content of these wedding magazines; the magazines taken as a representation of the larger wedding industrial complex. For the purposes of this project I am using editorial content to mean any of the content put forth by the magazine — both text and visuals — because the majority of bridal magazines are wedding dress advertisements

(and similar) which would require looking at the semiotics of clothing and other theoretical considerations which fall outside the scope of my research. However, that being said, the analysis chapter will touch on the quantity of wedding dress images (including advertisements) as the wedding dress serves as both an integral culturally laden material object, as well as the most readily apparent example of the power wielded by the wedding industrial complex. As

Amnéus (2010) noted: “The embodiment of cultural values is nowhere more evident in dress than in the marriage rite” (p. 17). The magazines see themselves as curators of wedding trends and therefore serve as an example of the voice of the wedding industrial complex. As I am

looking at the development of this editorial curation over a 10-year period, it is not about the psychology of the reader, but rather about the interpretive lens provided by said editorial.

When looking at the nature of the arguments being made, and how they engage with the ideologies of the wedding industrial complex as a whole, this project also touches upon the concept of the bridal identity. This term will be used to encapsulate the branding of the bride that occurs throughout the planning process — through the activities, events, and rituals traditionally associated with the engagement and the wedding; as well as the creation of items typically associated with actual branding such as logos, monograms, and themes which are disseminated through print materials, social media, and décor. This wedding identity, whether subtle or overt, is at the core of Weddingbells’ communication; by examining the shifts over the time span of my data set, the core ideologies of the wedding industrial complex in Canada were illustrated. It was interesting to ascertain the change over time in how Weddingbells presented the commodification of the wedding identity culminating in the veritable branding of the bride. Much as Sarah

Banet-Weiser (2012) presented the term “brand,” I will use this term to refer to the relationship between communication, a product, and consumers — which, in the context of a wedding presents the couple as the product, and friends and family as the consumers.

As Lionel Wee and Ann Brooks (2010) elucidated:

Because traditional sources of identity no longer ‘define our life experiences’, the

resulting vacuum creates not just the need for actors to become reflexively aware, it also

leaves open a host of possibilities and opportunities for actors to take control of the kinds

of identity work they wish to engage in. (p. 48)

Therefore, as reflexivity and personal branding become ever-more pervasive, their ubiquity achieves a zenith in the wedding ritual. As Alison Winch and Anna Webster (2012) outlined in

their article “Here Comes the Brand: Wedding Media and the Management of Transformation,” by drawing on branding discourse, the wedding media are able to convince brides that the correct choice from myriad brands will result in a wedding that is “unique, distinctive and perfect”

(p. 51). So, with this vantage point, branding also provides a link between consumption and performance, where the magazine, as proxy for the wedding industrial complex, negotiates their cultural role as both curator and advisor of how wedding activities and the wedding ritual itself should be performed.

Considering the ubiquity of the wedding in all genres of popular culture, and the enormity of the wedding industrial complex, the dearth of academic study on the subject is definitely noteworthy, a sentiment also expressed in some of the current literature on weddings (Boden,

2003; Dunak, 2013; Engstrom, 2012). While there is a corpus of anthropological and sociological research on weddings, particularly focused on specific ethnicities and on the gender dynamic, I found it very interesting that after much careful investigation I was able to find very little prior scholarship which views weddings solely through a communications lens. This is particularly the case with literature that looks at how the wedding industry relates to the issues of identity, consumption, and commodification in the wedding planning process, and virtually none utilizing a rhetorical analysis of wedding media. As Engstrom (2012) deftly noted, “unlike the nature and history of marriage, only recently have scholars seriously examined the wedding as an important cultural artifact and practice” (p. 5). One of the goals of this project, therefore, is to examine the wedding as both cultural artifact and practice. Ritchie et al. (2016), also pointed out the shocking lack of scholarship regarding women’s magazines and magazine professionals, despite “the thousands of magazines — past and present — available for us to study” (p. 2). And, as Engstrom (2012) pointed out, “as cultural products of symbolic meaning, bridal-themed media

offer a means by which we can discover the narrative of the modern woman within [North]

American society” (p. 4). Engstrom also identified wedding media as a locus to examine “how cultural production defines meanings and values” (p. 231). Thus, Weddingbells offered an opportune site to examine both the machinations of a women’s magazine, but also how it can serve as proxy for the wedding industry as a whole.

This research offers the opportunity for both the advancement of knowledge, as well as practical application. My research generates a new perspective on weddings as communication, what it means to commodify our identity, and weddings as an enactment of identity, facilitated by an examination of pertinent theory, methodology, and a review of literature focused on the wedding ritual. It offers valuable insight into the wedding industrial complex at large, in addition to indicators of its impact in the areas of identity and consumption.

By exploring wedding media’s role in the wedding planning process, my research offers a new perspective for future explorations of weddings as communication. As Russell Belk (2001) noted: “we use specialty magazines to inflame our consumer desires” (para. 1) asserting that we, as consumers, seek out this “consumption-focused editorial material” (para. 1) for the express purpose of fueling our desires. This study also offers a look at how wedding magazines reflect and inform both the creation and the communication of the bridal identity, and what that wedding identity reflects more broadly about contemporary popular culture.

My professional background as lens

Into this examination of the wedding industry in Canada I bring my professional experience. For more than a decade I ran an event planning company where I planned and produced over 100 weddings. These weddings had budgets that ranged from $5,000 to $500,000 and had anywhere

from two guests to 400 guests. I had weddings featured in bridal magazines, both within Canada, as well as internationally.

Part of the professional lens that was used in the analysis for this project stems from the fact that I really went out of my way to reinvent the “wedding” wheel. I frequently tried to get couples to eschew outdated wedding traditions (such as receiving lines, bouquet tosses, and garter throws). I would indoctrinate all of my brides as to why it is traditional to wear white and had a diatribe at the ready as to why she should not wear white. With very few exceptions I convinced my couples to not have the traditional head table with the entire bridal party seated on one side (no one enjoys having a room full of people watching them chew). I was constantly on a quest to source non-traditional material objects with which to create their décor. Dealing with this myriad of brides furthered my belief that Weddingbells is an important artifact that should be analyzed to understand how the wedding industry helps shape social practice, and to understand the rhetoric of the wedding industrial complex.

In addition to running my own business, during this timeframe I also had professional associations which further contributed to my knowledge of the wedding industry, and provided background of the inner workings of many different vendors, thus also informing my professional lens. I served on the board of the local chapter of the International Live Events

Association (ILEA)1 as president, and as a director of the ILEA Canada board. In 2010 I was one of the first event professionals in Canada to receive the Certified Special Events Professional

(CSEP) designation, and for many years following was a grader for other CSEP examinees, and

1 From its founding in 1987, this association was known as the International Special Events Society (ISES), but was rebranded as ILEA in 2016. 6

also a judge for several international event award competitions. All of these factors contribute to the professional lens through which the data was examined, offering the breadth of knowledge from my own professional practice, as well as the background information gleaned from guiding and critiquing others in the industry.

Weddingbells Magazine

During the decade of January 2003 to December 2012 Weddingbells was readily available across

Canada at major bookstores (such as Indigo, Chapters, Coles), grocery stores (such as Loblaw’s,

Safeway, Sobey’s), drug stores (such as Shopper’s Drug Mart, London Drugs, IDA), and various wedding industry vendors (such as bridal salons, photographers, wedding planners). After printing, the magazines were shipped in cartons (of 12 issues) to the regional publishing staff for distribution to local advertisers — who were given somewhere between two and 24 copies, depending on their advertising buy size — as well as directly to retail outlets. While the typical

Canadian bride during this timeframe had a choice of several American bridal magazines to choose from, the only mainstream national Canadian bridal publication readily available was

Weddingbells. Some wedding vendors would pass their copies onto their clients — however, during my time in the industry, some fellow vendors told me that they did not want to promote their competitors and would keep a copy for their records and put the rest directly into recycling (!!).

With a large portion of Canada’s wedding vendors choosing to advertise within its pages, and an even larger portion choosing to peruse each issue, analysis of Weddingbells allowed the examination of industry as reader, as well as a participant in the wedding industrial complex. It is important in this process to examine readership through both the lens of bride, as well as the lens of industry. Weddingbells has a cultural role in the landscape of both the Canadian wedding

industry, as well as society at large — with its mandate to shape the wedding ritual as well as reflect the Canadian norms reflected in that wedding ritual. Weddingbells’ cultural role is also borne out by its circulation, which was 95,000 in 2010.

My perspective for this project was different than an audience-centric investigation would be, as I was looking at the industry itself through the lenses of conspicuous consumption, spectacle, communication, and identity. Using Weddingbells as proxy for the wedding industry in Canada I was able to analyze the areas where culture overlaps with industry, as well as where industry overlaps with individual values and identity. Using the historical period of 2003-2012, I analyzed Weddingbells as an artifact of the industry — making my focus in no way audience reception based. Examining a magazine as a material object allowed for cultural and economic perspectives on the wedding industry that would not be available from other sources.

While weddings are often not granted much gravitas as a site for academic study, they are vital in terms of both cultural identity and commerce. As Mead (2007) noted: “Weddings are often thought of as being only so much fluff and fun; but when looked at from the perspective of their larger cultural relevance they could hardly be more important, and more defining” (p. 7).

The wedding is a ubiquitous main-stay in popular culture; while the sheer magnitude spent on weddings speaks to the social significance we grant them: the US wedding industry generates somewhere between $80 and $125 billion annually (Dunak, 2013, p. 4; Ingraham, 2008, p. 41), with the average wedding budget for 2013 of just under $30,000 (Miles, 2014); or to look at it another way, while only 1% of the American population gets married each year, 14% of all sales are wedding-related (Leeds-Hurwitz, 2002, p. 9). It is also worth noting that in the US, the 2019 average spend on a wedding dress is $1,600 and the bridal market as a whole has risen to a $72

billion industry (Biron, 2019). For the sake of comparison: the cosmetics industry in the US had revenue of $49.2 billion in 2019 (Shahbandeh, 2019).

Justification

Weddingbells is uniquely suited for such an analysis for several reasons:

1. Weddingbells is a representative voice of the wedding industry in Canada

2. Weddingbells represents the messaging encountered by the vast majority of Canadian

brides

3. Weddingbells can be analyzed as both a material object and as a rhetorical site

4. Weddingbells reflects the popular culture context, allowing an examination of how that

context might inform and be reflected in both the ritual of the wedding itself, as well as in

the ensuing bridal identity the wedding planning process helps create.

Research Questions

For this project my primary research question was: What is the wedding industrial complex trying to accomplish through Weddingbells magazine? In other words, how does the wedding industry shape social practice?

To explore this issue, I investigated the following:

1. As culture and values shifted over time (2003-2012), how did Weddingbells played a

role in leading change?

a. How does the Western history of the wedding industrial complex (since the

19th century) speak to the power and permanence of the wedding ritual?

2. What does the content of Weddingbells reveal about the nature of the magazine’s

ideology and the nature of its major arguments?

a. How does Weddingbells engage cultural ideologies as it advises?

b. What is the nature of its ethos, particularly with regard to consumption,

identity, and branding?

Overview of Thesis Chapters

Chapter Two of this dissertation offers an overview of the literature I found most relevant to this project. In assessing the literature, I established several relevant categories to frame the pertinent literature pertaining to weddings. The literature review looks at literature analyzing weddings from a multitude of angles, literature discussing bridal media, as well literature analyzing magazines more generally which was helpful in providing framework for my analysis. It covers the topics of the wedding industry, wedding media, and magazine analysis.

Chapter Three presents an overview of the theoretical framework I used to frame my analysis. Even after much investigation I was unable to identify one single theory that seemed to be the right fit for this project, so I use several theories that offer a framework through which I could examine the data with a communications lens. I also offer my own theoretical construct with the term “white wedding” which encapsulates some of the most important concepts in this dissertation.

Chapter Four is the methodology chapter. It provides an overview of the concepts and scholars behind my chosen methods, as well as a step-by-step description of the analysis offered in chapters five and six.

Chapter Five provides a historical background of the modern conception of the wedding and outlines the establishment of the wedding industrial complex. It is important to have a good

understanding of the power encompassed by the WIC in manufacturing, retail, and publishing to better assess the analysis of Weddingbells which appears in Chapter Six.

Chapter Seven offers the conclusions I gleaned after completing the analysis of the data, as well as future implications and potential utility of the findings.

Chapter Two: Literature review

In assessing the literature, I established several relevant categories to frame the pertinent literature pertaining to weddings. The literature review looks at literature analyzing weddings from myriad angles, literature discussing bridal media, as well literature analyzing magazines more generally which was helpful in providing framework for my analysis. After extensive reading of academic literature on the topics of the wedding industry, wedding media, and magazine analysis I began writing my literature review. I completed the majority of this before beginning my analysis but continued reading until I had completed an exhaustive overview of all available literature pertinent to my impending analysis of Weddingbells.

On several occasions I conducted a multi-database global search of dissertations using the keyword wedding plus various combinations of other keywords such as rhetoric, communication, branding, consumption, identity, commodification, and came up with no relevant findings. I then completed a search for dissertations using the keywords rhetoric and magazines (together) and did not find anything that seemed remotely pertinent to my endeavors, so there is no coverage of other dissertations in this literature review.

The modern wedding ritual affords the opportunity to examine the concatenation of performance, identity, and consumption, and examining the wedding industrial complex affords the opportunity to see the cultural impact of said concatenation. A majority of the literature on weddings I looked at focused on the cultural and ritual aspects, often providing a historical account of the development of the wedding over time (Baxter & Braithwaite, 2002; Dunak,

2013; Leeds-Hurwitz, 2002); while others examined the facets of consumerism evident in the wedding ritual, and how we consume romance (Boden, 2003; Illouz, 1997; Purbrick, 2007;

Vannini, 2004). The general tone of much of the literature was critical of the modern wedding

ritual; however, a couple offered a more optimistic tenor (Dunak; Illouz). The literature with a historical or cultural perspective offered a foundation to work from, and the small amount of literature from a communicational approach is the corpus I intended to contribute to with this research. For example, communication scholars Leslie Baxter and Dawn Braithwaite (2002) examined marriage as cultural performance using social constructionism and ritual performance theory.

This project looks at the intersection of commodification, identity, and performance, which comes to the fore in the bridal identity. The role of bride is an identity taken up while planning the wedding, and as media scholar Erika Engstrom (2012) explained, the wedding serves as “one of the most revered front stage performances of a woman’s life” (p. 2), as well as a “performance of love and imbuement of romance” (p. 8). This bridal identity reveals both something unique about the performance surrounding the ritual, the effects of culturally sanctioned consumerism, as well as how the wedding identity is shaped during the planning process and if it is intentionally idealized, or perhaps even completely fictionalized.

According to religion and culture scholar Ronald Grimes (2000) the wedding has become the single ritual performance upon which families “spend the largest amounts of time, energy and money” (p. 153). Perhaps, too, as Engstrom (2008) contended with the very Veblenesque2 notion that weddings purposefully allow for the creation of spectacle for higher social status, if only for one day. So, in addition to a pervading economic force, the wedding spectacle is also a robust site for academic study. Not only is the wedding an event that is celebrated in front of a

2 This refers to economist Thorstein Veblen. His Theory of the Leisure Class is discussed at length in the theory chapter. 13

crowd of friends and family, and is also well documented with photographs, and sometimes video (Leeds-Hurwitz, p. 10); but weddings offer an “unparalleled lens upon the intimate sphere of American life” (Mead, 2007, p. 7), and as Ingraham (2008) expressed “wedding culture and the wedding industry provide clues as to the larger social interest they serve” (p. 3). Also, as

Engstrom (2012) asserted, through the performance of bride, she becomes a spectacle (p. 117), which also ties into Marxist philosopher Guy Debord’s (2002) theory of the spectacle which will be further examined in the Theory chapter.

Fashion and textile curator Cynthia Amnéus (2010) asserted that while rituals “may act upon specific individuals…they are communal in nature” (p. 16), and that as a rite of passage,

“marriage is both a social and private, sacred and secular institution” (p. 16). Much like I discuss how the wedding serves as both a ritual and a performance in the Theory chapter, Amnéus also identified it as both, noting it marks the passage to “the married state” (p. 16). Viewing the wedding ceremony from both the perspective of ritual and performance also ties into the notion of the bridal identity, and the cultural forces at work within the wedding industrial complex.

Family studies scholars Besel, et al. (2009) offered a look at weddings as both a ritual and a rite of passage, through the lens of bridal books.3 The authors suggested that weddings provide

“a good example of both the positive and negative aspects to rituals” (p. 100) and that weddings are “often seen as ‘rites of passage’ into adulthood and the beginning of a new family” (p. 100).

From this point forward, I disagree with most of the rest of their positioning. I found the basis of this article slightly outdated — for example it treats a “double ring ceremony” as a novelty as

3 Bridal books are the book equivalent of a bridal magazine – that is, a book that deals with one or more wedding planning issues, such as bridal fashion, bridal beauty, wedding etiquette, floral arrangements, and wedding toasts. 14

opposed to the ubiquitous feature that it is — but the overall feeling also seems out of touch, somehow. Perhaps because all the details came solely from the 13 books they analyzed, which do not necessarily reflect the reality of the wedding ritual — but either way this article seems to have a very narrow scope and its findings contain only marginal utility. The authors also posited that “it can be inferred from the lack of advice for grooms that men are not expected to be involved in traditionally feminine activities” (p. 118). I quite fervently disagree with this also — mainly from the perspective of my professional experience, but also from my research. After working with more than a hundred engaged couples it was apparent that regardless how involved the groom may or may not be in the planning, he was very unlikely to engage with bridal magazines and books. I will certainly concede that there are grooms out there that are not really interested in the planning details: not very often, but there were grooms that I either met once during the first meeting and then not again until the rehearsal — or grooms that I did not lay eyes on until the rehearsal. These grooms wanted their betrothed to have a wedding day that made them happy but did not have the desire to participate in its creation; however, I did not get the impression it was due to a desire to not engage with “feminine activities.” Also, as will be discussed in the Analysis chapter, material in Weddingbells that targeted the groom did appear very briefly but then disappeared. I am sure the research done by the Weddingbells staff indicated that the grooms were not actually engaging with the magazine making groom-centric content superfluous.

Weddings are both influenced by, and an influence on, popular culture (Boden, 2003;

Dunak, 2013; Ingraham, 2008; Leeds-Hurwitz, 2002; Otnes & Pleck, 2003). Communication scholar Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz established that through movies, television, books, magazines, and web sites, weddings are the subject of “extensive popular culture treatment” (p. 20).

Consumer behavior scholar Cele Otnes and historian Elizabeth Pleck attested that Hollywood has long heralded the utility of weddings as subject matter, furthering Ingraham’s assertions that in addition to the proliferation of wedding-related feature films (p. 14), on the small screen — especially prior to the advent of reality TV (p. 11) — television seasons were not complete without a romance, an engagement, or a wedding, and “weddings were not only main fare on situation comedies but were also used to sell everything from antacids to Visa credit cards”

(p. 2). Reality television is responsible for producing an entire genre of wedding programming

(Williams, 2013, para. 3) with no fewer than a dozen wedding shows currently airing, one of which has been airing since 1996. Indeed, reality TV in general is inundated with wedding imagery (Sgroi, 2006, p. 114). Although coverage of celebrity weddings — and the ensuing celebrity emulation — seems to have inextricably raised expectations of both brides and their wedding guests (Boden, 2003; Dunak, 2013), according to sociologist Chrys Ingraham (2008), the “scale of the celebrity weddings reviewed in People and In Style is less ostentatious than one might imagine” (p. 154).

Regardless, though, whether the wedding ritual under scrutiny involves celebrities, a fictional couple on television, or your long-lost cousin, there is little debate over the categorization of wedding as spectacle. Historian Karen Dunak (2013) tied the public perception of wedding as spectacle to the emergence of what she deemed the performative elements of the modern wedding ritual — proffering the example of a late 1960s “hippie wedding” which basically served as a counterpoint to the culturally mainstream white wedding (p. 79). To Otnes and Pleck (2003) the spectacle extended well beyond the purview of the wedding to the very roots of the visual nature of our current culture, stating that while the spectacle “was not only used to sell the idea of the lavish wedding, it conveyed the belief in romantic love through many

updated variants” (p. 37). However, regardless of the presumption of ostentation — visual or otherwise, it is the current incarnation of the ritual itself that seems to fuel English scholar Jaclyn

Geller’s (2001) vitriol towards the wedding, asserting that it “transforms that which began privately into a public spectacle — a binge of self-congratulations that actually cheapens the sentiment between two people” (p. 124). Regardless of her ardent anti-wedding stance, even

Geller was not able to fully eschew the bridal ideology, and rather succumbed to the power of the white wedding when she tried on a wedding dress herself (Geller, 2001; Jellison, 2008). As

Amnéus (2010) noted, “even the most successful and independent women often succumb to the allure of a fairy-tale-style dress that is the culmination of girlhood fantasies” (p. 15); or perhaps in the case of Geller, the nemesis of girlhood fantasies, but an unyielding force, nonetheless.

Although, as women’s history scholar Katherine Jellison (2008) outlined, in the 1970s many were predicting the demise of the traditional wedding, the wedding not only survived but thrived. Jellison suggested one of the sustaining factors is the wedding’s offering of “memorable ways for female friends and relatives to interact and sustain their relationships” (p. 4). I am not sure if I agree that part of the wedding’s appeal lies in its ability to sustain female relationships, but this is an interesting observation, nonetheless. Jellison also noted that “radical feminism…had not succeeded in dismantling the Cinderella myth…by the early twenty-first century, the white wedding gown was more popular than ever” (p. 108). Jellison then brought consumption into her argument by noting that “celebrity culture, like consumer culture in general, revolves around the notion that people can bring meaning to their lives through consumption of the right products” (p. 113). Jellison (2010) also asserted that by “hosting just one event — a white wedding — a family could project an image of respectability, material success, and domestic happiness that would live eternally in photographs” (p. 85). This can be

seen as doubly so for weddings: there is so much tradition — real or imagined — attached to certain elements of the white wedding — and emulating your favourite celebrity bestows that much more credence to your own personal Cinderella moment.

Jellison (2008) cleverly concluded her book by asserting that most women “believe that the rewards of the white wedding outweigh its drawbacks and enthusiastically continue their love affair with the elaborate ritual” (p. 235), going on to note that “in a world where both the perfect wedding and the perfect marriage are impossible to achieve, the continuing popularity of the white wedding truly represents the triumph of hope over experience” (p. 235). These statements succinctly communicate the author’s opinion of the industry but left on a somewhat positive note. It also indicated that Jellison did not see any end in sight to the stronghold of the white wedding in our culture.

Chapter three “Superbrides: Wedding Industries and Consumer Cultures” of consumption sociologist Sharon Boden’s (2003) book Consumerism, Romance and the Wedding Experience, focused on the wedding as a media spectacle. Boden noted that we cannot fail to notice, what she deemed, the “newfound eagerness of the popular media [in devoting] the space, time and opinion traditionally reserved for royal weddings to the weddings of the famous, celebrities, and, increasingly, to the more bizarre wedding preferences of the general public” (p. 54). Boden examined the “commercial jamboree” (p. 56) that is the celebrity wedding: even those deemed successful, often receive a certain amount of backlash when viewed as an exercise in self- promotion, or a “performance designed to enhance the star’s position” (p. 57). Boden also delved into the idea that celebrity emulation and media coverage both contribute to a meaning-making function which develops the ubiquity of the popular wedding consumer culture (p. 58). It seems

a sensible assumption that this chapter is an extension of her 2001 article which also addressed

“Superbrides.”

In an earlier article, Boden (2001) looked at the wedding “as a spectacular, within-reach consumer fantasy” (para. 1). This article is important for this project as it addresses wedding consumption, particularly the concept of consuming the actual wedding, in addition to the consumption that takes place in the planning and execution of it (para. 2). This concept of the consumption of the wedding as a whole — the ritual event of it, not just the material objects that go into the planning of it — is an interesting vantage point from which to examine Weddingbells.

The other focus of this article that is very pertinent to this project is Boden’s focus on how bridal magazines give meaning to the bridal identity (para. 2.1). Boden went on to discuss how the wedding’s current incarnation as a cultural event or performance “generates its meaning primarily through consumption” (para. 2.5). The wedding as a cultural event is definitely the focus of the wedding industrial complex — and the bridal magazine in particular, as its representative/proxy. The performance of this culturally charged bridal identity is what first sparked my interest in this project. In this article, Boden also examined the covers of various bridal magazines. Boden asserted that the cover bride is displayed not only through

“conventional markers of bridal identity” (para. 4.4), but also through her pose — identified as somewhat submissive, as well as through the implied gaze of the male spectator. I do not find either of these attributes evident on any of the Weddingbells covers, except perhaps the last one in my timeframe (Fall/Winter 2002). The Weddingbells cover brides do not seem to imply a male gaze, but rather a female gaze, and their poses fall somewhere in the spectrum between playful and powerful, therefore not communicating the same inferences that Boden identified in her research for Superbrides. Boden went on to portray the discussion of the bridal body as

ubiquitous in bridal magazines (para. 4.6-4.7). I noted this in several other studies as well, however, I found the discussion of the bridal body as an integral part of the bridal identity conspicuously absent in Weddingbells — unlike the majority of American and UK bridal magazines mentioned throughout all of my reading. The Canadian bridal magazine does not offer a section devoted to fitness — no countdown to fit in the dress, no proffered exercises to get your arms strapless-ready, no diet tips to help you look your best. I must say, I found this quite a nice omission. The pages of Weddingbells might be filled with mostly thin, and all quite lovely, brides, but this particular bridal magazine does not take up the mantle of making a punishing fitness regime a mandatory part of the already stressful wedding planning process. Boden also noted that this focus on denial and self-control stands in “ideological contradiction to the commercial discourses of abundance, choice and instant satisfaction” (para. 4.9) so inextricably linked to the wedding. This definitely presents a dichotomy of the portrayal of the bridal identity; however, this particular contradiction is not one that is endemic to the pages of Weddingbells.

Boden (2001) also delved into the litany of unwanted advice and the social minefield promulgated by family and close friends during the planning process (para. 5.1). These adverse effects on the wedding planning experience are one of the many reasons having a paid advocate

— in particular, a wedding planner — was a non-negotiable item for many of my clients. I routinely said to potential brides, “this is your wedding, your mother already had her turn” which usually elicited a broad smile and/or nodding head. With so much cultural indoctrination and familial pressures preying upon the nuptial expectations, my personal selling feature for my services was twofold: creating a wedding that esthetically portrayed what the bride and groom were about as a couple (or what they strived to be), and project management that was both far-

reaching and intricate in detail — with the sole aim of allowing the bride to show up and actually enjoy her big day.

Boden (2001) then went into some of the terrible scenarios presented in the UK bridal magazine (para. 5.3-5.4), and ways they suggested maintaining control of your day. A few of the details suggested are probably an issue at times in Canada and the US, but there is a slightly different level of cultural norms at play when it comes to UK wedding, so some of the scenarios are more apt to be in wedding nightmare anecdotes, rather than typically problematic dynamics.

Boden also elaborated the magazines’ call to arms: that as the wedding day approaches, brides should actually “ban the purchase” (para. 5.4) of such titles as FHM and Maxim, as they are designated as “instruction manuals for men who want to behave badly” (para. 5.4). Weddingbells addresses their readers with the assumption of having more agency than is apparently the case for a typical UK bridal publication.

Boden (2001) concluded her analysis by stating that the “wedding becomes a carefully negotiated performance organized by the bride, aided by the industry, given meaning by the culture and kept at a secure distance from the unwanted influences of other involved parties”

(para. 5.5). While this seems decidedly harsh, and perhaps a bit extreme, the notion of keeping a safe distance from familial pressures was definitely the primary reason for hiring a wedding planner for some of my clients. I did not ever find this feeling of “us against them” — specifically the bride and the wedding industrial complex against the families — but in my capacity as an event planner, I definitely served as the delegate for the industry in the “us (bride and WIC) against them (family)” feeling that some of the brides had as the rationale for hiring a professional event planner. Boden’s final thoughts again spoke to the bride’s duality of “project

manager and childish fantasizer” (para. 7.1) asserting that it is the wedding media that has turned the wedding into a consumption-dependent cultural event.

Ingraham’s (2008) White Weddings was essentially the first comprehensive academic look (outside of anthropology) at weddings. Ingraham was bewildered how the wedding could be so prevalent in popular culture yet so little studied, noting: “Considering the magnitude of wedding culture and the wedding industry it is both shocking and mystifying that so few have studied weddings” (p. 14). Chapter two, “The Wedding-Industrial Complex,” provided a brief history of weddings, a fairly thorough overview of the wedding industry as a whole, and an introduction to the term which has been taken up by much of the subsequent academic literature on weddings. As Sgroi (2006) noted when discussing Ingraham: “the celebrity wedding spectacle mobilizes viewer desires at the same time as it offers a vision of a wedding that they can emulate” (p. 124). These readings give a sense of how notions of spectacle have changed, as well as how, when examining a ritual — in this instance the wedding — through the lens of spectacle it is possible to examine not only the elements of ritual, but also how the wedding media reflects our priorities, both culturally and as individuals.

Currently, social media is a large trend in the wedding ritual — whether that is the use of

Pinterest to plan a fairytale event, Facebook to keep track of RSVPs, or requesting the guests use a special hashtag when posting photos of the nuptials on Twitter and Instagram. Consequently, this trend is accompanied by a backlash against social media — with couples requesting their guests actually pay attention during the ceremony — utilizing everything from on-site signage to notices included with the invitations instructing guests that their professional photographer will take all the photos needed during the ceremony, so please leave your iPads and smartphones at home. Brian Ries’s 2012 Newsweek article “My Digital Wedding” explored the notion of the

validity of an experience if it does not get posted online. Ries is head of social media at

Newsweek and The Daily Beast. In this article he relayed the experience of his elaborately planned marriage proposal in the middle of a remote lake, so remote there was no Wi-Fi or cell signal. Less than five minutes after his girlfriend accepted his proposal they realized they could neither update their Facebook status, nor Instagram her mother a photo of the ring. Ries mused:

“Lacking the digital evidence, we wondered, had it even happened?” (para. 2). Ries went on to discuss statistics, such as, nearly 50 percent of brides use social media to communicate information about their wedding, and 19 percent of all women on the internet use Pinterest, a fact which perhaps spurred them to create a separate category for weddings in July 2012.

The wedding media has a reciprocal relationship with spectacle and ritual; one that both reflects and is influenced by: for example, how social media can turn minutiae into a spectacle, how social media has changed our cultural expectations of ritual, and how it can alter our perceptions of what spectacle is. Otnes and Pleck (2003) examined weddings from the perspective that elaborately planned affairs are now considered a right as well as a rite (p. 3), so it is interesting to ascertain whether the wedding industrial complex is most closely aligned to spectacle as a rite, or as a right.

Communication specialists Alison Winch and Anna Webster (2012) contended that

“wedding narratives convey extraordinariness through representations of excess” (p. 56) which could prompt deliberation about whether consumption makes for spectacle, or if the spectacle itself prompts consumption. So, although Debord’s examination of the spectacle began as a condemnation of society as a whole, it is very much applicable to examining the current parameters of the ritual in Western society, particularly using the wedding as illustration.

Romance, as ethnographer Phillip Vannini (2004) wrote, “must follow the logic of both spectacle

and consumption because the ethos of interpersonal relationships has been increasingly intermixed with the ethic of consumer culture” (p. 183). Therefore, the wedding can serve as an excellent vehicle to facilitate the discussion about the nature and significance of spectacle, the role of ritual in our society, as well as the dynamics of spectacle and ritual in social media.

Consumer researchers Kira Strandby and Søren Askegaard (2013) offered an interesting perspective in their look at weddings, framing their investigation of how consumers plan and execute their weddings with Georges Bataille’s analysis of waste, in particular his distinction between consumption and expenditure compared to the notion of utility (p. 147). Strandby and

Askegaard asserted that “spending thousands of dollars and an endless amount of hours, on an experience which technically only lasts a single day, can arguably be defined as some kind of waste, or decadence” (p. 148). They went on to draw out the influence of Bataille on

Baudrillard’s (1998) notion of “superfluous consumption” (p. 148), marketing scholar Dennis

Rook’s (1985) look at consumption rituals, as well as sociologist Eva Illouz’ (1997) theory of romance; concluding that a wedding must have an element of wastefulness in order to “truly express the festive nature of the ritual” (p. 148) and by wasting an object it is granted sacred status (p. 151).

That weddings serve as fodder for visual media is not a new trend, but rather an enduring one. One such example comes from Otnes and Pleck (2003) who noted “Hollywood has long known that weddings, especially elaborate ones, can draw large audiences” (p. 2). Another is in a discussion of an early twentieth century wedding of a socially elite couple in New York, where journalism scholar Carolyn Kitch (2001) remarked that due to the throngs of onlookers, the police had to be called to the church to maintain order (p. 40). And, as far as the silver screen,

Ingraham (2008) identified more than 350 films produced since 1890 with the word ‘wedding’ or

‘bride’ in the title (p. 2). Therefore, visual media comprises an affective site from which to examine the wedding as both spectacle and ritual. For the sake of this project, the wedding can be viewed as both a means of communication and a cultural artefact.

In The Bride Factory, Engstrom (2012) presented a very comprehensive look at other wedding literature and examined the wedding as a “metaphor for society as a whole” (p. 4).

Engstrom used the theory of hegemony as an effective lens for both bridal media and the wedding itself. Through the lens of hegemony, Engstrom was able to unpack both feminism and femininity in bridal media (p. 23), elaborating on the bride as both actor and object (p. 33).

Engstrom defined editorial content the same way I do: that being everything produced by the magazine staff that is not advertising (p. 5), also asserting that bridal media purposefully “blur[s] the line between the editorial and the commercial (p. 27) making it very difficult for the reader to discern where editorial stops and advertising begins — and, in fact, the reader does not really care. Engstrom deftly identified an overarching problem in wedding media, and in the wedding ritual itself: “that the role of ‘bride’ becomes almost generic, in that despite whatever individual and extraordinary traits a bride might possess in reality, they become obscured through the prism of the bridal image” (p. 53). This also speaks to — although not intended to — the fact that for most brides, no matter how unique or individual the bride may be at the outset, she will almost inevitably end up looking like some iteration of a traditional bride.

Engstrom (2012) delved extensively into the overlap of editorial and advertising in bridal magazines, pointing out that they “provide the wedding fantasy in its final, completed form, with that fantasy presented as being possible as long as one just follows the instructions and purchases the products advertised within them” (p. 83). The use of the term “completed form” is quite interesting here — perhaps alluding to the minimal amount of content that actually addresses the

difficult planning required to get to that point. Along these same lines, cultural studies scholar

Ellen McCracken (1993) also asserted that “advertising and editorial material are, on a practical level, inseparable in women’s magazines” (p. 3). McCracken focused on the “crucial role” (p. 3) of advertising when it comes to “shaping the cultural content of these publications” (p. 3).

McCracken also delved into the editorial content as an extension of the advertisements, and how this blurring “contributes to the cultural formation of the editorial material” (p. 39). This is definitively the case with Weddingbells both because the sheer volume of advertising helps demonstrate the reach of the wedding industrial complex, and also because the reader actively sets out to engage with the advertising content.

Somewhat in contrast to Engstrom (2012) and McCracken (1993), Jellison (2008) initially suggested that wedding magazines “were only one cog in a vast postwar publicity machine that…normalized the concept of the capital-intensive white wedding” (p. 17). While it may be true that the bridal magazine is merely one cog — in this context it is perhaps the most enduring cog — and both for the purposes of this project, as well as in the world at large, serves as a good proxy for the wedding industry as a whole. However, in somewhat of a contrast,

Jellison went on to declare bridal magazines “the bibles of the wedding industry” (p. 28), a bible that was taken up by “traditional outsiders in American culture” (p. 47). Jellison offered a history of the wedding industrial complex to help outline how “the commercialized white wedding had become such a central feature of American society that it could successfully overwhelm all challenges in its path” (p. 47). This facet is one of the best attributes of Jellison’s work: offering a glimpse at the cultural and commercial behemoth that is the white wedding. The reader can almost envision the white wedding as a steamroller, working its way into cultural ubiquity.

When looking at the research done by Engstrom (2012), McCracken (1993), Jellison

(2008), and others, it seems that the commodification in bridal magazines, and the overlap between editorial and advertising even more enmeshed, than in a women’s fashion magazine.

While most women who read fashion magazines have a very decided opinion on their own personal style — it seems that the vast majority of brides still desire an instruction manual when it comes to their nuptials. Bridal magazines are essentially catalogues for all the elements required to plan a wedding, all while being presented as the “primary authority on wedding planning” (Engstrom, 2012, p. 84). However, deeming them mere catalogues diminishes the real and powerful influence of the actual editorial content. Engstrom also acknowledged the ubiquitous dichotomy that is present in virtually every wedding: the desire to be an individual and unique without deviating too far from the traditional wedding rules (p. 217), a fact that was borne out by virtually every wedding client I encountered in my professional experience. In fact,

Engstrom went so far as to deem that a bride that does not follow the societally established rules should not, in fact, be considered a “real” bride at all (p. 147). This is a fairly harsh statement, but certainly explains why in my professional experience I had so much difficulty getting clients to deviate from the norm.

Sociologist Ewa Glapka (2014) used critical discourse analysis, through the lens of modernity and late-modernity to examine bridal magazines. Glapka indicated the overall intention of her book was to “encourage consideration of the degree to which media seek to integrate commodity consumption with the contemporary wedding culture” (p. 93). Glapka opened her book by asserting that “not so long ago, it would never occur to people to deliberate on the color of the wedding gown, in the same way the bride’s virginity, which it has symbolized, was taken for granted” (p. 2). Not surprisingly, I disagree with this statement — and

what lies behind this statement as well. I think rather, that not so long ago (which I suppose is a matter of perspective) people absolutely deliberated on the colour of the wedding gown — because white was rarely the outcome — and in the mythos created around the white wedding

(and perhaps there are some that correlate the white gown to virginity) but as history has shown us, it has no correlation to the origins of the white wedding dress. Glapka emphasized that “the erosion of tradition and the individualistic ethos…have left people wanting an alternative source of authority and inspiration in the pursuit of identities” (p. 54). This is an interesting comment as it offers a possible explanation why people cling to the rote aspects of the white wedding: they, perhaps subconsciously, want to be told how to construct their bridal identity and look to the wedding media to tell them how to do so. It becomes a case of this desire outweighing the desire for individuality and uniqueness. Glapka also discussed the presupposition of what the bride/reader already knows, stating “bridal magazines perpetuate the established narratives and imagery of the wedding-ideological complex” (p. 55). Glapka then tied these presuppositions into the commodification of bridal artifacts, and the intrinsic assumption that this importance is

“embedded in the existential presupposition of ‘your big day’” (p. 57). This is certainly part of the crux of the matter: whether it is a unique wedding, or a modern wedding, or whatever — it nonetheless requires commodification — that being, goods and services from the wedding industrial complex. The requisite commodification to create a certain — albeit superficial — sense of uniqueness and specialness in the wedding ritual is something that I did not think about when I was part of the wedding industrial complex. I did try very hard to create each wedding as a reflection of the couple — so their guests could utter “it’s so you!,” I did try to get brides out of the ubiquitous white gown, and I did try to get them to eschew meaningless elements like the

garter toss, but nonetheless the weddings I created were mostly comprised of long-established wedding artifacts/material objects.

Glapka (2014) also asserted that the “construction of weddings in the texts suggests that weddings have ceased to function as solely social and religious rites of passage and have taken on the role of cultural performances wherein couples enact their romance through wedding commodities” (p. 105). This is perhaps my favourite sentence in the whole book as it succinctly brings in so many of the elements pertinent to this project. Glapka described that when analyzing commentary from a traditional bride and a non-traditional bride that “both women equally ascribe a non-material, symbolic value to the wedding dress” (p. 70), and that for all brides the wedding is primarily an esthetic experience, with the bride being “the central part of the ‘big white wedding’ spectacle” (p. 70). Overall, Glapka’s examination of “how the discourse of commodification forges a link between self and consumption” (p. 105), was quite successful in demonstrating how bridal magazines reinforce the cultural ideology of the white wedding, even if I do disagree with some of her suppositions.

Amnéus (2010) explored the history of the wedding ritual through the lens of the dress.

This fascinating tome was created to accompany a museum exhibit of historical wedding garb and provides essays from a few other authors (in addition to Amnéus herself). Amnéus (2010) introduced the book, offering that it “traces the relationship between this ritual dress, the terms of marriage, and the fluctuating social and economic status of women” (p. 9), going on to note that

“the emergence of the wedding dress stands as a stellar example of middle-class self-definition through the acquisition of objects — even those that are meant to be used only once” (p. 9). This speaks to many aspects of this project, particularly the ritual and the self-identity facets, as well as the issues of consumption and commodification. Due to some significant research presented

on the bridal wear manufacturers, there will be a much more in-depth look at this book in the

Historical Background chapter.

In Decoding Women’s Magazines, Ellen McCracken (1993) offered a structured look at understanding women’s magazines using a critical textual analysis. McCracken noted that

“technological advances and increased opportunities for financial gain through the production of commodified culture have greatly widened the scope and audience of mass culture” (p. 1). It seems a fitting correlation to this project as the promulgation of wedding culture definitely follows the production of commodified culture outlined by McCracken. She also offered the example of the bridal magazine’s “ability to join the real and the imaginary so that the boundary between the two becomes progressively vaguer” (p. 5) as one of its main draws. This factor seems to be a very integral part of the attractiveness of bridal magazines. There is a definite blurring between real and fantasy — which is endemic to the wedding industry at its core. I found McCracken’s work particularly pertinent where it examined the ideological tools and editorial devices employed in women’s magazines to promote consumption. This also aligns with Amnéus’ (2010) examination of the influence of women’s magazines. Amnéus asserted that the “widespread consumption” (p. 39) of these magazines created a unified desire that was able to cross all socio-economic boundaries, and that the great expense could be justified because

“choosing a white gown equated her with a higher social and economic status” (p. 39). Amnéus seemed to avow that the influence of magazines could not be underestimated, and the overall tone of her essay aligns with this project as it supports the notion of using the wedding dress to capture a higher social class — if only for that one day — which hearkens to the work of Veblen and Bourdieu, which is discussed in the Theory chapter.

McCracken (1993) also delved into the ideas of ideology in cultural texts, commodified desire, and the master narratives at work in magazines (p. 299). In what I found to be, perhaps, the most compelling sentence in the entire book, McCracken asserted that “Magazines figuratively assimilate an idealized individual consciousness to a similarly idealized group consciousness as one of their primary narrative strategies” (p. 299). She then further elaborated on the importance of this notion of group consciousness:

If women, at the magazines’ urging, experience a sometimes real and sometimes utopian

sense of community while reading these texts, confident of participating in normal,

expected feminine culture, they are at the same time learning consumerist

competitiveness and reified individualism. Magazines figuratively assimilate an idealized

individual consciousness to a similarly idealized group consciousness as one of their

primary narrative strategies. (p. 299)

This struck me as a very succinct and insightful assertion of what women’s magazines generally, and Weddingbells specifically, strive to accomplish. It helps articulate the cooperation of the individual bride identity with the larger familial and cultural expectations. If applied specifically to the bridal magazine reader, it portrays, quite correctly, the magazine as an integral component in the commodification of the wedding ritual, as well as an instigator and facilitator of the conspicuous consumption evident in the white wedding.

In consumption studies scholar Russell Belk’s (2001) look at specialty magazines, he delved into the ability of magazines to cultivate their readers. For the purposes of this project, I am not really interested in the prospective bride that has been reading the magazine since a young teen, but rather how the magazine as proxy for the wedding industrial complex is speaking to, and shaping consumption and desires of, the engaged couple. Belk examined both the

advertising and editorial content to elucidate how specialty magazines are used to “inflame our consumer desires” (para. 1) presenting the reader with a litany of new objects of desire. This is absolutely the case with bridal magazines — such a high percentage of the magazine is comprised of advertisements and yet they are thoroughly scoured — and sometimes more sought after than the editorials. Belk’s term “consumption-focused editorial material” (para. 1) perfectly encapsulates the content of bridal magazines — as it inevitably does of other specialty magazine genres as well. While I am sure there is a small audience for Weddingbells that is neither a bride nor part of the trade, the majority of Belk’s article pertained to niche magazines that are read continuously over time, which he dubbed an “exercise in fantasy consumption” (para. 10). So, his research is applicable to the bridal magazine consumer that has been clipping images from the pages for a decade or two “constructing a specific material wish list” (para. 10) in order to plan the fantasy wedding — long before the groom ever appears — it is outside the parameters of the type of Weddingbells reader germane to this research. In my professional experience I noted that a typical bride reads two issues, but never more than three issues, during the planning of her wedding. For this reason, bridal magazines, and Weddingbells specifically, often re-use material for advice and planning articles on an 18-month cycle: if an article provides timeless advice on matters of etiquette, timelines, planning, or choosing vendors, the publishers feel

“safe” to recycle articles because their readers do not usually buy their magazine for longer than a year (two issues).

In response to the dearth of magazine scholarship, four editors put together a book comprised of work by 15 different authors — six of whom I examine below (Glew, Tinkler,

Hackney, Loughran, Cortez, and Spaulding). Women in Magazines (Ritchie et al., 2016) offered a fairly comprehensive look at “magazines as a cultural form and the workings of the periodical

press” (p. 2). Ritchie et al. voiced their bewilderment at the lack of magazine research despite the huge breadth of material available for study (p. 3). They explained that historically — particularly by feminist scholars — magazines tended to be viewed as a “repressive force” (p. 5), but today they tend to be seen as neither good nor bad, as “mass culture is rife with contradictions, ambivalence, and competing voices” (p. 5). Industry and production are identified as central, but under-examined areas of study (p. 16). The production context is definitely relevant and quite unique in its relationship to bridal magazines. With the advertisements mostly clumped together for hundreds of pages — they are an integral draw for the reader.

When discussing historian Helen Glew’s (2016) chapter on Chatelaine magazine, the editors Ritchie et al. (2016) noted that for magazines like Chatelaine the reader is not merely a

“passive” consumer (p. 17), but that there is a “reciprocal, albeit unbalanced” (p. 17) relationship between the publisher and the reader. This is an interesting comment about Chatelaine specifically and women’s magazines in general — as it alludes to the very nature of magazines

— a nature based on “the shifting and capricious relationship between women and magazines”

(p. 18). This perspective on Chatelaine is interesting as it gives insight into Weddingbells — both as a women’s magazine, as well as a Canadian magazine. Glew (2016) identified

Chatelaine as the only women’s magazine actually produced in Canada in the late 1950s

(p. 137), as well as a fairly forward-positioned magazine (in comparison to its American and

British counterparts) discussing women’s employment (p. 139) and contradicting widely-held notions of domesticity (p. 137). Glew also delved into the dichotomy of advertising’s messaging: the fact that while editors had little-to-no control over the content, they were nonetheless dependent upon it for their very survival (p. 144). This, of course, is part of the complexity and incongruity of magazines’ contents — the inability of editors to control advertising content —

even in publications like Weddingbells (and other specialty magazines) where the ads are as much of a draw to the reader as the editorials.

In historical sociologist Penny Tinkler’s (2016) look at “Fragmentation and Inclusivity,” she wanted to foster a more explicit discussion of magazine research methods used to probe historical questions using the content of women’s magazines. Tinkler expressed a desire to look at this issue as she felt most research seemed to work “around” magazines as opposed to working

“with” them (p. 25). Tinkler’s main points are effectively summed up when she wrote that

“editors consciously use different types of imagery to create different impressions, although intentions should not be conflated with effects” (p. 32). Apart from discussing the ways in which magazines are both “visual and textual objects” (p. 34) — and all the complexities involved in accessing and attracting readers, the majority of this article deals with her particular method for analyzing magazines. Tinkler’s methodology description is very harmonious with my own — as is discussed in the Methodology chapter.

Rather than focusing on the editor, design historian Fiona Hackney (2016) focused her research on the advice pages in women’s magazines, offering that they present “a shared imaginary of modern womanhood” (p. 118). Hackney presented what seemed to be a very dynamic period for women’s magazines — the 1920s and 1930s — targeting working women in a network of “inter-textual storytelling and mutual knowledge exchange” (p. 119). Hackney offered the advice pages as a viable tool to validate the female experience for readers. While only one issue of Weddingbells saw the appearance of a specific advice column, much advice- oriented content nonetheless appeared throughout the pages of the 10 years of Weddingbells that

I analyzed.

In her look at women’s magazines, cultural historian Tracey Loughran (2016) examined the general landscape of women’s magazines, particularly in the UK. Loughran espoused the importance of looking at magazines as a cultural form (p. 42) and identified some of the reasons she felt they are historically important (p. 41). Like many of her contemporaries, Loughran also commented on the dearth of scholarship regarding women’s magazines — identifying the paradox of being both a “powerful symbol of mass culture” (p. 41) while also being “belittled and maligned as cultural forms” (p. 41). It seems like bridal magazines cut across the socio- economic strata more so than most other women’s titles — pretty much every engaged bride picks up at least one wedding magazine along the way, regardless of status or type of wedding that is desired. It is an interesting observation that the aspirational quality of magazines is integral to their experience, as the reader requires to see and imagine a world that is not their own (p. 47). Loughran also took an interesting look at the issues of agency and self-fashioning of identity, asserting that it is imperative to not lose sight of the “structural determinants” (p. 49) that put limitations on said agency, as well as the identity we are able to envisage. Loughran’s look at women’s magazines was particularly useful as my project also focuses on linking together facets of identity and agency (within the arena of bridal magazines).

In “The American Girl,” art historian Cheyanne Cortez (2016) examined the history and influence of the Ladies’ Home Journal from 1889-1919. Cortez touted magazines during this period as the “taste-creators of American culture” (p. 166), also examining the cover as a “form of cultural propaganda” (p. 169) through both explicit and implicit messaging. Similarly, Ellen

McCracken (1993) presented magazine covers as “an idealized mirror image of the woman who gazes at them in which the everyday and the extraordinary are conjoined” (p. 13). This conjoining of fantasy with the mundane is particularly heightened with a wedding magazine —

as it is ubiquitous to strive for a fantasy — an idealized identity construction built for a single day. McCracken also discussed the cover as “packaging” and ascribed the goals (of the cover) to not only sell the magazine, but also the goods and services presented within its pages (pp. 14-

15). In addition, although a vastly different time period than my project, Cortez’s analysis is nonetheless applicable. Weddingbells definitely serves — or at least attempts to serve as a tastemaker for Canadian wedding culture. During a time when many magazines flailed or failed, bridal magazines were still flourishing, so it is not too much of a leap to find them firmly entrenched in the creation of the identity of “engaged couple” as well as of “bride.”

Regardless of time parameters, Cortez (2016) identified the primary power of the magazine, as well as their imagery, “in their ability to be seen, shared and experienced by a racially diverse and physically dispersed people — perceivably uniting them into a cohesive and harmonious society” (p. 178). Cortez expanded on that to say that every publication has a personality, and it is that specific personality that engages a reader into a relationship, a “shared intimacy” (p. 178) that is particularly profound when brought into the home. Looking at a decade’s worth of Weddingbells certainly allowed an assessment of the personality of the magazine as a whole, as well as that of the editor Alison McGill.

American studies scholar Carina Spaulding (2016) presented hair magazines as proxy for the cosmetics industry, much as I present Weddingbells as proxy for the wedding industry.

Spaulding traced the rise of mass media and the “synergistic connections” (p. 229) within the industry between manufacturers, retailers, and advertisers. It seems like it is impossible to disentangle one from the other now (the interests of manufacturers, advertisers, retailers), particularly in the context of magazines — as they are so inextricably linked. Spaulding noted that “women’s magazines, commercial advertising and the celebrity system” (p. 230) all work in

concert to promote “mass consumption of beauty products” (p. 230). This is readily transferable to the promotion of “mass consumption” of products promoted via advertising and editorial coverage within the pages of Weddingbells.

Spaulding (2016) also referred to Ellen McCracken (1993) to bolster her arguments about special-interest publications: “McCracken asserts that the readers of special-interest publications receive normative messages from the magazines about the roles expected of them as members of these unique groups” (p. 233). This sounds like a very similar circumstance to Weddingbells readers — they are taking advertising and editorial messaging in equal measure and are ready to purchase the products and services featured in both arenas.

In her examination of celebrity images using visual rhetoric, advertising scholar Marla

Stafford (2003) offered a content analysis using a visual rhetoric model to celebrity gender images in magazine advertising. As was the case with Spaulding (2016), Stafford also heavily referred to the work of McCracken (1993) to bolster her look at celebrities imbuing meaning onto commercial products. Stafford explored the visual rhetoric model, and how that model can illuminate how messages are conveyed to the consumer (p. 13). Stafford utilized this method

“from a particular underlying cultural assumption” (p. 14) in order to “follow context specific implications and inferences” (p. 14). As I did not analyze the advertising itself in Weddingbells

Stafford’s approach was not overly relevant to my project, but as my project deals so heavily with visual imagery I felt it was important to include her work, nonetheless: Although I did not use visual rhetoric as a model, my project nonetheless focuses very heavily on visuals. As

Stafford mainly focused on how and what products are associated with male celebrities versus female celebrities it presented useful findings for representations of gender norms instead of

giving any insight into consumption or celebrity (in general) influence, either of which would have proved more useful for my research.

In “Manufacturing Authenticity,” communication scholar Brooke Duffy (2013) took a look at the move towards using “real women” in advertising and editorial layouts in magazines

— and the difficulties inherent in the term “authentic.” Duffy noted that “authenticity functions in these texts to distance products from the very marketplace within which they were created and distributed” (p. 137). Although perhaps not directly applicable — it does evoke issues with the increasing importance of the real weddings featured in Weddingbells. Duffy also delved into the magazine as “discursive sites for reproducing heteronormative ideals” (p. 148) — which is, of course, germane to this project as bridal magazines are definitely selling the ideal, regardless of how real or “your day, your way” the editors manage to spin it. I also found a lot of correlations with Duffy’s examination of the contradictions rife in the messaging requiring women to “create an individual look through consumption of mass produced products” (p. 149). Duffy concluded by noting that “women’s magazines and advertisements are increasingly infused with various rhetorics of authenticity, but in no way have these texts…lost their commercial function”

(p. 151). Throughout my analysis of Weddingbells magazine I was overwhelmed by the contradictory nature of promoting unique and individual weddings by following their mass circulated ideas and advice.

In literary scholar K.B.C. Ashipu’s (2013) rhetorical analysis of magazine editorials, he defined certain magazines norms like editorials, house style, and stylistics. Ashipu referred to editorials in a much more narrow scope than I do in my project — ascribing them to be essays produced in the magazine’s “house style” (p. 48). I, of course, define editorials much more broadly, for ease of expression. My analysis certainly looked at the “house style” of

Weddingbells — without specifically defining it as such — but included any text produced by the editorial staff to be included in the term “editorial.” Ashipu defined rhetorical theory as “a linguistic activity which treats the devices that convey meaning in language” (p. 49) and ascribed the tone of text to be the “general mood and sound of the write-up” (p. 52). While I do comment on the tone of the letters from the editor in my analysis, I approached the terminology from a slightly different vantage point.

Communication scholar Mahmoud Eid (2012) provided an interesting rhetorical analysis of magazine advertising and how that is reflected in Canadian culture. Eid discussed defining culture, and how by reframing meanings, advertising can add value to products (p. 2). After a rather lengthy section defining rhetoric, Eid went on to examine the reasons why “conspicuous display is a powerful force in human behavior” (p. 3). This realm of analysis is definitely pertinent to my interest in conspicuous consumption — particularly as evidenced in weddings — and as a societal function is at least partially about keeping up with the Joneses. Eid also offered specific examples of rhetorical devices: “In Maclean’s advertisements, verbal appeals as a rhetorical device has been used through the sub devices solving a problem and expert advice”

(p. 5). Clearly, these verbal appeals are used heavily in Weddingbells magazine, so this was of interest for this project. Overall, Eid’s article quite deftly illustrated how Canadian culture is promoted and conveyed and used to sell items in advertising seen in Maclean’s magazine.

In his look at women’s fashion magazines, social anthropologist Brian Moeran (2004) aimed to establish them as “both cultural products and commodities” (p. 260), in that “they circulate in a cultural economy of collective meanings” (p. 260) as well as “are products of the print industry and crucial sites for the advertising and sale of commodities” (p. 260). This was an interesting piece for my purposes as Moeran placed fashion magazines as operating in the field

of cultural production (p. 270) which is the field where I place bridal magazines as well. It is a useful perspective to view magazines from both the cultural perspective as well as an economic one.

Cultural studies scholar Anna Gough-Yates (2003) looked to provide a better understanding of women’s magazines, partially by providing an overview of what has previously happened within magazine studies (pp. 5-6). Gough-Yates examined women’s magazines through the lenses of Gramsci and Althusser, framing her analysis through theories such as hegemony (much like Engstrom (2012) in The Bride Factory) to explore the notions of identity construction and the cultural economy. Gough-Yates pointed out that traditionally, feminist critiques of the media industries “portray them as ideologically manipulative” (p. 7); however, I do not necessarily view bridal magazines quite so cynically — at least not in terms of ideological manipulation. They are, of course, commodifying the wedding ritual, and maintaining the cultural entrenchment of the white wedding, but underneath it is driven by economic forces, and outwardly there is a cultural ubiquity to the white wedding that is slightly beyond categorizing with such oppressive “feminine identities” (p. 7). Very much like Moeran (2004), Gough-Yates

(2003) also found it imperative to analyze women’s magazines “as both economic and cultural phenomena” (p. 26). It seems reasonable that this is also the appropriate placement for

Weddingbells — between the planes of culture and economy. Gough-Yates also went into some detail about the minutiae of the industry itself: printing methods, labour issues, etc. (p. 39), as well as the functioning of the British advertising industry: from media buying to consumer research (p. 56). Gough-Yates offered an observation that could also be seen to provide an explanation for the staying power of the white wedding: “One way that the cultural intermediary seeks to legitimate the social value of ‘new middle-class’ cultural capital and gain influence over

symbolic production…is through the promotion of their own cultural authority” (p. 123). The wedding industrial complex definitely manifested symbolic production which not only displays cultural influence in their initiation, but also in their static ubiquity. Gough-Yates’ observations were also echoed in Jellison’s (2008) assertion that “the formal wedding’s resilience in the face of enormous cultural change was the product of complex interactions between the wedding industry and its predominantly female clientele” (p. 2). By outlining how even the most ardent feminists — for example Gloria Steinem and Susan Weidman Schneider — became participants in the traditional wedding ritual, Jellison was able to illustrate how really complex and powerful the siren call of the white wedding actually is.

Gough-Yates (2003) also asserted that a rhetorical analysis of women’s magazine editors

“suggest that they were keen to advance an image of themselves that coheres with the discourse of the ‘new middle class’ and cultural intermediary” (p. 124), going on to write that their “claim to expertise came from…the cultures they shared with their target groups of young women readers” (p. 125). These statements might also be used to explain Weddingbells’ editor Alison

McGill’s need to try and be a bride even though she did not take up the mantle in any traditional way — which is a perfectly valid choice but interesting in that she is supposed to be an arbiter of the traditional white wedding.

In studying ritual, religious studies scholar Catherine Bell (2009) stated that we can gain insight into the dynamics of both culture and us as individuals (p. ix). Chapter seven “Ritual

Change” from Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions offered a slightly more holistic look at ritual, than Bell’s previous Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (1992). Bell established that rituals are not autonomous: not only do the parameters of ritual influence the actions that ensue, but the actions will in turn influence the performance and subsequent understanding of the ritual (p. 252). I also

thought this was a pertinent reading as Bell discussed the effects of television on ritual (p. 242), which is important for the reader to be able to ascertain both the cultural significance of the depiction of rituals, particularly weddings, in popular culture, as well as the reflexivity of said depictions.

In Deeply Into the Bone, Grimes (2000) provided a thorough examination of the more prominent rites of passage and espouses the importance of renewing our interest in life’s rituals.

Grimes’ introduction “Rough Passages, Reinvented Rites” provided some insight into this important ritual studies scholar, as well as the cultural importance of celebrating rites of passage.

Chapter three “Divining Mates, Making Kin” discussed weddings as the sole rite of passage in

North America and Europe (p. 152). Not only has the wedding become the single ritual performance upon which families spend the greatest amount of resources, both time and money

(p. 153), but Grimes also felt that weddings are “saddled with expectations that in other parts of the world are loaded onto the backs of initiation rites” (p. 152). Not only is the historical account engaging, but the spread of the Western wedding to sometimes remote locales across the globe, serves to begin the discussion of ritual’s place in popular culture and the idea that weddings can simultaneously exist as both a sacred occasion and an empty formality (p. 191). The fact that no one got married in white in the UK until Queen Victoria, and that the trend did not gain popularity in North American until after World War II, is undoubtedly quite startling for many, as the general public assumes this is an immemorial custom. By examining certain facts about the wedding, particularly the ritual’s Western incarnation, it readily begins the discussion about other societal notions we hold to be true, and how this can be reflected in the pages of

Weddingbells magazine.

The discussion of ritual and spectacle is not complete without some discussion of consumption, as it often factors into the literature on both topics. To that end, financial writer

John Brooks’ Showing Off in America provided a grounding in consumption. Brooks wrote:

“Display had become a game anyone could play. The leisure class, defined as Veblen defined it, had become nobody and everybody” (p. 17). Brooks provided not only a thorough look at

Veblen’s (1934) theory of the leisure class, but also a balanced examination of the theory’s current applicability; especially the fact that status gained through a conspicuous display of wealth is no longer the domain of the leisure class, and, in fact, he posited that the leisure class no longer exists. It is important to get a sense of the circumstances that motivated Veblen to write his tome, which Brooks sufficiently provided.

These works present an overview of the available scholarship around which I structured the framework for my study. By examining the relevant literature dealing with weddings in general, bridal media, as well as magazine scholarship I was able to both create a foundation on which to base my analysis, as well as establish the parameters of missing research in these areas to ensure my study can help fill some of the gaps.

Chapter Three: Theory

My approach to this project was framed by several theories — including the theory of conspicuous consumption, performance theory, branding theory, and theory of identity, all viewed through a communications lens. Rhetorical theory is also discussed in this chapter to ground the rhetorical analysis presented in the topical analysis section. Weddingbells directs its audience through a curated list of wedding necessities.

To help frame the importance of the consumption of these consumer goods within the wedding industry, I have framed the analysis with the theoretical framework of conspicuous consumption. Consumption is at the very core of the wedding industrial complex, and in our society, consumption and identity are inextricably linked. Many noted scholars, such as

McCracken (1986, 1987, 1990, 2005), Belk (1984, 1988), Arvidsson (2005), Elliott (2011), and

Sassatelli (2007, 2011), have suggested that individuals use the consumption of material goods as a means of constituting their sense of self and their cultural sense of the world. Although many accepted approaches to defining consumption exist, at a very core level, consumption can be regarded as a system of meaning, very much like a language (Baudrillard, 1988, p. 46).

Perhaps a language that is concerned with identity and social relations — even viewed by some as a shorthand that refers to the myriad material goods secured through various systems of provision and utilized for varying intentions (Trentmann, 2012, p. 3). Therefore, when examining the wedding industry, and especially the consumption of the wedding and the enactment of the bridal identity, the primary theory utilized is the theory of conspicuous consumption.

Veblen’s theory of the leisure class is included in this theoretical pillar of conspicuous consumption. As can be seen in Figure 1, this theoretical perspective overlaps with performance

theory and Debord’s theory of the spectacle. Where these two pillars overlap is where branding and self-branding are situated. As it is impossible to employ conspicuous consumption, commodification of self, or spectacle, without enacting issues of identity, the theories of identity are identified as output of the other theories, both individually and in combination. Identity is inextricably linked to all the facets of consumption and spectacle, just as identity is inextricably linked to the issues of bridal identity and the white wedding.

Figure 1 Relationship of theories used as framework

conspicuous

consumption g spectacle & & the leisure performance brandin class

identity

Anthropologist Grant McCracken (1986, 1987, 1990, 2005) investigated the prominence of consumer goods from a variety of perspectives, all of which nevertheless establish them as an

intrinsic medium of our culture (2005, p. 3). The very structure of meaning in any community must take the cultural context of consumption into account (1987, p. 144). So not only does the consumption of material goods reflect both our individual and collective sense of the world, but it is integral in constituting the meaning behind it as well. Communication sociologist Roberta

Sassatelli (2007) asserted that McCracken’s work has provided us with a “culturalist perspective which sees consumption as part of a process of meaning attribution” (p. 102). In addition to constituting an individual’s cultural sense of the world, material goods also constitute a sense of self. McCracken contended that goods play this role because we are free to construct the self

(2005, p. 3), and that it is imperative to remember that these consumer goods “carry a great deal of cultural meaning beyond status” (1986, p. 77). McCracken (1987) also emphasized that all material goods have a performative role to play in social standing (p. 149), while the “right” possessions can serve to legitimize social standing (McCracken, 1990). While I concur that material goods definitely have a performative role to play, it seems slightly expansive to assert that all material goods work to constitute social standing all the time. Cannot a boutonniere just be a boutonniere?

Weddings are typically employed to establish an identity and social standing, and engaged couples look to the wedding media for guidance as to what that identity should be. In economist Thorstein Veblen’s time, social standing was legitimized not only with the “right” possessions, which included impractical clothing and ostentatious jewellery, but also with the right leisure activities such as lavish dinner parties, breeding non-working animals, and even a brazen display of good manners. Although, in Veblen’s time the leisure class needed to proffer evidence to establish its social standing (Veblen, 1934, p. 36), once they had done so, the rest of society nonetheless adopted the leisure class’ own assessment (Brooks, 1981, p. 14); this,

assuredly is no longer the case. While the parameters for assessing social standing may have altered, the use of consuming material goods to constitute identity has not.

While the consumption of material goods has long been a source of constituting personal identity, it seems that the current trend of self-as-brand demonstrates that personal identity has been completely commodified. To use some of McCracken’s (1987) terminology, it appears that the process of constituting one’s personal identity is being eclipsed by the current level of consumption (p. 160). I agree with sociologist Colin Campbell’s (1983) assertion that where it was once a matter of utilizing the opportunity to consume to help express the extant sense of self, it currently seems more accurate to declare that one actually builds the self through consumption

(p. 288). With the collaboration of self-branding and social media, we are now afforded the opportunity — however unfortunate — to not only constitute ourselves metaphorically through the branding process but are also stakeholders in the co-production of other’s identities, and institutional brands at large.

Sassatelli (2007) defined consumption as “a sphere of social action regulated according to the cultural principle of individual expression” (p. 149), while “conspicuous consumption” can be deemed any consumption activity that is visible to others (Winkelmann, 2011, p. 184). If consumption can be viewed as mirroring the human condition (Trentmann, 2012, p. 1), it is perhaps necessary to identify who is holding the mirror, because what is considered to be consumption has not been static over time, particularly while academics and the public at large often choose to define it as “self-evident” (Trentmann, p. 2). When looking at it historically, the perspective on consumption alters over time, ranging from a source of cultural estrangement to a creative pillar that is central to forming our identities (Trentmann, p. 1). Centered around the

acquisition of status, the study of consumption provides a representation of the human condition

(Cook, 2012; Trentmann, 2012).

The roots of conspicuous consumption date back to Veblen’s (1934) The Theory of the

Leisure Class which was originally published in 1899. Veblen ascribed evolutionary thought to economics, asserting that Charles Darwin could tell us far more about the consumption of luxury goods than could Karl Marx. Focusing his attention on the habits of the nouveau riche, Veblen concluded that the impetus behind conspicuous consumption was a conscious and deliberate effort to achieve a particular goal, however, Campbell (1995) contended that Veblen emphasized the motivation behind this behaviour much more strongly than any specific outcome (p. 39).

While Veblen acknowledged that status was not automatically conferred upon the wealthy

(Scott, 2010, p. 289), he also specifically singled out consumption that was perpetrated with the intent of achieving status (Winkelmann, 2012, p. 183). Although there may not have been a specific outcome motivating the conspicuous consumption in Veblen’s day, I think one afternoon spent people watching in a shopping mall would provide ample evidence that this is no longer the situation. This is particularly evident when looking at weddings. Historian Katherine Jellison

(2010) noted that the middle-class purchases “consumer items to demonstrate their success, and those making the transition from the working class to the middle class announced their arrival through appropriate purchases” (p. 85). It seems evident that the wedding industry has been so fruitful and culturally ingrained due to what is elucidated in these theories of conspicuous consumption.

Perhaps there is no facet of Veblen’s (1934) theory of the leisure class that is more germane to contemporary society than his “keeping up with the Joneses” notion of emulation.

Veblen identified emulation as the primary catalyst in conspicuous consumption (Trentmann,

2012, p. 10), although some feel that he classified it as more of an instinct than a delineated motive (Campbell, 1995, p. 39). As leisure researcher David Scott (2010) explained: “Veblen used the term emulation to refer to a deep-seated motive that drove individuals to seek invidious

(favorable) comparisons with others” (p. 288), going on to say that although Veblen was discussing the leisure class, he recognized that emulation occurred across all socio-economic levels (p. 289).

In consumption historian Frank Trentmann’s assessment of Veblen, he stressed that however universal emulation and status-seeking might be, they have nonetheless had fundamentally different incarnations over time. That being said, though, emulation is enduring in its ability to act as a sort of shorthand for the pull of consumer culture (p. 10). Historian Enrica

Asquer (2012) alleged that many scholars too easily explain consumers’ longing for material goods as “the product of a ‘Veblenesque’ desire for social emulation” (p. 569), in particular, focusing on the “conspicuous” when, indeed, the consumption might very well be just a by- product of ordinary, everyday routines. However, Sassatelli (2007) maintained that in Veblen’s view it is only through this mechanism of emulation, conceived purely for the societal struggle for status, that new goods serve, however fleetingly, as the benchmarks for social distinction and the “reproduction of hierarchies of taste” (p. 67). I think Asquer is correct, at least to the extent that it would be over-reaching to catalogue all consumption under Veblen’s conspicuous umbrella.

Although Veblen’s (1934) work has garnered much criticism over the years, it is nonetheless quite widely held that his work elicited permanent change in how people viewed themselves and their place in society (Brooks, 1981, p. 278). Economist Emery Hunt (1979) designated Veblen as “probably the most significant, original and profound social theorist in

American history” (p. 300). In contrast, however, some scholars find little utility in Veblen’s work. McCracken (2005) for example found Veblen’s theory, and indeed everything that followed from it “too crude to be useful” (p. 136). I, perhaps, fall somewhere in the middle: there is definitely merit to Veblen’s theory, but as the “leisure class” no longer exists as Veblen observed it, it is difficult to directly transpose analysis of current societal consumption solely through his lens.

In the more than 100 years since Veblen first articulated what he observed as the somewhat dubious nature of the idle rich, approaches to consumption have vacillated widely.

Trentmann (2012) asserted that consumption was “routinely decried for most of the 20th century as leading to alienation, waste, and selfish materialism” (p. 1). Trentmann went on to explain that in the 1970s and 1980s it emerged in a much more optimistic light, being hailed “as a source of creativity and meaning central to social relations and identity formation” (p. 1). But, Sassatelli

(2007) contended that contemporary studies of consumption are now “sufficiently mature to overcome that moralistic swing of the pendulum which ... either celebrates consumption as a free and liberating act or denigrates it as a dominated and subjugated act” (p. 107). While I agree that contemporary studies of consumption are primarily positioned from a more neutral stance, it seems slightly optimistic to assume that all future research on consumption will be devoid of any moralistic slant.

Veblen lamented what he deemed the wastefulness of consumption, feeling it “directed resources away from more productive, socially worthy” (Trentmann, p. 9) causes. However, today, consumption is considered a productive channel for understanding social relations, personal identity and forms of community (Arvidsson, 2005). Whether examining conspicuous consumption as a method of attaining new status, for maintaining current status, or whether or

not said conspicuous consumption changes with fluctuations in the socio-economic climate, it always poses a certain degree of difficulty because, as Mason (1981) pointed out, “conspicuous consumption is a form of economic behaviour to which individuals will not admit” (p. x).

Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1984) offered an examination of conspicuous consumption, however, through a much different lens. Bourdieu asserted that it is a form of “naïve exhibitionism” (p. 31) seeking “distinction in the crude display of ill-mastered luxury” (p. 31).

Bourdieu established that there is “an economy of cultural goods” (p. 1) in which “popular taste applies the schemes of the ethos” (p. 5); and that while “taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier” (p. 6), and ultimately art and cultural consumption “fulfil a social function of legitimating social differences” (p. 7). As weddings, and the wedding industrial complex at large, revolve around material goods, this is a pertinent lens for this project. It should be noted that the material goods available for weddings, especially within the WIC — being dictated neither solely by the wedding industrial complex, nor by consumer tastes — but some combination thereof making it impossible to isolate one from the other. This creates a circular and cyclical environment much like Bourdieu’s notion of taste classifying the classifier. It is also possible that there is ebb and flow as to which factors dictate this market most extensively.

While the motivation behind consumption might be varied, and according to Sassatelli

(2007) not entirely comprehensible (p. 54), its role in establishing an individual’s identity is much more coherent. Although material culture scholar Louise Purbrick (2007) identified what she feels is a disjunction “between material possession and self-expression” (p. 20), suggesting there is not a straightforward link between consumption and creating one’s self-identity,

Campbell (1983), to the contrary, seemed to feel that the significance of the connection between

using a particular consumption style as a means of expressing identity and social position is often overlooked (p. 288). Perhaps, then, the most succinct explanation of the relationship connecting consumption and identity formation is Campbell’s assertion that “it would be just as true to say that the self is built through consumption as that consumption expresses the self” (p. 288).

McCracken (2005) referred to Campbell when providing a brief history of this relationship, maintaining that although consumption is an historical artefact (p. 3), the connection and “mutuality” between consumption and identity continue to the present day

(p. 20). Cultural sociologists Lionel Wee and Ann Brooks (2010) noted that because traditional sources of identity no longer serve to delineate our life experiences, the resulting void constitutes not only a need for reflexivity, but also the potential for us to “take control of the kinds of identity work” (p. 48) we wish to engage in. So, individuals might enact different forms of emulation to construct different facets of identity — whether that be personal, professional, or familial.

As Debord’s (2002) tome on spectacle is a series of somewhat disjointed thoughts, Heath

Schultz’s (2013) reworking of Debord’s 1973 film “The Society of the Spectacle” more clearly communicated the general ideas, and Schultz did a very nice job of updating some of the imagery alongside Debord’s original work. Although Debord’s analysis of the spectacle is a critique of capitalist society as a whole, and clearly expresses his distaste for the contemporary notions of special events (p. 22), it nonetheless provided an apt framework to examine spectacle on a smaller scale, such as the wedding ritual. Trier (2007) also helped illuminate that “Debord’s theorization of the spectacle appears to leave no room for escape or for the expression of any individual or group agency” (p. 70), which provides a good opportunity to begin to establish

what role media, and perhaps even the wedding media specifically (as proxy for the wedding industrial complex), plays in the current arena of spectacle and ritual.

Cultural studies scholar Douglas Kellner (2002; 2005) furthered the scope of spectacle to examine media culture and all forms of spectacles ranging from sporting events to world conflicts. The preface to his 2002 book Media Spectacle, discussed the evolution of spectacle culture — and the ever-increasing permeation of the logic of the spectacle into every facet of our culture and social life (p. 1), and posited that “whatever the vicissitudes and dynamics of the future, today, media culture continues to arbitrate social and political issues, deciding what is real, important, and vital” (p. 2). Although that was written almost twenty years ago, I think it could prove to be an even more apt assessment today.

In addition, Kellner’s 2005 article “Media Culture and the Triumph of the Spectacle” situated Debord’s work in our global media culture. Kellner also elaborated on his interest in the megaspectacle — where with the injection of profuse media interest, certain spectacles become

“defining phenomena and events of their era” (p. 2) — which to cite contemporary examples, could be anything from George Clooney’s Venetian nuptials to the Black Lives Matter protests.

Debord (2002) likened the spectacle to the moment when commodification completely consumes our social life (p. 7). Kellner (2005) advanced this notion by theorizing that the concept of the spectacle “involves a distinction between passivity and activity and consumption and production” (p. 3). As pervasive as Debord (1990; 2002) theorized the society of the spectacle, Kellner extended Debord’s theory, alleging that it has now infiltrated all aspects of our lives (p. 4). The perspective offered by Kellner (1995) would seem to assert that identity must elicit some form of spectacle in its performance. And, as Ingraham (2008) noted, Kellner positioned media images as shaping spectacle’s domination; he wrote that “consistent with

Kellner’s argument, weddings in popular culture are powerful sites for the enactment of dominant messages about society-at-large” (p. 174). With the spectacle of royal weddings and celebrity weddings, and their ubiquity in popular media, it becomes interesting to look at the emulation that occurs in “real” weddings.

Kellner (2005) presented a couple of key passages pertinent to the wedding ritual. The first passage expressed how weddings contribute to identity construction, and the other presented them in the guise of the commodified ritual that is spectacle. Kellner discussed how in this global media culture “celebrities are the manufactured and managed deities of the contemporary moment” (p. 5). With celebrities as stars of media spectacle it would seem that this has become a major factor in people’s desire to emulate celebrity experiences, which could be aligned with the increasing need to throw a celebrity-event caliber wedding. When reflecting on Debord’s (2002) stance on celebrity and media spectacle, Ingraham (2008) mused that celebrity spectacles have become “the vehicles through which the masses not only imagine the possibility of wealth and fame but seek to emulate it as well” (p. 151). Kellner (2005) also discussed the spectacle of consumption. He wrote “In a postmodern image culture, style and look become increasingly important modes of identity and presentation of the self in everyday life, and the spectacles of media culture show and tell people how to appear and behave” (p. 9). This, too, can be readily associated with weddings and the huge increase in wedding budgets.

It was not until the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century that the concept of identity as we know it today came to the fore (Lemert, 2011, p. 9). However, what exactly that concept of identity is, often remains elusive. Social theorist Anthony Elliott (2011) suggested that “for many social theorists, from George Simmel to Anthony Giddens, the answer to the

question “‘What is identity?’ would be something like this: ‘An enigmatic paradox!’ The paradox concerns the complex ways in which identity wraps together subjectivity and objectivity” (p. xv). Cultural studies scholar Douglas Kellner (1995) established that in traditional societies anthropological and sociological folklore present identity as “fixed, solid, and stable” (p. 231); whereas, identity in our society is much more capricious, as it has become

“more mobile, multiple, personal, self-reflexive, and subject to change and innovation” (p. 231).

At the most basic level, identity can be defined as a statement of who you are, involving “a tension between public (what occurs in front of others) and private (what occurs when there is no witness), for private statements can vacillate in a way that public ones cannot” (Leeds-Hurwitz,

2002, p. 28). Communications scholar Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz explained that we, as consumers,

“make choices about the physical props that will serve in their statements of identity” (p. 28), going on to say that we “not only say who we are, what groups we claim allegiance to through our words, we also show it through our actions and the material choices we make” (p. 28).

McCracken (1987, 1990) made numerous references to consumption scholar Russell

Belk’s (1984) work on the role of material goods in establishing our sense of self. Belk (1988) is best known for his contention that possessions are instrumental to the development of self

(p. 141), asserting that “knowingly or unknowingly, intentionally or unintentionally, we regard our possessions as parts of ourselves” (p. 139). McCracken was intrigued with Belk’s suggestion that the “growing role differentiation and anonymity in Western Society has encouraged the use of goods as an expression of and guide to social identity” (McCracken, 1990, p. 19), but seemed equally fascinated by Belk’s analysis of how, as he put it, “this growth of the autonomous individual is aided by the use of consumer goods as a means with which the individual can

define and distinguish aspects of the self” (McCracken, 1987, p. 145). Belk (1988) frequently revisited the notion that our possessions both constitute and reflect our identities, becoming part of what he dubbed the “extended self” (p. 139). He furthered that notion by exploring how possessions can distinguish an individual from others while simultaneously expressing belonging to a group (p. 153). Belk asserted that most prior research on consumer self-concept rather considerably underestimates the extent to which we incorporate material goods into our sense of self (p. 140) and also highlights his understanding that contemporary consumption reveals that the feeling of identity we invest in material objects can be “extraordinarily high” (p. 144).

In contrast to Belk, Elliott (2011) seemed to find the entire notion of identity both

“curiously puzzling” and “mysteriously contradictory” (p. xii). So, although Elliott concurs with

Belk that the consumption of material goods contributes to the constitution of an individual’s sense of self, he also explores the idea that identity is something “profoundly individual, subjective, personal and private” (p. xiv), suggesting that in order to properly frame consumption’s role in our sense of self and our sense of the world, it is necessary to factor in a litany of “individual pathologies, compulsions and addictions” (p. xii). While I do essentially agree with Elliott’s stance on the notion of identity, I also feel that holding this position precludes much meaningful research on the topic. To a certain degree it feels like Elliott was suggesting that there can be no consensus on identity because it is far too individualized a concept to produce any meaningful generalized conclusions.

Sassatelli (2011), meanwhile, framed the relationship of consumption and identity formation from a decidedly less pessimistic (however, slightly tautological) vantage point, asserting that consumer culture is “deeply implicated in the fabrication of identities: it produces

consumers, and does so in a variety of ways” (p. 236). Sassatelli (2007) was a proponent of reframing the meaning and uses of material culture when examining consumption, suggesting that “as an increasingly central social identity, the ‘consumer’ takes up the object/subject dialectic which characterizes the constitution of modern subjectivity as normatively defined in opposition to objects, even though these serve to fix various aspects of identity itself” (p. 139).

Sassatelli not only advocated examining the role of material goods in the embodiment of personal identity, finding value in delineating how our identity as consumer relates to other social identities (2007, p. 84), but also advised looking beyond commoditisation and conspicuous consumption to get to our true identity as consumers (2011, p. 236). Sassatelli (2007) concluded that conspicuous consumption is the modern, and more individual version, of the process of identity construction and social distinction seen in traditional society as the accumulation of precious objects whose value increased with the patina of time (p. 67).

To consumer culture scholar Adam Arvidsson (2005), the most ideal access point to understand current social relations, was undoubtedly through consumption and the associated questions of culture and identity, an assessment which he felt must be shared by many students of contemporary consumer practice (p. 17). Arvidsson went on to assert that there can be no doubt that consumers use material goods productively, most readily in the construction of personal identity (p. 18). Arvidsson seemed most interested, though, in how brands have become, what he deemed, “something of an omnipresent tool” (p. 3) in the construction of identity and shared experiences; explaining that “although brands have a long history as a commercial institution, reaching as far back as the eighteenth century, their position as central components of the social fabric was established in the 1980s” (p. 3). For Arvidsson, when

examining the personal constitution of identity, there seemed to be little distinction between branding specifically, and the consumption of material goods generally. And, as Arnould, et al.

(2004) asserted: “inalienable possessions play a powerful role in legitimating group and individual identity” (p. 210). Arnould, et al. helped explicate the authority, and perhaps even supremacy, that consumption plays in the constitution of identity.

Branding can be seen as the amalgamation of identity and consumption. Brands tend to work “as a kind of generalized medium of communication” (Arvidsson, 2005, p. 130). As communication specialists Alison Winch and Anna Webster (2012) explained: “Brands create narratives. These narratives are usually aspirational and tap into popular consciousness in order to encourage the consumer to engage with, buy into and invest in the brand” (p. 52). This is particularly evident in areas where brands are functionally interchangeable, such as bicycles and cars. Consumers who would never entertain purchasing GM over Ford, or those who insist upon an esoteric boutique brand bike over the mainstream, exhibit a strong identification with the brand narrative.

Sassatelli (2007) likened the function of a brand to that of the myth — not just a name, but a symbol evoking an interpretive and emotional frame around the meaning (p. 127). Yet, from Banet-Weiser’s (2012) perspective, branding is differentiated from commodification because a brand’s value is dynamic and “extends beyond a tangible product” (p. 4). This extension of value beyond the product constructs a shared experience between the consumer and the brand (Winch & Webster, 2012, p. 55), which can be seen as inviting consumers to “actively co-perform the themed experience” (Arvidsson, p. 79). In fact, a major component of contemporary branding practice is “the creation of an interactive community around a brand”

(Winch & Webster, p. 55), in essence aiding individuals in establishing their cultural sense of the world.

Consumers have the tendency to equate branding with the industry’s attempt to establish loyalty by constructing an identity for material goods — in essence attaching social or cultural meaning “to make the commodity more personally resonant with an individual consumer”

(Banet-Weiser, 2012, p. 4). Arvidsson (2005) explained that from a marketing perspective:

“goods might fulfil a wide variety of needs and functions, but brands are primarily to be understood as resources for the construction of a self and its social moorings” (p. 82).

Similarities between the formation of identity and the marketing concept of branding certainly exist, particularly as “branding in our era has extended beyond a business model; branding is now both reliant on, and reflective of, our most basic social and cultural relations” (Banet-

Weiser, 2012, p. 4). However, unlike personal identity, branding requires a certain amount of agreement from the public, as Winch and Webster (2012) explained: “branding is a practice that increasingly facilitates the coproduction of value by consumers” (p. 52) — something that is increasingly evident with Facebook pages for brands, and corporate Twitter feeds. So, in essence, constituting one’s sense of self proves to be a more solitary activity than does the marketing concept of branding.

That being said, however, a key development in branding recently has been branding people, a practice referred to in the branding literature as personal branding, or self-as-brand; what is essentially “marketing the self and strategically branding one’s presence in the public sphere” (Winch & Webster, 2012, p. 58) with the ultimate goal of increasing one’s social capital

(Kheder, 2014, p. 36). Also, as Engstrom (2012) noted, when it comes to weddings, both the

public and private spheres become performative (p. 22). Tom Peters is credited with coining the term “personal branding” in his 1997 article titled “The Brand Called You” (Arruda, 2014, para.

1). What likely started as simply a unique way to package career self-help in a flailing economy, has morphed into a big business “world of work where employees think of themselves as brands and use all the same assets, resources and tools that corporate brands have to remain relevant and achieve their goals” (Arruda, 2014, para. 1). In this domain, rather than viewing the brand as merely a communication vehicle (Burmann, Hegner, & Riley, 2009, p. 113), the self-brand becomes about “claiming a space to express oneself, and through that claiming, establishing oneself as an expert of a particular field of knowledge” (Banet-Weiser, & Arzumanova, 2013, p. 167).

The foundation of the personal branding phenomenon is the process of marketing oneself and the assertion that everyone has a personal brand that must be strategically managed (Kheder, pp. 30-32). In communications scholars Sarah Banet-Weiser and Inna Arzumanova’s (2013) investigation of what they deemed the “increasing normativity of self-branding” (p. 170) they concluded that consumption “is both the route to visibility and the reward in this formulation”

(p. 177), asserting that this phenomenon produces increasingly more fine-tuned and negotiated narratives of the self. Wee and Brooks (2010) presented the primary goal of personal branding as utilizing self-knowledge to influence how we are perceived (p. 47), however, they ultimately portray personal branding as much more of a product of big business than it is an exercise in reflexivity. Based on my professional experience in the wedding industry, I tend to agree with

Wee and Brooks. While I do concede to Banet-Weiser and Arzumanova’s pronouncement of the

“increasing normativity” of self-branding, I do not feel the result is a more finely tuned narrative of the self, but instead an increasingly contrived façade presented as the self.

The personal branding phenomenon seems entirely more calculated than generalized consumption in the name of constituting a sense of self. Wee and Brooks (2010) suggested that not only does personal branding promote commodification of the individual, but by nature of its very construction, the personal brand needs to be commodified in order to be distinguished from the group at large (p. 54), the promotional imperative being intrinsic to the world of personal branding (p. 55). So, while branding is now ubiquitous within the realm of identity construction

(Arvidsson), it is nonetheless not synonymous with the marketing concept of branding.

There may be some intrinsic value in understanding notions of the self metaphorically through the model of branding, but this may be most readily facilitated by framing them in the current culture of social media. While the branding literature may suggest that everyone has a personal brand, whether they want one or not, for the general public personal branding serves primarily as the latest development in entrepreneurship and job-finding techniques. The personal branding phenomenon holds much more traction when scrutinizing the social media mavens of the world — those who, despite having no discernible talent, have managed to turn their personal brand into an empire of fame and fortune (ex. Kim Kardashian). But, nonetheless, the concept of self-as-brand undeniably suggests changes to our contemporary notions of identity.

Looking at consumption, particularly as prescribed by Weddingbells, is an excellent segue into rhetorical theory, particularly within the rhetorical framework established by Kenneth

Burke (1969) and Lloyd Bitzer (1968, 1987). Burke and Bitzer both offered structure to judge a

piece of discourse against the cultural and situational contexts in which it was produced (Herrick,

2004, p. 222). I use the term rhetoric as it is defined by Hoffman and Ford (2010): “a neutral term that simply refers to the strategic use of symbols to generate meaning” (p. 2).

The rhetorical audience, as identified by Bitzer (1968), is comprised only of “those persons who are capable of being influenced by discourse and of being mediators of change”

(p. 8). In the context of my data set, the primary rhetorical audience is the engaged couple, with the secondary, but still important, audience being members of the wedding industrial complex, particularly wedding planners, florists, and photographers. Bitzer also noted that comparable situations elicit comparable responses which produce rhetorical forms and establish a special vernacular (p. 13) which is certainly applicable to weddings, and I imagine to the magazine itself. For Bitzer, rhetoric must exist within a context, and the “notion of audience is central to the rhetorical situation” (Sloane, 2001, p. 73).

A key term for Burke (1969) is identification. When examining Weddingbells magazine,

“bride” may be the primary identifier — providing commonality without denying their distinctness (p. 21). Rhetoric is integral in this examination of identity, for as Longaker and

Walker (2011) noted, Burke “insisted that rhetoric does not ultimately aim at persuasion but rather at identification, a sense that the listener and the audience are consubstantial in their motives” (p. 232). Burke offered a “body of identifications” (p. 26) rather than a single, particular address, as a new way to examine rhetoric, ascribing their pertinence to repetition and

“daily reinforcement” (p. 26) rather than to “exceptional rhetorical skill” (p. 26). And, Burke delved further into identification, looking to what he deems a “privileged class” (p. 28) which just by nature of belonging infers a “kind of social insignia promising preferment” (p. 28) which

he wished the reader to view along the lines of Veblen (p. 28). This can certainly be applied to the identification as bride. Surely, part of the enticement of the white wedding is the social insignia of bride — offering preferment — if only just for that one day. It also confers, à la

Veblen, a certain socioeconomic status that quite possibly will not carry forward into the marriage — but at least can be achieved through the ritual of the white wedding.

Burke (1969) also delved into the dynamic between identification and persuasion, asserting that “persuasion may be for the purpose of causing the audience to identify itself with the speaker’s interests; and the speaker draws on identification of interests to establish rapport”

(p. 46). It seems clear that this is what transpires within bridal media: the wedding industrial complex needs the bride to feel aligned with their interests, even if they are packaged as her interests, and develops a rapport by enticing her into the white wedding milieu.

Narrative theorist Walter Fisher and communications scholar Stephen O’Leary (1996) presented rhetoric as a genre of communication, as well as “a way of interpreting communication, and a theory or philosophy of communication” (p. 246). The authors looked to the work of Kenneth Burke to expand the parameters of rhetoric to include any “symbolic expression that relates to human beings” (p. 247), going on to assert that it is “from this stance that rhetoric becomes a significant mode of interpretation” (p. 247). This seems like a crucial point for this project — by expanding the parameters of rhetoric (to include more than just the verbal aspect of communication, but the symbolic including visual and cultural connotations), readily allows the examination of bridal magazines.

Similarly, communication scholars Michael Miller and Timothy Levine (1996) proposed a broadening of how persuasion is approached in communication research but placing it under the umbrella of “social influence” (p. 261). This is pertinent to this project, as it assuredly goes without saying that Weddingbells is in the business of persuading its readers to engage with its advertisers and execute their prescribed strategies when planning their weddings. Miller and

Levine also emphasized that “perceived competence (or expertise) and trustworthiness are commonly recognized as contributing to perceptions of source credibility” (p. 262).

As the leading bridal magazine in Canada, Weddingbells has intrinsic source credibility before the reader even opens the cover — and editor-in-chief Alison McGill reminds the reader of the magazine’s credibility frequently in her letters, either by noting how many brides they have helped over the years, or her personal tenure at the magazine. Therefore, rhetorical theory is particularly useful in the analysis of the editorial content of Alison McGill.

The motivation for the audience to take up the rhetoric of the wedding industrial complex, as presented by Weddingbells, can be better understood by looking to the work of

Simmel (1997), particularly his views on adornment (p. 206) and style (p. 211). This concept coincides with the idea of the “Rhetoric of Fashion” (Barthes, 1983, p. 225). Social theorist

Roland Barthes (1983) examined fashion from a written perspective, asserting that photographic communication “has its own lexicon and syntax, its own banned or approved turns of phrase”

(p. 4). It can certainly be said that the same can be said for wedding editorial photographic coverage — and the corresponding texts — as well. It is helpful when viewing the white wedding as theory, to take up Barthes’ terminology and ascribe the signifier as the writing of Wedding, and the signified as the ideology of Wedding (p. 226). Barthes’ lens can also be seen to align

with that of Veblen (1934) when he asserted that the most prolific representations of the rhetoric of fashion pertain to not work, but rather, leisure (Barthes, 1983, p. 248), and how the work of fashion is not necessarily grounded in a reality that is familiar to society at large.

Sociologist Stuart Hall (2019) offered a look the ideological effects of culture and the media. Looking to the work of Marx and Engels, Hall discussed the many perspectives on the definition of culture (p. 302), and how hegemony and ideology interplay (pp. 318-325). Hall asserted that both “quantitatively and qualitatively, in twentieth-century advanced capitalism, the media have established a decisive and fundamental leadership in the cultural sphere” (p. 326).

Hall concluded this chapter by examining how the “whole gigantic complex sphere of public information” (p. 326) both produces and consumes “social knowledge” (p. 326), offering that this “is the first of the great cultural functions of the modern media: the provision and selective construction of social knowledge, of social imagery, through which we perceive the [worlds of others], and imaginarily reconstruct their lives and ours into some intelligible ‘world-of-the- whole’” (p. 326). This is pertinent to this project because it places magazines as an important vehicle to observe the construction of the ideological and cultural sphere as well as the construction of social knowledge. Engstrom (2012) looked to the work of Hall to help define the dichotomy between public and private spheres within the structure of the wedding (p. 227). All of these forces enable the dissemination and propagation of the white wedding and its ubiquity in our society.

The phenomenon of imitation, or mimesis/mimetic desire, can certainly be applied to modern wedding culture: employing all the effort to appear original while still maintaining convention. Anthropological philosopher René Girard (1996) offered a look at religion and

culture, as well as mimesis in literature in the collection of his own work, The Girard Reader.

Girard asserted that we can look to great literature to see that society portrays originality through imitation, unveiling the “imitative nature of desire” (p. 42). Girard went on to write that “we must not be fooled by these individualisms professed with fanfare, for they merely hide a new form of imitation” (p. 43). Girard explained that mimesis and mimetic desire are virtually synonymous — declaring that “mimetic desire is a kind of nonconscious imitation of others”

(p. 290), while mimesis “seeks to obtain the object that the model desires” (p. 290). This perspective is very useful for looking at how the wedding traditions keep getting imitated even when the bride is looking for uniqueness and individuality within the wedding ritual.

In “René Girard and the Rhetoric of Consumption,” rhetorician Kathleen Vandenberg

(2006) looked at the work of Girard through Burke’s lens of rhetoric as a “general body of identifications” (p. 259). Vandenberg provided a useful framework from which to examine

Weddingbells — as a body of identifications — but perhaps a bit extreme to call it “sociological propaganda” (p. 259), but perhaps not too far off either. This rhetoric of consumption employs the same phenomena that transpires with weddings: people want a unique, personalized wedding, yet most often end up — whether consciously or unconsciously, imitating their experience of what they know a wedding should be. Vandenberg also delved into the work of Girard’s “theory of mimetic or triangular desire” (p. 259) as it aligns with the work of Bitzer and Burke.

While exploring how rhetoric is commonly exhibited in our society, Vandenberg (2006) provided a perspective useful for this project:

In this modern culture, rhetoric is most frequently employed in spontaneous,

unconscious, and contagious symbolic acts, acts motivated by metaphysical desire and

expressed through ‘statements’ (whether verbal, visual, or physical) of imitation and

identification exchanged in fluctuating and multidirectional messages. Such rhetoric is to

be found in all instances where multiple members of a community (which today can be as

small as a household or as large as the globe) at persuasively on one another, particularly,

in these times, by means of the mass media which multiply and intensify the impact of

persuasive action. (p. 261)

This helps frame the fact that a wedding can be viewed in this context as a statement, a persuasive action, and a rhetorical act; the community can be seen as the bride, and then later the guests at the wedding; and, although Girard was largely discussing unconscious acts or processes, without an individual being conscious of it, it stand to reason that for most brides, what is being communicated is somewhat culturally scripted so not always consciously informed. Vandenberg emphasized that although it is ultimately unconscious, there remains a sense of community that amplifies the unconscious desire — particularly through the constructs of mass media.

Vandenberg (2006) also discussed the change in consumer culture at the turn of the century with improved production — and access to products that had previously only been accessible by the very wealthy. Contentment was no longer encouraged, but rather it was discovered that “encouraging envy was the key to increasing profits” (p. 264), and that mass production had led to mass consumption. Vandenberg noted that there was an “inability to achieve contentment through acquisition [that] was obvious to all from the beginning” (p. 265), asserting that Burke would feel that individuals are not drawn to the objects but rather the

“persuasion itself” (p. 265). This phenomenon is very evident now — both societally at large, as well as specifically for my purposes with weddings. There is a factor to celebrity weddings, for

example, that seems both enticing and intoxicating — and while the couple might be emphatically pronouncing their uniqueness, they are nonetheless doing their best to emulate the high-profile attributes of the white wedding. Further to this point, Vandenberg also noted that as society “became audibly and visibly linked with one another through catalogues and magazines, radio, television, and the Internet, their opportunities to identify with and imitate one another, in other words, their opportunities to act rhetorically upon one another, increased” (p. 267). This is ever more dominant now with social media — but prior to the explosion of social media, magazines were the arena to “act rhetorically upon one another” — a place to be influenced, and if you managed to get your wedding featured, then an opportunity to influence as well.

Vandenberg’s primary focus on “sociological propaganda” (pp. 269-270) seemed to speak more about the internet and social media, rather than magazines, however, in broader strokes it does speak to the rather nebulous rhetorical structure of Weddingbells and how complicated it can be when delineating and describing the nature of desire and consumption.

Because of its omnipresence in the data, as well as its clear ubiquity in all of the literature, I posit that the term white wedding can take on the mantle of theoretical concept. The white wedding encompasses the material objects required for a wedding, the societal expectations associated with the wedding, the bridal identity that is created in the planning process, the conspicuous consumption of the wedding that has become the cultural norm, as well as the undeniable yet quiet machinations of the wedding industrial complex.

Chapter Four: Methodology

For more than a decade before returning to university for my doctoral studies I ran a special events company where I planned hundreds of weddings. In this role I acted as project manager, therapist, etiquette advisor, interior designer, and branding specialist. For several years during this period I also wrote a newspaper column (in The Calgary Herald) about wedding etiquette. When looking at this process as a research topic, it became apparent that a primary imperative in the wedding ritual is establishing what the wedding will communicate, as well as establishing that a primary task for a wedding planner is helping to create the bridal identity and creating a brand for the couple, which seems to be an example of the perfect amalgamation of identity and commodification. I was very intrigued to examine how the wedding media both reflect and inform this amalgamation of identity and commodification — both from the perspective of the bridal couple as their primary audience and from the perspective of their secondary audience — a place I formerly occupied as part of the wedding industrial complex — all through my current vantage point utilizing a scholarly communications lens.

It was a rhetorical balancing act to utilize my professional experience as an asset and maintain an unbiased approach when analyzing my data set, but it definitively proved to be an asset during the content analysis allowing a much deeper understanding of both the text itself as well as the machinations of the industry behind the text. Having a deeper understanding of the behaviors at play during the planning process and the sway held by the wedding industrial complex, allowed me as researcher to better frame the data with the theory of conspicuous consumption and performance theory, as well as elevate the scope of white wedding to a theoretical construct that allowed a more profound analysis of the data.

Methodological context

As Tinkler (2016) pointed out, scholars from many disciplines (not just historians), including social scientists, work with women’s periodicals using quantitative content analysis and thematic studies in order to “study the mechanisms through which magazines construct meaning” (p. 25).

For my analysis, magazines did, indeed, prove to be “complex cultural products” (p. 26).

Tinkler’s position is definitely in line with my own:

[Magazines] are the product of negotiation typically between publishers, editors,

advertisers and readers. Their pages harbor diversity, inconsistency, contradiction and

tension. For all these reasons it is helpful to have a methodology for working with

magazines that is inclusive rather than fragmentary. (p. 26)

I like this concise explanation of magazines — it explains some of the issues I had with editorial vs. advertising — elucidating for me that perhaps this is not anything unusual with Weddingbells in particular but is ubiquitous in the medium as a whole. As Tinkler also points out: “the magazine experience is not just about reading and looking, but the interplay of these and how people engage with magazines as material objects in their everyday lives” (p. 32). Tinkler’s suggestion of a holistic approach spoke to me — as it basically laid out what I was doing when going through each issue — even if at the time I did not know specifically that was what I was doing. Tinkler breaks this approach into several elements: “tracing the threads in themes; reflecting on the impression created by magazine content; attending to the different ‘voices’ that emerge” (p. 32) — which also helped illuminate that when I was focusing on the specific elements I pulled out of each issue, I needed to make sure that I did not lose sight of the plethora of elements within the context and complexity of each theme (Tinkler, p. 32).

My primary method was a critical textual analysis of wedding magazines, utilizing content analysis, as well as rhetorical analysis on a subset of the data. The primary goal, however, was to contextualize what was going on in society at the time particularly within the industry and target audience to reveal how this medium conveys messages of consumption and branding. I completed a content and qualitative analysis with my audience — investigating both how a bride would read the content, as well as how a wedding planner would read it. Any anecdotal examples from my professional experience are clearly bracketed and are offered as part of a rigorous, methodologically sound rhetorical criticism.

Berger (1998) offered a number of pertinent definitions of content analysis, the most predominant being: “a methodology by which the researcher seeks to determine the manifest content of…published communications by systematic, objective, and quantitative analysis” (p.

23); going on to say that as a magazine “is produced by a communicator, the intention of the communicator may be the object of our research” (p. 23). Berger asserted that the values and attitudes reflected in the material can be seen to reflect the values and attitudes of the those who created it (p. 23). Clearly, I am employing content analysis in this project — so Berger’s perspective that content analysis “is an indirect way of making inferences about people” (p. 24) is germane.

Berger (1998) also explained the concept of social role: “the behavior that is expected of people, given their places in particular groups or organizations” (p. 45), going on to say that a role is a “pattern of conduct” (p. 45) which is always “connected with a particular situation”

(p. 45). This is a useful perspective for examining how the role of bride is taken up in our society. Berger also made an important observation that people are “not necessarily conscious that they are adopting these roles, because their behavior patterns have become internalized and

seem completely natural” (p. 45). This can be broadened to pertain to the societal view of bride and helps establish how the readers of Weddingbells assume this role of bride.

Berger (1998) went on to look at identity from a sociological perspective, identifying it as the “socialized part of the self” (p. 47). Berger went on to note that it is only when said identity is sanctioned by others that it actually becomes real to the person presenting it (p. 62). This serves as a very pertinent point for this project — because for the reader of Weddingbells to take up the identity of bride — she must be recognized as such by others. This may indeed serve as another — however small — factor in the continuity and pervasiveness of the white wedding.

Content analysis

The first stage of my research method involved a content analysis of the editorial content of 20 issues of Weddingbells magazine; my primary data set is a 10-year span of Weddingbells magazine — all issues from 2003 to 2012. Weddingbells is the preeminent Canadian bridal magazine which is published twice a year: Spring/Summer edition and Fall/Winter edition.

Rhetorical analysis

After the content analysis was complete, rhetorical analysis was used to analyze the letters from the editor. Just as the magazine is used as proxy for the industry as a whole, the editor stands in proxy for both the position of the magazine, as evidenced in the letters, as well as to contextualize the analysis within society at large, the industry, and for the target audience. In the analysis phase I triangulated between how magazines portray the communication elements of a wedding, intention and strategy of the editor, and the context and audience culture dominant at the time of publication. The content analysis illuminated the historic change: how the wedding- industrial complex’s communication altered over time. During this phase I also employed my

own experience both rigorously and critically to offer one perspective of what the analysis of the data set reveals.

Kenneth Burke asserted that when a text conforms to an expected pattern, the content will be more persuasive (Sloane, 2001, p. 55). Therefore, it will be enlightening to not only scrutinize the content of Weddingbells, but the format in which it is presented, as well as how that format changed over the ten-year period.

Examining the data set from the perspective of organizational rhetoric was also useful, taking the magazine as the organization and the assumption that all rhetoric is “strategically generated for one or more audiences” (Hoffman & Ford, 2010, p. 8). While one editor-in-chief was at the helm of the magazine over the 10-year period, there were a multitude of writers that contributed texts that are analyzed. As Hoffman and Ford noted, between the pervasiveness of technology and the “concurrent shrinking of the world” (p. 11), the entire concept of audience is now a much more convoluted notion, demanding more thought when creating any messaging.

Data selection

My initial quantitative analysis of my primary data set — a ten-year span of Weddingbells magazine — involved counting and categorizing every single page of every single issue from

Spring/Summer 2003 to Fall/Winter 2012. This was done in order to get a sense of the content make-up of each issue as well as the focus of the magazine overall.

After going through the first few issues I developed categories to code each page. This process resulted in 35 different categories (only five of which are shown in Table 1) which enabled coding of every page from this ten-year period.

Table 1 Selection of categories from initial data analysis Pages of Number of Pages of Pages of Pages of Pages of Total tips: real Issue beauty fashion tips: real number planning weddings ads ads etiquette weddings of pages misc. featured S/S 2003 33 249 28 5 10 6 586 F/W 2003 36 138 15 7 5 5 475 S/S 2004 24 236 35 2 20 4 580 F/W 2004 24 183 34 2 6 3 475 S/S 2005 14 244 39 2 10 4 553 F/W 2005 20 180 31 2 8 4 476 S/S 2006 17 220 23 2 13 4 493 F/W 2006 13 192 32 0 11 3 505 S/S 2007 17 250 28 0 13 4 557 F/W 2007 11 202 53 0 9 4 503 S/S 2008 15 243 36 0 9 4 533 F/W 2008 10 183 39 0 9 7 475 S/S 2009 9 204 42 0 12 7 479 F/W 2009 8 162 33 0 13 9 406 S/S 2010 8 216 39 0 7 5 462 F/W 2010 12 159 34 0 7 5 405 S/S 2011 6 198 37 0 10 5 437 F/W 2011 4 183 34 0 10 7 410 S/S 2012 2 212 39 0 19 11 429 F/W 2012 15 192 41 0 19 7 404

Average: 15 202 35 1 11 5 482 all issues Average: 35 1 12 5 510 SS Average: 35 1 10 5 453 FW

After this coding was complete, I was able to determine some patterns, both in each issue and longitudinally over the ten years. Based on this, I combined some of my headings to create the four most pertinent categories for my project:

1. letters from the editor

2. real weddings

3. tips

4. a category for overall impressions of the issue.

The order of the categories was in no particular order — basically the order in which I encountered them in the first few issues. Table 1 offers a snapshot of some of the 35 categories, which gives an indication — a cross-section of sorts — of some of the categories I used. Table 1 also offers both some of the categories that did not end up being part of additional analysis, as well as some of the categories that became the primary focus of further analysis.

Tips

Although I coded the pages into 13 different tips categories in my initial analysis, I combined them all into one category for the sake of my qualitative analysis section. These tips categories originally included planning advice on everything from etiquette to fashion — there were some tips categories that only appeared in the first few issues (for example: tips aimed directly at the groom) — and some that were extensive throughout all issues (for example: planning suggestions). I generally only focused on tips that were either repeatedly mentioned throughout all the issues, or tips that stood out because they were clearly mentioned to tie-in with a particular feature or theme in a specific issue.

Letters

I chose “letters” as a category because it offers the most direct access to the opinions and potential influence of Alison McGill, the editor-in-chief of Weddingbells. The letters serve as insight into the editorial focus of each issue — and a benchmark of whether or not the editorial staff actually managed to realize that focus throughout its pages. That dynamic also enables the letters to offer some insight into the behind-the-scenes dynamics — between the editor, the publisher, and the advertisers — that are inevitably endemic in all modern magazines, regardless of genre. Although Weddingbells does not dub the letter a “letter” until the very last issue in my timeframe (before that it is referred to as some permutation of “editor’s note”) — I refer to them all as “the letter” throughout my analysis section.

Real weddings

The number of real weddings in each issue remained a primary focus as I used this to indicate several trends — some about the magazine generally over time, and some about the industry as a whole. The real weddings are features depicting just as it sounds — the weddings of real

Canadian couples — in general, but not always — who tied the knot in the same time frame as the issue, but one year earlier (for example: the real weddings in the Spring/Summer 2005 issue typically took place in the spring or summer of 2004). The real weddings are an integral part of my analysis because they provide insight into the reality of what type of weddings are actually taking place, as well as offering a glimpse of whether or not the trends promoted by

Weddingbells — and by proxy, the wedding industrial complex — are coming to fruition, and the way in which the real weddings are presented in the various issues offers insight into the machinations of magazine publishing — and various methods used to present imagery over time.

General overall impressions

Finally, I had a category for overall impressions of the magazine, which often included comments about the cover, a fashion editorial layout, or some overarching sentiment I had after spending hours within the pages of each individual issue. Sometimes this involved a newsworthy event — such as a royal wedding — which occupied the attention of the editorial staff throughout an issue — and sometimes it was a bold statement made on the cover, which never really came to fruition inside the pages.

After I had determined the four categories I wanted to focus on: tips, editor, real weddings, and general — I started new spreadsheets to capture my impressions as I went through each issue. During this process I spent a lot of time with the portion of each issue that comprises those categories. In my spreadsheets I made note of the date I was conducting the analysis, the issue, the page(s), the author (if available), the category, my notes about the overall impression or key element, and any quote (if applicable). This resulted in over 3,000 cells of data, so my next step was to break down the large spreadsheet into four separate spreadsheets grouped by topic.

The next step was to print out the four individual spreadsheets, which was productive to allow even more in-depth analysis. I then went through the data viewing each topical section from each issue and used a highlighter to choose the most pertinent phrase or keyword from my notes. After completing this process for each issue in each of the four categories, I chose a colour for each category: green for editor, orange for tips, pink for real weddings, and yellow for general.

Figure 2 Snapshot of first whiteboard orientation/layout

Going back through the spreadsheets I wrote the key word or phrase on a the appropriate colour of notecard. I then organized the notecards on a large magnetic white board, grouped by

issue. I was able to fit half the data in a row horizontally — so I had two rows of all the pertinent data — which was very helpful to take a step back — both literally and figuratively — to see what trends, topics, and issues were highlighted. Figure 2 depicts a section of the whiteboard at this stage of analysis.

I then used a dry erase marker to circle cards that struck me as key issues, as well as draw lines to make connections between categories and between different magazine issues.

Chronological analysis

This was the starting point for the write-up of the chronological analysis of the 20 issues of

Weddingbells. I found it very helpful to be able to continually go back to the whiteboard and assess what I had chosen to encapsulate the contents of that particular issue. This approach allowed for both an in-depth analysis of each issue, as well as the ability to visualize trends that emerged over the 10 years.

After this step was mostly complete, I realized that many of the notes in the general/overall impression category involved comments about the cover itself. To allow for a similar ability to analyze the covers both individually and as a whole, I had small copies of each cover printed so they could go up on the whiteboard also. This turned out to be very helpful to see the changes in format over the decade, as well as the editorial focus of certain key issues, such as “Your Day, Your Way,” and general stylistic choices (especially font and layout) over time. After analyzing the covers generally, I got out a ruler and actually measured the text on a few of the issues that seemed both interesting and different — especially their size in relation to the magazine title. Throughout this process I went back through the chronological analysis write- up and added pertinent facts about the covers as necessary.

Figure 3 Snapshot of second whiteboard orientation/layout

Note: This offers a look at a section of the whiteboard. The codes are unnecessary to understand and are not intended to be understood at a detail level by the reader. During the chronological analysis there were a few topics that emerged as key components and offered an opportunity for more meta-level analysis. So, after incorporating

analysis of the covers, I reorganized the white board grouping all the cards according to topic to allow further insights into key topics for analysis (see Figure 3). Figure 3 offers a snapshot of how the cards were organized on the whiteboard.

Topical analysis

After analyzing the cards grouped together in this fashion, four elements emerged as important fodder for a topical analysis. Specifically, the key topics are:

1. the editor — “According to Alison”

2. the dominant theme of personalizing your wedding day — “Your Day, Your Way”

3. how Weddingbells reflects its socio-cultural environs — “Canadian-ness”

4. and what emerged as the dominant theme both in the analysis as well as the rest of the

dissertation — “The White Wedding”

So, although the chronological analysis provided many insights, I decided some topical analysis was necessary also to properly communicate the full extent of the answers to my research questions.

For the “According to Alison” topical analysis I went back through all of the applicable spreadsheets, as well as the notecards on the whiteboard. Rather than the step-by-step chronology of her letters that I had analyzed before, I was looking for larger themes presented by looking at the data set as a whole, as well as what I was able to glean about her personality and her professional goals from these sections in the 10 years of Weddingbells.

To complete the “Your Day, Your Way” topical analysis I combed through all mentions of both this specific phrase, as well as any editorial content aimed at personalizing your wedding day. I looked at how many covers had text referring to some sort of personalization of the

wedding, as well as went through all the spreadsheets and notecards to see how often and in what context this message was promoted.

For the examination of how Weddingbells exemplifies the social and cultural indicators of Canada I again went through all of the pertinent spreadsheets and notecards taking note of any facets that struck me as uniquely Canadian — either from my own perspective as a Canadian or in marked contrast to key elements of American and British bridal magazines as described in the outside literature I read for this project. I also went back to the actual magazines to reacquaint myself with some of the visuals — for example, the depictions of non-white brides and grooms

— as I had not made note of these particular issues, and it was rather an overall impression I had about the content of Weddingbells after realizing how much focus the literature from the US and the UK had on the ethnicity and total lack of diversity evident within those publications. I then completed a search for literature dealing with the depiction of ethnicity and multiculturalism in

Canadian media. I found five or six relevant articles which were useful to back up my own assertion of what I was noticing to be the Canadian-ness of Weddingbells. By referencing these publications, I was able to establish that what I was noticing within the pages of Weddingbells was not something unique to Weddingbells but rather a reflection of the societal norms within which it was produced.

For my analysis of the “White Wedding” topic I followed the same tactic of combing through the spreadsheets and notecards. However, it readily became apparent that this was the overriding topic throughout this dissertation. As this term is reflected throughout the literature review, as well as by nature of the fact that I use the term as theory, this section of topical analysis appears in the Conclusion as it effectively serves to encapsulate the thread that runs throughout the project as a whole.

Historical background analysis

At a later stage of dissertation writing it became apparent that there is an integral historical and cultural component to my findings that seemed to require a separate section unto themselves:

 details about the power of the wedding industrial complex

 the supremacy of the wedding dress

 and the ubiquity of the white wedding

Therefore, I decided it was a necessity for an untraditional chapter. The Historical Background chapter (Chapter Five) is a hybrid of sorts: part literature review and part analysis. I went through the fascinating historical literature on the wedding industrial complex, the wedding dress, and the white wedding as a literature review, while also analyzing it through the lens of my professional experience, as well as through the lens of the data set (Weddingbells). I wanted to ensure that the reader has the appropriate background information to better understand many of the details that remain ubiquitous in contemporary wedding culture.

Chapter Five: Historical Background

It is not merely the power of the wedding industrial complex that is fascinating, but the fact that it can wield such power for so many years, and yet be so quiet about it. The wedding industry displays a dichotomy of being completely pervasive in popular culture, yet rarely ascribed to anything more than “women’s work,” or a long-standing cultural tradition — which in fact, it is not really — another reason the whole phenomenon is so very intriguing.

The term white wedding which appears throughout this project, refers to much more than the white dress, or the colour of the flowers or table linens, but is used to reflect a much larger theoretical term — a term that includes the wedding industrial complex, the cultural traditions surrounding the ritual of the wedding, the performance of bride, the societal norms and familial expectations, and yes, the wedding dress. White wedding is about the cultural phenomenon of the wedding. As Jellison (2008) asserted: “the act of marrying [is] not a wedding” (p. 231) going on to say that almost a century of “media images and wedding-industry publicity [has] convinced most Americans that a wedding [is] about wearing the right clothing, in the correct setting, surrounded by the appropriate objects” (p. 231). This is certainly a very telling statement, and while Engstrom (2012) asserted that the term white wedding requires “little in the way of definition when used to describe a form of social event marking the marriage ritual” (p. 23), going on to describe how it has become a “commonsense term” (p. 23), it nonetheless requires further definition within the parameters of this project. Engstrom explained that the white wedding “has become the standard for the ritual of marriage, and increased as the 20th century progressed” (p. 1), offering that the “evidence for the popularity of the white wedding comes from the commonality of its depictions in mass media and…the profits it generates as an industry totaling in the billions of dollars annually” (p. 1).

Engstrom (2012) deftly identified a phenomenon I constantly dealt with in my professional experience:

To reject the common sense associated with certain practices required of the wedding

(ceremony details, expense, and the like) becomes a matter of deciding if the battle is

worthwhile, especially when considering the pressure of family desires. One may wish to

forego the time, effort, and symbolism connected with the white wedding ideal purported

by various sources (media, common sense, relatives’ wishes), but to actually do so would

be another matter. (p. 194)

This is exactly the reason why I had so much trouble for all those years convincing a bride to eschew tried and true traditional white wedding details. Even if I did manage to get the bride on board, she would inevitably reverse her position when it came down to it, rather than make her mom cry, incur her father’s wrath, or some other such debacle.

Engstrom (2012) also had a valuable insight in noting that the role of bride “negates all other roles” (p. 251), and that “the images, emotional narratives, and promises of happiness depicted in the bridal media…has become so strong that challenges to this “common sense” appear nonexistent” (p. 251). During all those years I was planning weddings I never really investigated the root of the entrenched hold of the white wedding, however, it is certainly very clear why I had such a low success rate in convincing brides to eschew the tradition — not in its entirety — but simply a detail here and there. While first consultations were full of sentiments regarding a desire for the unique and unexpected, when I suggested eliminating certain elements that did not suit their ages or esthetics as a couple, I was met with exclamations of “but we’ve never seen a wedding that didn’t do that!.” While I offered that very fact as the perfect rationale not to do something — especially if it did not hold significance for them in particular — it was

always a lengthy discussion and a request on my part for them to assess if it was actually meaningful to them or not, or simply ubiquitous.

Engstrom (2012) was quite hopeful in her prediction of brides eventually breaking away from the confines of the white wedding. She noted that “aside from the ups and downs of a capitalist economy, changes in actual wedding practices have the potential to become realized when counter-attitudes find a voice” (p. 249). While this potential exists, with the machinations of the wedding industrial complex, and the stronghold of the bridal wear manufacturers specifically, this will perhaps still be a long time in coming — as will be explained in the remainder of this chapter.

Although it is a commonly held and pervasive notion that the roots of the white wedding dress date back to antiquity, it is, in fact, a new development in the wedding ritual. A dress specifically for the wedding, regardless of colour, is indeed, a relative novelty in itself. Only the very wealthy would wear a garment specifically for the wedding, and it is interesting to note that

“the form and even the color of the garment has fluctuated continually over the ages” (Amnéus,

2010, p. 8). As Amnéus informed us, “it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that the white wedding dress with the accoutrements we now take for granted — the train, the veil, the fitted bodice — was popularized, and even then, the wedding dress continued to evolve”

(p. 8). Amnéus also critically asserted that it was the “formation of the bridal industry in the first half of the twentieth century that resulted in the standardization of the wedding gown as we know it” (p. 8). This is so fascinating, both as an exemplar of the foundation of the wedding industrial complex, but also looking to the dress itself, which as Amnéus asserted, speaks to the creation of the bridal identity through consumption of material objects (p. 9).

I was constantly informing clients, as well as readers of my newspaper column, that

Queen Victoria is solely responsible for the ubiquity of the white wedding dress. I asserted that

Victoria sat on the throne for so long and had a penchant for wearing white. Typically, no one in

Victorian England wore white dresses as they would get dirty so readily. After decades on the throne her penchant for white trickled down to the aristocracy, and then eventually to the middle class afterwards. As Amnéus (2010) described, Victoria was a young bride with her own opinions, and very much “broke with royal convention by choosing not to wear her coronation robes” (p. 34) for her nuptials. After Victoria wed in 1840, “both the style and color of her gown were emulated just as gowns of royalty and celebrities are today, creating a preference for white gowns in the following decades” (p. 34). Dress, in general, was a prime indicator of social status, and “wedding dresses were, perhaps, the article of clothing in which this aspiration reached its height” (p. 37). As they still do today, women’s magazines were the curators of style in the mid- nineteenth century and were already instructing brides-to-be on options for having a white wedding dress at a variety of price points (p. 39). This is also the historical point when weddings can be seen to move “toward more commercialized events” (p. 40). Amnéus noted that:

Merchants and service providers including jewelers, florists, confectioners, caterers,

engravers, and photographers saw opportunities for profit in the weddings of the

consumerist middle class. These vendors, along with popular women’s magazines, raised

the expectations of brides for more opulent weddings. Consequently, it was during this

period that “traditional” signifiers of bridal attire were more frequently employed —

although they were not yet pervasive. (p. 40)

It is at this point that we can see the beginnings of the wedding industrial complex come to the fore. It is also interesting, not just from a historical wedding perspective, but also from a

marketing perspective, that these vendors were already achieving notoriety and enhanced profits from their association with high-profile brides (p. 40). While the lineage of the white wedding gown is much shorter than most people assume, I personally was surprised to learn that the media was providing coverage of weddings demonstrating conspicuous consumption as early as the late-nineteenth century. Apparently the desire and allowance for conspicuous consumption has been ingrained in our culture for much longer than I assumed. Butler (2010) noted that as early as 1905 Ladies’ Home Journal published a special bridal issue (p. 69). Then, as Amnéus noted, by 1910 advertisements for bridal services made a regular appearance in Vogue; and by

1914 “Harper’s Bazar itself proffered a personal shopping service. Addressing either the bride or her mother, the magazine suggested its staff might alleviate the burden of the many details associated with a wedding” (p. 42). And thus, another component of the wedding industrial complex — the wedding planner — was born.

Amnéus (2010) introduced the first bridal magazine, which first appeared on the shelves in 1934, as So You’re Going to be Married: A Magazine for Brides which was later renamed

Bride’s Magazine (p. 44), still the leading bridal magazine in the United States today. Through the research presented from Bride’s we can see that in the 1920s, hemlines on wedding dresses still fluctuated with fashion trends, however, by the 1930s the wedding dress “began to retain characteristic elements that are ubiquitous even today” (p. 44). Amnéus went on to note that it was also during this decade that brides were shown wearing full-length white dresses with a veil and carrying a bouquet: “As bridal retailers promoted their goods; they democratized the white wedding dress and all its ‘traditional’ accoutrements” (p. 44). I definitely do not see it as a coincidence that the establishment of bridal attire coincides with the appearance of the bridal magazine.

Amnéus (2010) then introduced what I found to be one of the most fascinating details of all of the reading I did for this project: that fabric restrictions during WWII were impeding the production of wedding gowns, and in response the wedding industry founded the Association of

Bridal Manufacturers which successfully lobbied congress and received an exemption from the fabric rationing (p. 45). Jellison (2008) asserted that the achievement of this wartime exemption

“served two of the chief purposes of an invented tradition: it established the legitimacy of a particular institution, and it socialized the public in the values and conventions of that institution” (p. 68). The wedding industrial complex deserves its moniker even more than I previously thought. Having the power to ease restrictions during the war is an enormous accomplishment — and indicates its power, even in its fledgling state.

Jellison (2010) noted that the typical accoutrements of the white wedding were established as de rigueur with wealthy brides by the 1930s but identifies the 1980s as the most prominent decade for the myriad vendors involved in the wedding industrial complex (p. 80).

This is much later than the timeframe identified by Amnéus — but does state that the “American wedding industry was so successful in its campaign to take the lavish wedding to the masses that eighty-five percent of brides purchased formal wedding gowns” (p. 86) by the 1960s.

However, Jellison (2010) did offer details that both expand upon and backup the momentous details provided by Amnéus (2010) regarding the Association of Bridal

Manufacturers: Jellison asserted that of all the factors promoting consumptive white weddings,

“the most significant was the democratization of the formal wedding gown” (p. 81). Jellison

(2008) noted that wedding gowns used to be the milieu of tiny bridal shops made by immigrant seamstresses, one laborious piece at a time (p. 66). Jellison (2010) explained that the move to manufacturing wedding gowns in a factory enabled retailers to have samples of all the available

gowns, so brides could try them on and feel the fabric, and then get measured to order her made- to-order wedding dress. Jellison went on to establish that “this ingenious method of producing and marketing luxurious wedding dresses for the masses resulted in the establishment of a national bridal wear business that would become the centerpiece of a postwar wedding industry”

(p. 81). The application of “an assembly-line approach to the creation of customized, luxurious wedding gowns” (Jellison, 2008, p. 66) is an excellent example of the inventiveness of the wedding industry. This is a huge deal as it basically makes the gown the lynchpin in the wedding industrial complex and the driver of all the other involved purveyors of wedding wares. So many advances were made about a century (or more) ago and are still going strong today. The wedding industrial complex is truly a formidable example of production, marketing, and consumerism.

The power of the bridal wear manufacturing process also helps explain the static nature of wedding gown trends: by only starting production a couple of times a year, it established a minimum amount of time required to plan a wedding, created very high margins on dresses for the manufacturers, and elucidates why the trends are so static as the manufacturers created and maintain a stranglehold on the entire industry almost a hundred years after inception. Jellison also explains a variety of ways the white gown has been pivotal to the white wedding (p. 87).

According to Jellison:

The real reason the wedding remained to popular in the midst of sweeping social change

was that the central purpose of the white wedding remained the same. Regardless of the

participants’ race, previous marital history, or sexual orientation, it remained a ritual that

allowed those involved to experience and project a sense of stability, emotional security,

and success. (p. 90)

This is quite important as it establishes her thoughts on why the wedding industrial complex remains and flourishes, even in the face of fairly dramatic cultural and societal changes. Very few industries have managed to be so methodical — and successful — in pervading ritual and informing our culture.

It was in the 1930s that the fairytale terminology began to be associated with brides. As

Amnéus (2010) described, brides throughout the nineteenth century were characterized in writing with an air of solemnity and innocence, but there was no reference made to royalty or fairytales, but in the 1930s this comparison was commonplace (p. 45) and remains ubiquitous to this day.

Figure 4 Cinderella still image (Disney, 1950)

This emergence of the fairytale imagery can be denoted as the start of the Cinderella ideal in weddings. Although the iconic Disney film Cinderella was released in 1950 (see Fig. 4), it is documented that Walt Disney began working on the Cinderella imagery as early as 1922 (Acuna,

2019). Clearly, there was a cultural shift during these decades towards this fairytale imagery that began to pervade the societal norms for wedding iconography.

Amnéus (2010) also pointed out that the modern bride is “participating in a ritual that has not changed significantly for centuries” (p. 47): the wedding begins with a period of planning and preparation, a ceremony with official words spoken, typically in front of an audience, and typically with a celebration afterwards. “The modern bride, like those before her, participates in the ritual of the wedding. On that day, she wears a special costume and she is the center of attention” (p. 47). Amnéus went on to say that for the 21st century bride, the wedding ritual “has become for all women, not just the affluent, a moment of presentation and display — a theatrical performance preceded by a rehearsal” (p. 48). It is quite amazing how steadfast the ritual has remained. Regardless of how progressive most brides feel, a desire to enact the traditional aspects of the wedding ritual remains resolute. I always managed to be, at least a little bit surprised, at the abundance of occasions in which I witnessed what Amnéus dubbed the “tug-of- war between reason and long-held fantasy” (p. 51). The wedding day manages to assume a power and importance that seems to take even the most fanciful brides by surprise.

Amnéus (2010) concluded her essay by describing the current significance of the white wedding dress. She noted that “since the establishment of the Association of Bridal

Manufacturers during World War II, the white wedding dress has been elevated to an iconic and irresistible status. Its codified elements — the formal length, train, veil, and floral bouquet — tempt even the most independent and nontraditional women” (p. 51). This is certainly borne out in virtually all of the research and reading completed for this project, as well as in my more than decade of professional experience dealing with brides. Amnéus also ascribed the white wedding dress with the power to “subsume the self into a larger entity, a shared cultural thing” (p. 52). It

is such deeply entrenched imagery: the bride in the white wedding dress — perhaps that is why it seems so difficult for the bride that goes into the process intending to eschew the norm — but nonetheless ending up in a traditional, culturally-sanctioned gown.

Taking us into the current era, Jellison (2008) noted that at the turn of the 21st century wedding purchases were at about $50 billion in the US; and by 2005 that number was up to $70 billion (p. 5). Even though the average wedding budget is about two-thirds of the average annual income, Jellison asserted that “for most people, the capital-intensive formal wedding remained the only acceptable way to marry” (p. 5). This is quite a powerful statement: “the only acceptable way to marry” — from my perspective this elevates the white wedding to one of the most pervasive and tenacious elements of our culture.

Jellison (2008) illuminated various influences on the wedding industry over several decades. She noted that the counter-culture weddings of the 1960s failed to make a dent in the wedding industry. As an example, Jellison offered that “in fact, New York’s exclusive Bergdorf

Goodman store, for instance, offered a version of a hippie wedding dress for $500 (equivalent to

$2,421 today4)” (p. 28). It is quite remarkable and resilient — the ability of the wedding industry to co-opt various cultural changes — even if they are counter to mainstream wedding culture — and make them their own. Jellison asserted that in the 1970s the “wedding industry successfully relied on the continuing loyalty of Baby Boomers who had grown up in the postwar era thinking of marriage and formal white weddings as the norm” (p. 36). A major disruption of the wedding industry occurred in 1989 when Vera Wang — a first-time 40-year-old bride and Ralph Lauren

4 Which is equivalent to approximately $2,982 in 2020. 93

designer — was unable to find what she deemed to be an appropriate wedding dress, even with all of New York’s fashion industry at her avail. Wang ended up wearing a $10,0005 custom- made gown and one year later she opened her now iconic bridal design label. As Jellison explained, Wang “dropped the bows and the ruffles and focused instead on sensuous simplicity in her bridal gown designs” (p. 51). Jellison went on to quote Wang who elucidated that she felt the wedding gown industry was stuck in a formula — the more bows and beads the better — and her aim was to insert a “sense of modernity” (p. 51). As Jellison asserted, Vera Wang “helped make sleeker gowns the dominant trend in bridal fashions for all pocket-books and regions of the country” (p. 51). This is both interesting and true, and something I had not thought about before.

Alison McGill (editor of Weddingbells) put such a huge emphasis on the effect of Carolyn

Bessette’s gown choice that I forgot that Vera Wang had already been well established by the time Bessette married John F. Kennedy, Jr. and Wang had single-handedly streamlined what an aspirational wedding gown looked like. With the approach of the end of the twentieth century,

Jellison noted that “as always, the key to success in the wedding business remained marketing”

(p. 53). Jellison went on to assert that “while in flusher times wedding professionals had touted their services as convenient for the harried bride who wanted a “dream wedding,” they now emphasized that they were at the bride’s disposal to help her stay “on budget” in her wedding plans” (p. 53). In my professional experience with brides, I always touted my company as offering both — I always wanted to stay on budget even if the bride did not care about doing so, and I would let prospective clients know that I was excellent at making a small amount of money look like a lot of money — so they could achieve a dream wedding regardless of budget.

5 This is the equivalent of $20,677 in 2020. 94

As Jellison (2008) moved her narrative into the twenty-first century, she noted that “the white wedding that the bride of 2000 organized indeed looked very much like the one her grandmother held fifty years earlier” (p. 61). It is interesting that Jellison noted that although the major facets of the white wedding were the same, “their symbolic meaning” (p. 61) was likely altered. The white wedding gown was no longer projecting information about the bride’s virtue, however, the motivation behind the white wedding remained the same. Jellison declared that

“elaborate wedding celebrations still allowed a woman and her loved ones to advertise material success and to proclaim publicly a change in marital status” (p. 61). While Jellison’s research may have been spurred on by a desire to find one, she pronounced:

No single influence created and sustained the popularity of the white wedding during the

six decades of economic, ideological, and political change that followed World War II.

Media and advertising images, parental and peer expectations, and the advice of political

pundits and etiquette experts all played a role in shaping the ritual and aiding its

adaptation to changing times. (p. 61)

Although a single influence cannot be pinpointed, it is nonetheless remarkable the ubiquity and the tenacity of the white wedding. While the pendulum swung greatly back and forth with fashion, ideologies, cultural norms, and economic climates, the white wedding managed to not only survive but thrive — and speaking to the power of the bridal wear manufacturers — and thrive with very little alteration in the parameters of the material objects required to execute said white wedding.

Chapter Six: Analysis

In the Canadian market, Weddingbells serves as the primary arbiter of taste in the wedding industry, unlike in the American market where there is a veritable plethora of wedding magazines. Apart from small locally produced, locally focused publications, and one high-end purely aspirational publication (WedLuxe which began publishing in 2006), Weddingbells does not really have any Canadian competition. Some of the American periodicals available during my timeframe were:

 Brides

 Modern Bride

 The Knot

 Martha Stewart Weddings

 Elegant Bride

 InStyle Weddings

 Bridal Guide

 Grace Ormonde Wedding Style

All magazines use their circulation numbers to help determine what they will charge advertisers, so it is the most important metric in the magazine industry. Sometimes they promote readership figures also — which are much less precise, but accounts for issues being passed from one person to another or read communally somewhere — whereas circulation is the specific figure of how many issues the publisher has distributed (through all channels including subscriptions, retails sales, and distribution to advertisers). In 2011, there were 10 wedding titles in the US that had a circulation of 100,000 or more (the top two titles had circulation figures of 400,000 and

450,000). While this is in no way a comprehensive list, it serves as a contrasting example to the ubiquity of Weddingbells magazine for any bride planning to marry in Canada — and therefore requiring Canadian vendors and products — and most likely Canadian brides planning to marry outside the country as well.

As a little background, it is worth taking note of the content of some of the more popular women’s magazines. For example, McCracken (1993) offered statistics from January 1981 issues:

 Bazaar had 146 pages of advertising — 59 purchased and 96 covert ads

 Mademoiselle had 180 pages of advertising — 88 purchased and 62 covert

 Savvy had 83 pages of advertising — 41 purchased and 26 covert (p. 40).

These statistics are interesting for this project because there are very few pages in any issue of

Weddingbells that are not either overt or covert advertisements. I do not think they try to conceal as much of the ads as covert as perhaps is the case in more mainstream women’s magazines, but there is a good deal of covert advertising, nonetheless. McCracken also commented on the

“remarkable” number of ad pages sold in both Bride’s and Modern Bride noting that in 1983

Bride’s averaged 307 ad pages per issue (to 154 editorial pages) and Modern Bride averaged 257 ad pages (to 131 editorial pages) (p. 268). So, assuming the tally of ad pages and editorial pages account for total pages, then both magazines average about 33% editorial content. To put this in the context of my data set — as can be seen in Table 2 — Weddingbells averaged 68 editorial pages per issue which was 14% of the magazine’s total content.

Table 2 Canadian circulation figures Magazine Title Year Circulation Canadian Living 2012 511,000 Chatelaine 2011 540,000 FASHION 2011 142,000 LOU LOU 2011 146,000 Weddingbells 2010 95,000

During the timeframe of my study, some of the mainstream women’s magazines in Canada included:

 LOU LOU, which published its first issue in 2004 (and its last issue in 2016), had a

circulation in 2011 of 146,000. LOU LOU focused on presenting their readers with

celebrity style guides, spring must-haves, and the occasional wedding or bridal guide.

 FASHION magazine began publishing in 1977 (and is still publishing in 2020) and

features the latest in Canadian fashion, focusing on Toronto and environs. In 2011,

FASHION had a circulation of 142,000.

 Another staple magazine is Canadian Living, which began publishing in 1975 (and is still

in circulation in 2020). This monthly lifestyle magazine offers their readers features on

food, fashion, crafts, and health. In 2012, Canadian Living had a circulation of 511,000.

 And, the quintessential Canadian magazine, Chatelaine, published its first issue in 1928

(and is still publishing in 2020). This ubiquitous periodical offers its reader articles on

food, style, décor, politics, and health issues. In 2011, Chatelaine had a circulation of

540,000. As a very small look at the decline in magazines in general — it is worth noting

that in 2014, Chatelaine had the highest circulation of any magazine in Canada, at

534,000, but in 2017 was in fourth place at 257,000.

Bridal magazines, in general, tend to be a fairly robust breed. During my timeframe, some other types of magazines were folding, but distribution of wedding magazines continued to grow. Although Weddingbells does not publish their circulation figures — nor, rather shockingly, do they keep a historical record of them, after endless phone calls and emails I was able to get the figures for 2010 and 2013: in the former they had a circulation of 95,000, whereas in the latter they had a circulation of 98,700.6 This does make the timeframe in question a particularly interesting one for investigation, however, the vagaries of periodical distribution are not within the scope of my thesis. From my time working for a newspaper, as well as numerous conversations throughout my professional career with magazine editors I know the tenacity of bridal magazines, but due to the difficulties of obtaining certain data from the industry, there is only so much I can actually prove so I must posit my best guess for my overall assertion of this.

The contrast between Weddingbells and the American market is useful in my analysis for several reason, primarily it helps situate it as a material object on offer, but most importantly it establishes some of its Canadian-ness characteristics, both culturally and within the industry as a whole. For example, by identifying how many large bridal magazines were available in the marketplace in the US during my timeframe, it further establishes the veritable monopoly that

Weddingbells holds in the Canadian marketplace, but also some of the intrinsic differences in the magazine industry at large in both countries. As women’s studies scholar Karla Huebner (2016) identified: “Historically, women’s magazines have been part of a woman-centered discourse with an important role in the construction and expression of gendered and class identity” (p. 68).

6 For a rough comparison: using the rule of thumb of 10x for the size of the US market compared to Canada, this gives Weddingbells a US equivalent circulation of a million. 99

Although Huebner was analyzing magazine’s between 1919 and 1939, her visual description and evaluation of target market nonetheless helps explain why Weddingbells appeals to a much broader swath of brides than would a comparable American bridal magazine.

During the decade of January 2003 to December 2012 there were quite a few bridal magazines (besides Weddingbells) available on the store shelves for the reader to peruse, such as the previously mentioned American titles, however, in the smaller markets across Canada only one or two of them might have been on offer.

Although my data is from the Calgary and Calgary/Edmonton editions exclusively, it is nonetheless applicable to the rest of Canada because the editorial is exactly the same in all of the regional additions, with only local advertising being different from one region to another — which is outside the purview of this analysis.

Any of the more in-depth content analysis does not involve any local content as the goal was to have the results to be telling of the wedding industry throughout Canada, not just in one local region or another. There are definitely things to learn from examining the trends evident in the categories: for example, the elimination over time of the etiquette category, or the large fluctuations in the size of the beauty tips category. These sorts of trends were analyzed to see what might be revealed, however, the rhetorical analysis of Weddingbells focused solely on the letter from the editor.

I have structured the data in terms that were perhaps only meaningful to myself, but they do have a very precise meaning for me and aided my categorization of the data. For example, throughout the dissertation I refer to traditional and non-traditional weddings — as do many of the scholars quoted in the literature review. According to me — as has been informed by my event planning practice, as well as this research — traditional refers, in broad strokes, to the

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culturally approved and societally expected version of what a wedding is supposed to look like: a white wedding gown cut in one of a handful of styles established by the wedding industrial complex; a groom in a suit or tuxedo — often rented; bridal party attendants — numbering from two to a gaggle; a ceremony held in a religious building (church, synagogue, etc.) or in some scenic indoor or outdoor location; a bridal bouquet and floral decorations; and a reception celebration that usually includes some or all of the “traditional” elements of be-linened tables, guest favours (small gifts), music, dancing, wedding cake, toasts, garter throw, and bouquet toss, to name but a few; as well as in the last two decades: custom monogramming (on the printed materials — invitations, ceremony programs, menus, seating charts; a gobo projected on the dance floor; as a cake topper); choreographed dance numbers (by the bride and groom or the entire bridal party); projected slide shows of photos of the couple as children or during their courtship; and some sort of distinct colour palette or theme.

Non-traditional is simply used to describe nuptials that diverge from the traditional paradigm in one or more key elements. Some aesthetic terms are also used, such as “simple elegant,” which is essentially meant to describe a stylish, yet not overly ornamented, design.

When I use the term white wedding I am not just referring to the colour of the dress, or the colour of the napkins; but rather, I am referring to all the machinations involved in giving the wedding ritual, and all the planning that goes on beforehand, its cultural currency. The white wedding refers to the traditions that were established in the 1940s, as well as the latest celebrity nuptials featured on social media and the news. The white wedding refers to the power of the bridal wear manufacturers that managed to lobby congress for an exemption from fabric rationing during WWII, as well as the ardent feminist (Geller, 2001) that succumbed to “the lure of the white wedding dress” (Jellison, 2008, p. 63). The white wedding refers to the

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conflagration of societal norms and familial expectations, as well as the bridal identity which combines project manager and believer of fairytales (Boden, 2001). The white wedding refers to the power of the wedding dress to make brides personify conspicuous consumption in the purchase of what is typically the most expensive garment of a lifetime, knowing it will only be worn once. The white wedding refers to the eschewing of thousands of years of tradition of getting married in a new dress, or simply your best dress, to the inculcation of the white dress into the bridal identity to the extent that most women do not feel like a bride at all, without donning one. The term white wedding might conjure images of a bride in a white gown, or a reception venue filled with white flowers and white linens;7 but the term white wedding is, in fact, a cultural model — so heavily weighted and laden with meaning that goes far beyond the grammar its verbiage might imply, and is elevated for the purposes of this dissertation to a theoretical level.

Quantitative results

The spreadsheet of raw data was created with my initial analysis of Weddingbells which entailed categorizing every page in all 20 issues: literally counting every page to establish the overall content of each issue.

As I went through the first three issues I developed some broad categories to better elucidate the subject composition of each individual issue as well as establish broader themes and highlight any changes in content over the decade of my investigation.

7 Or it also might potentially conjure images of a 1980s Billy Idol video! 102

Figure 5 Average number of pages for each coding category (2003-2012) WEDDINGBELLS CONTENT

250

202.3 200

150

100

66.5 63.1

28.85 29.05

14.9 14.25 11 11.95 9.7 7.2 6.1 8.8 5.95 1.1 0.3 1 3 3.35 0.95 1.7 0.3 0.75 0

Note: The 13 different “tips” categories have been combined into a single category. The order along the X axis represents the order in which the reader encounters the categories when flipping from cover to the back.

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Because the editorial content is consistent throughout the various local editions across

Canada, it is not imperative to analyze all 20 issues of the same edition, but I nonetheless analyzed all Calgary, and Calgary/Edmonton editions. In 2007 the Calgary edition became the

Calgary/Edmonton edition — there was not a separate Edmonton edition prior to 2007.

Figure 5 illustrates the average content of these categories in the 20 issues of

Weddingbells that were analyzed.

As the page numbers are askew in many of the issues, I am assuming that the pagination is set for the Toronto edition and they just slot in local content to the other editions, assuming no one is actually going to sit down and count the number of pages like I did.

As can be seen in Table 3, the amount of editorial content in the 20 issues ranges between

10% and 19%, with an average over the range of 14% of total content. Although only 14% of the total number of pages of these issues, this still amounts to over 1300 pages of editorial content, which is too large in scope for this project.

The magazine is published twice a year — offering a Spring/Summer issue and a

Fall/Winter issue. Over the 10-year period, the issues vary in length from 404 pages to 586 pages

— with an overall average of 482 pages — averaging 510 pages for the Spring/Summer issues and 453 pages for the Fall/Winter issues. As Figure 6 illustrates, Weddingbells is typically larger in Spring/Summer, with a small dip for the Fall/Winter issue. There is also a general trend over the 10 years to an overall lower page count, which reflects the increasing costs of paper and an overall trend in the industry to smaller page counts.

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Table 3 Editorial content Issue Pages of editorial Total number % of total pages content of pages S/S 2003 89 586 15%

F/W 2003 89 475 19%

S/S 2004 93 580 16%

F/W 2004 66 475 14%

S/S 2005 75 553 14%

F/W 2005 64 476 13%

S/S 2006 61 493 12%

F/W 2006 68 505 13%

S/S 2007 57 557 10%

F/W 2007 75 503 15%

S/S 2008 61 533 11%

F/W 2008 67 475 14%

S/S 2009 68 479 14%

F/W 2009 52 406 13%

S/S 2010 61 462 13%

F/W 2010 63 405 16%

S/S 2011 53 437 12%

F/W 2011 55 410 13%

S/S 2012 69 429 16%

F/W 2012 66 404 16%

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Figure 6 Trend of page count seasonally and over time

Weddingbells pages 700

600

500

400

300

200

100

0 S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W 03 03 04 04 05 05 06 06 07 07 08 08 09 09 10 10 11 11 12 12

The Fall/Winter 2006 issue is the first issue that combined Calgary and Edmonton together — which may be the reason for the phasing out of certain areas like etiquette and grooms, needing the pages for the increased local advertising. Prior to this issue, Edmonton did not have any local representation in the magazine. There is a noticeable spike in most categories, including overall page count, in the Spring/Summer 2007 issue which could be attributed to the new market representation (Edmonton).

I believe it is possible link the quantity of dresses in the magazine to the corresponding power of the bridal-wear manufacturers. I feel the stability of the percentage of gowns over the decade will demonstrate the dominance of the gown, and as the magazine is acting as proxy for the wedding industrial complex at large, this will be a good representation of their continued dominance of both the industry and culturally-at-large. My analysis looks at the power of the white wedding, and the wedding gown specifically.

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Table 4 Wedding dress content Gown Gown Total Total Total Issue ads layouts fashion pages gowns S/S 2003 249 27 276 586 47% F/W 2003 138 30 168 475 35% S/S 2004 236 32 268 580 46% F/W 2004 183 34 217 475 46% S/S 2005 244 33 277 553 50% F/W 2005 180 32 212 476 45% S/S 2006 220 29 249 493 51% F/W 2006 192 28 220 505 44% S/S 2007 250 30 280 557 50% F/W 2007 202 29 231 503 46% S/S 2008 243 28 271 533 51% F/W 2008 183 31 214 475 45% S/S 2009 204 30 234 479 49% F/W 2009 162 18 180 406 44% S/S 2010 216 27 243 462 53% F/W 2010 159 27 186 405 46% S/S 2011 198 27 225 437 51% F/W 2011 183 31 214 410 52% S/S 2012 212 31 243 429 57% F/W 2012 192 27 219 404 54% Total 4046 581 4627 9643 Average 202 29 231 482 48%

As is shown in Table 4, the content of Weddingbells during the 10-year period is comprised of between 35% and 57% wedding gowns, with both the mean and median being

48%. So basically, essentially half of every issue is devoted to images of wedding gowns.

Considering the substantial size of the issues that is a considerable, and somewhat daunting, number of images for the reader to digest. Being able to leisurely peruse such a large assortment of wedding gowns, is, for many brides, the primary reason for purchasing the magazine.

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Figure 7 Trend of wedding dress content and editorial content over the 10-year period

Weddingbells content: Wedding dresses & Editorial content 60

0 S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W 03 03 04 04 05 05 06 06 07 07 08 08 09 09 10 10 11 11 12 12

% of total pages: editorial content % of total of pages: gowns Linear (% of total pages: editorial content) Linear (% of total of pages: gowns)

Figure 7 illustrates the percentage of the magazine that is comprised of wedding gowns.

While the overall trend from the Spring/Summer 2003 issue to the Fall/Winter 2012 issue climbs about 10% upward, it also indicates the seasonal trend of more wedding gowns in the

Spring/Summer issues, with a drop seen in each Fall/Winter issue. This trend of more wedding dress content in the Spring/Summer issues mirrors the overall rise and fall of the total page count of the magazine which was demonstrated in Figure 6.

Figure 7 also illustrates the fairly consistent amount of editorial content that can be found in each issue. There is neither a notable change in the amount of content between the

Spring/Summer issues and the Fall/Winter issues, nor is there a noteworthy change over the 10-

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year period. The overall percentage of editorial content peaked in the Fall/Winter 2003 issue at

19% and was at its lowest in the Spring/Summer 2007 issue at 10% but overall was fairly consistent with the average being 14% over the 10-year period. Only one issue in the 10-year period (Spring/Summer 2004) contained letters to the editor, all other issues have a one-page letter from the editor — who is the same editor over the entire period of time. This would indicate a stable base of editorial content which does not alter with the vagaries of advertising content, suggesting that the issues only increase in size to accommodate the larger advertising budgets of the wedding gown manufacturers for the Spring/Summer issues.

Figure 8 illustrates the consistent number of pages allocated to real weddings over the 20 issues of Weddingbells. It also shows only minor variance between the Spring/Summer issues and the Fall/Winter issues, with a small spike in pages in the Spring/Summer 2004 issue, and both 2012 issues.

Although the number of real weddings featured in each issue did generally remain fairly consistent over the 10-year period, the number of pages devoted to real weddings did vacillate quite considerably, but with peaks and valleys8 rather than a generalized trend up or down over the time span. When looking at the real wedding features in each issue, I paid particular attention to the detail shots. One reason for this is it is evidence of the change in trend over that time, one which I noticed in my professional experience. At the beginning of my timeframe, virtually no detail shots are provided, whereas by the end of the timeframe, the real weddings consist of almost nothing but detail shots. I found this a consistent trend in reality: for many years I had to

8 I could not find a correlation to anything to explain this: the peaks and valleys were not seasonal and did not correspond to the economy. 109

coach and cajole photographers to take detail shots during events, whereas, by 2012 photographers would routinely fill up memory cards entirely with shots of the material object details.

Figure 8 Trend of “real wedding” content and planning tip content between issues and over time Weddingbells content: Real weddings & Tips/planning advice 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W S/S F/W 03 03 04 04 05 05 06 06 07 07 08 08 09 09 10 10 11 11 12 12

pages of real weddings pages of tips/planning advice Linear (pages of real weddings) Linear (pages of tips/planning advice)

As can also be seen in Figure 8, while there are peaks and valleys in the quantity of planning advice content, the overall trend for the 10-year period is a substantial decrease. For example:

 There was a small amount of content targeted directly at the groom — groom etiquette and

groom fashions — this was phased out completely by the Fall/Winter 2007 issue.

 There was also a much heavier focus on beauty tips at the beginning of the time frame.

The percentage of planning tips in the editorial coverage peaked with the Spring/Summer

2007 issue — and then generally remained quite stable over the rest of the time period. There

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seems to be several anomalous statistics for that particular issue — but I have no further evidence as to why that might be.

The latter years have very little in the way of tips regarding etiquette, invitation protocol, managing your guests, or information focusing on romance or the marriage itself. However, the category I dubbed “miscellaneous planning tips” did show a general increase — peaking with the

Fall/Winter 2007 issue at 53 pages, and after that remaining, on average, around the 40-page mark. There are a few factors that probably contributed to the overall decline in planning advice within the pages of Weddingbells: one being a growing focus on visuals and a general move away from text, and another being the growing focus on online content.

There are also quantitative results regarding the focus of content on the covers of

Weddingbells which is presented later in this chapter in the topical analysis section (see fig. 39).

Qualitative results

After going through 10 years of issues of Weddingbells, the most compelling data was presented in the letters from the editor and the real weddings. Coincidentally, the 10-year period I examined happens to be the editor’s first 10 years at the magazine. When looking at them as a whole, they do not necessarily indicate what is happening in the magazine as much as they indicate influences on the industry and what McGill would ideally like to be happening in the magazine. With so much of the content being advertisements, she can write all she wants, for example, about dresses with sleeves being the latest and greatest, but if the reader flips through about 200 pages of full-page photos of dresses and nary a one has sleeves, the editor’s opinion is not going to have that much of an impact. When looking at them individually, they often have indicators of current cultural influences, whether that’s the latest wedding-themed blockbuster movie, or a royal wedding. McGill’s letters also are very useful for delineating some of the

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changes in the industry over that 10-year period, especially as there is a lot of commentary in the magazine that was her 10th anniversary issue.

As an event planner, I was always extremely interested in having good documentation of the details, because for the most part, they were all my intellectual property: the results of my design and planning. Paying attention to the detail shots in the real wedding features, as well as the material objects present in editorial layouts, is telling of the progression of the importance of the “details” from the industry perspective. As there is very little non-fashion-related advertising, it would be impossible to track this trend by tracking the advertising. It is therefore imperative to note the frequency and prominence, or lack thereof, given to the details of the weddings featured in Weddingbells.

Chronological analysis

S/S 2003

The Spring/Summer 2003 issue is perhaps the most generic (overall) of all the issues. A good deal of movie references make an appearance and although the cover touts getting personal with your wedding (see Fig. 9), not a single mention of uniqueness appears inside its pages.

Cinderella being touted as the top wedding movie of all time is quite problematic. The “tips” contain quite a few references to the movie suggesting that Weddingbells assumes that every bride must be striving for a wedding depicted in a damsel-in-distress animated feature from

1950.

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Figure 9 Cover detail (SS2003)

This was Alison McGill’s first issue as editor, so perhaps she was trying to find her voice, or had not given much thought to weddings before taking on the helm of Weddingbells but as a whole the issue comes across as quite basic and lacking in a distinctive voice. In McGill’s

“Letter” she references My Big Fat Greek Wedding — a movie that was a hit the previous year

— and then tries to pull it into the write up of one of the real weddings, even though the connections are tenuous at best (McGill, SS2003, p. 8). There are also issues with McGill’s correlation of the real wedding to the movie, because in the movie all of the bride and groom’s personality was extricated from the day and it did not reflect them as individuals or a couple at all. So, although they are espousing — at least on the cover — having a personalized wedding day — they refer to a movie about a wedding — that was very popular, both critically and in the

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box office — but really is the antithesis of the aesthetic they are trying to promote. It is puzzling how something can be peddled on the front cover and yet really does not make an appearance inside at all. Perhaps it was the goal to present ideas on personalizing your wedding, but they did not deliver.

Referring to Cinderella brings to mind many antiquated ideals for a wedding and for marriage, and just culturally in general. It also made me think about having a Disney wedding: pre-packaged, pre-arranged, cliché. Although some women might secretly harbor princess fantasies for their wedding — the focus on an animated Disney princess from 1950 eschews all notions of a modern bride, or a wedding that is personal or unique in any way.

This issue contains five one-page, and one five-page real weddings. The one-page weddings are referred to as “features / Canadian Celebrations” (pp. 40-48) and the multi-page is identified as “feature / A Grand Affair” (pp. 56-63). The one-pagers have five photos each: 21 showing the bridal party, two featuring the cake, and just one of the venue. All five indicate the full name of the bride and groom; the city, province, and date; as well as about 150 words of text offering a quick blurb of detail — with virtually no mention of any specific details. In contrast, the five-page wedding features 30 photos and about 1000 words of text.9 The bride in this wedding, although identified as a “freelance fashion stylist” was, in fact, an employee of

Weddingbells (although not indicated in the article — a few minutes with Google produced that detail) and wrote the coverage of her wedding herself. Between the six-fold more photos and the seven-fold more text — this wedding gives a very different impression than the others featured

9 The quantities used throughout the chronological analysis section should be interpreted narratively by the reader. They are provided to help give a sense of when the real wedding coverage became more visual and/or less textual over time and are meant to aid in context. 114

— especially as 21 of the photos are of details — and the additional column inches allow the bride to take the reader through all the facets of her big day. Every designer and vendor is mentioned, and the feature gives a real feeling for what the wedding was like. Both the bride and the groom are Greek, the ceremony was held at a Greek Orthodox church, and the bride repeatedly refers to how their heritage featured in the wedding — perhaps giving a clue why

McGill refers to the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding in her letter from the editor.

F/W 2003

The primary focus of the Fall/Winter 2003 issue seems to be on beauty, beauty products, fitness, and looking good on your wedding day. Conversely, it contains no editorial layouts or features about the actual wedding (by which I mean décor, food, florals, and other such details).

The editor-in-chief’s letter (McGill, FW2003, p. 25) in the Fall/Winter 2003 issue primarily discusses the term “Bridezilla” — where McGill thinks the term started, when she thought it died out — and then what revived it. McGill mentions the reality show (Bridezilla) and how after it started airing, her phone was ringing off the hook from media outlets looking for her comments. Then when McGill thought it had died out she read Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic

Ties the Knot where the protagonist calls another bride a bridezilla, and realized the term had traction, and had made it into the lexicon. McGill also notes that men are not immune: “Wedding planning does have challenges which can take an emotional toll on both the bride and the groom

(People magazine recently published a feature on Groomzillas!), but the main thing to remember is to accentuate the positive” (p. 25). Although McGill is ostensibly supportive of her readers assuring them they are not really a bridezilla — she is promoting a spa day at the city’s most expensive hotel to be enjoyed at the first sign of wedding planning stress.

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Several other quite contradictory messages from McGill also appear throughout the pages of this issue. The editor mentions various dresses worn by celebrities and discusses the process of getting a custom-made gown from a couple of the more high-profile Canadian wedding gown designers; and although she does mention controlling the budget, a dress from one of her suggestions starts at $3,500. One of the designers is quoted as saying of the wedding gown: “It is the most fabulous thing you’ll wear in your lifetime, and you’ll never wear it again. What better way to go than to build your very own design?” (McGill, FW2003, p. 80-I). When the designer

(Schmidtke) refers to never wearing the gown again it presents a key example of the unexamined ubiquity of consumption rife in the wedding industry: why is it perfectly normalized in our culture that extra time and money should be devoted to a single-wear garment? This seems to be propagating a common fear with brides — and a potential explanation as to why they so often break the budget on things like the dress — because they will be looking at photos of it for so long. It seems like an easy “in” for the wedding industrial complex to promote the Cinderella quotient of the wedding. Another designer McGill spoke with (Cooper) advised the brides that they “will be looking at pictures of [themselves] in the dress for years to come, and the last thing

[they’ll] want to see is something [they] don’t like” (McGill, FW2003, p. 80-I) because of compromising on the wedding gown. I know in my own business I used to advise brides that the photographer was more important because a “crappy photographer will not be able to capture even the most magnificent dress, but a great photographer can make a cheap(er) dress look great.”

This issue features five real weddings. All of the them include six or seven — rather grainy — photographs and about 175 words of text. As in the previous issue, the photos are almost entirely of the bridal party and what few detail shots do appear, are very uninspiring. The

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only really notable items in any of the text is that in the description of an Ottawa wedding, it describes the guests swilling cocktails (Dougherty Reinke, FW2003, p. 70), which a reader might find quite entertaining; and, an Edmonton bride mentions that she knew they would have to have two ceremonies — one to honour her groom’s Indian roots, and another because “she’d always dreamed of being the bride “all dressed in white” (Dougherty Reinke, FW2003, p. 74) — an example of the power of the white wedding.

S/S 2004

The Spring/Summer 2004 issue is fairly cohesive and has a new layout making it look more like InStyle magazine, rather than a stereotypical bridal magazine. This is the first issue to have an editorial layout of material objects: cakes, flowers, favours. The most memorable facet of all the tips in this issue is the “Hip List” (see Fig. 10) which advocates eschewing all over-the- top and overused wedding trends. This is quite a departure from just two issues ago which was touting Cinderella as the top wedding movie of all time. The editorial staff is clearly trying to take the reader in a new direction — towards sleeker and less trite wedding décor and attire.

Editor-in-chief McGill’s letter approaches the purpose of Weddingbells in general, as well as identifies what they have changed, and all the work that went into these changes. McGill draws a parallel between the planning that goes into a wedding, with the year of research and development that went into the new look and feel of the magazine. Unlike many magazines, brides typically only read two or three issues of a bridal publication while planning their wedding, and typically just two10 — so it is entirely possible that a substantial portion of their

10 I remember reading this statistic in the advertising/media packages sent to me from bridal magazines. I also found this to be true by asking my clients about their bridal magazine reading habits. 117

readers are picking up Weddingbells for the first time with this issue so would not have noticed the changes. Clearly McGill is proud of having spearheaded these changes, and of all of the work done by her team, so she wants to highlight it, even if most of their readers probably did not even notice any changes had been made.

Figure 10 Hip list (SS04, p. 40)

An article appears in the fashion section that — although ostensibly about the going- away outfit — helps illustrate how many readers probably had entrenched ideas of what their wedding should/will look like from a very early age. Dana Dougherty Reinke writes: “My ideas of weddings as a child were very traditional and had little room for negotiation. At my event, I would wear a poufy white dress. There would be a limousine. There would be the most adorable

Chanel going-away outfit…that I would wear as…well-wishers tossed confetti at us” (Dougherty

Reinke, SS2004, p. 125). Reinke goes on to describe in broad strokes what her wedding was actually like, and perhaps reading this might have served as a catalyst for Weddingbells readers

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to disengage childhood fantasies from current ambitions. Although the article provides a history of the “going-away outfit” it actually speaks to the larger issue of how modern couples plan to enjoy their own event — to “make the most of the celebration they just spent a year planning”

(Dougherty Reinke, SS2004, p. 126) — rather than make an early grand exit to the honeymoon.

Figure 11 Real wedding details (SS04, p. 391)

There are four real weddings featured in the Spring/Summer 2004 issue. Two of them help with the continuity of the issue as a whole, as one of them is the cover model, and another encapsulates the hip list, right down to the custom cocktail and stacked treats instead of cake, as well as orchids as flower of choice and loose tresses (see Fig. 11). Perhaps they were very enamored with this particular wedding and tweaked the list a bit so that all their choices are clearly viable.

The coverage of the cover model’s wedding is noteworthy because it focuses on simplicity and the fact that they “don’t like to make a show of [themselves]” (Gibson, SS2004, p. 389) — which is an attitude that is quite opposite to most (not all…but most) brides. The bride

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explained that a simple event is more fun. Perhaps because as principal dancers for the National

Ballet they are on show all of the time their working life it is more unique for this bride and groom to want a down-to-earth wedding celebration. So many brides are enacting their princess- for-a-day fantasies, but if a bride is always in haute couture, or always on the world stage, then she does not need your wedding day to fulfil those things for you.

The Spring/Summer 2004 issue saw the real weddings move to the back of the magazine

— which seems to give them a little less importance — at least from the publisher’s perspective.

This time there are only four weddings featured — however, one of them is the cover model — and all of them feature photos that are of a substantially higher quality than in previous issues.

The text now — as opposed to the short blurb seen in previous issues — walks the reader through a comprehensive look at each wedding including such categories as: first meeting, proposal, ceremony, gown, accessories, bouquet, groom’s attire, reception, decorations, food, drink, cake, favours, biggest surprise, and favourite memory. This is the first time there is any real indication of personality or uniqueness in the weddings. It is not necessarily properly documented in the photos, but in the text the details are communicated quite thoroughly.

Interestingly though, the coverage of these weddings does not clearly indicate the city in which the wedding took place. This omission is an anomaly in the other issues, so perhaps with the change of format the editorial staff simply forgot to indicate the location, or perhaps they felt it would make the wedding more relatable to brides anywhere in Canada. As the locations appear again in the next issue, whatever the rationale, it can be viewed as a failed experiment.

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F/W 2004

Overall the colours presented in the Fall/Winter 2004 issue are quite a contrast from prior issues. There are very vivid graphic images, from vivid orange bouquets (see Fig. 12) to green striped and spotted wedding cakes (see Fig. 13).

Figure 12 Vivid bouquet detail (FW04, p. 72)

However, in contrast to the new, bold images, the letter in this issue focuses on promoting the bride to compromise. McGill assures her readers that compromising will make a bride happier when it gets to the wedding day, instructing “Don’t let the details get the better of you!” (McGill, FW2004, p. 27), which is certainly ironic as they are promoting a year focused on nothing but the details.

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Figure 13 Cake detail (FW04, p. 67)

There are only three real weddings in this issue — two pages each — with eight or nine photos. The photos are not the same quality as in the last issue, and their new placement near the back of the issue makes them disappear a bit — they are not nearly as prominent as in prior issues analyzed. The first real wedding featured a Weddingbells editorial assistant and offers one extra detail photo than the other two weddings. While there are some details — it is not particularly noteworthy, perhaps only making it into the issue due to being an employee of the magazine. The write up on all three is as extensive as in the previous issue, but nothing remarkable stood out. The descriptions of the various vendors and décor details will undoubtedly offer ideas to readers, even if the photos are quite uninspiring. The fairly generic feel to the weddings presented in this issue are perhaps a comment on the lack of unique trends in wedding planning during this period of time.

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S/S 2005

Spring/Summer 2005 is the 20th anniversary issue. This fact is not particularly well publicized, but there is a substantial advertising feature section where major advertisers list their top 20 items and there are a couple of feature articles featuring the top 20 items in various categories — such as their 20 top picks for bridesmaids dresses, 20 unique ideas for the big day, and 20 etiquette questions — as well as a layout showing small thumbnails of every cover for the last 20 years. McGill uses the letter as a forum to paint a picture of what was happening in popular culture in 1985 — offering some context for the first issue of Weddingbells. McGill offers some snippets of what she was interested in in 1985, and the story behind the first issue hitting newsstands. McGill asserts that with Weddingbells’ arrival “Canadian brides had a new best friend. Someone they could turn to for help finding everything for their W-day, from the gown and the right lipstick to registry essentials and, most importantly, planning expertise”

(McGill, SS2005, p. 29). While this sentiment is definitely corny, it also illustrates McGill’s desire for Weddingbells to be an indispensable part of the Canadian bride’s planning process, a process that ideally includes all of their advertisers. The goal of Weddingbells, McGill explains, has remained the same: “to deliver a beautiful publication, chock full of both practical information and inspiration” (p. 29). It is clear that McGill not only wants the magazine to be utilitarian, but aesthetically pleasing as well. McGill closes the letter with a brief summary of current trends but proclaiming that regardless of dress styles or hair styles, “saying ‘I do’ remains the biggest life commitment you’ll make” (p. 29). McGill wants to reinforce the huge importance of the wedding day: by declaring that the importance lies outside the realm of trends and styles she is attempting to elevate the importance of Weddingbells’ mission, but nonetheless fills the pages almost exclusively with the latest trends and styles.

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Another interesting quirk with this 20th anniversary issue is the first — and last — appearance of an advice column. “Belle” is touted as the resident wedding planning expert, offering her take on everything from a quandary over an off-white wedding dress to the benefits of hiring a wedding planner. This two-page column is listed in the table of contents in the “In

Every Issue” section — even though this is its one and only appearance. It appears that these are not legitimate questions received by the magazine, but rather an amalgam of inquiries designed to cover the largest breadth of potential queries from brides. For example, one of the questions is from a distressed bride who has fallen in love with her dream dress, but it only comes in ivory and her fiancé’s conservative parents find the whole idea “risqué and are worried guests may find it funny” (Dear Belle, 2005, p. 65) — really?!? It is completely implausible that this is a legitimate concern, and certainly not a common one. Another query touches on the merit of hiring a wedding planner, to which the reader is advised that one of the top regrets heard from brides is not hiring a planner and recommends doing so to tame their inner Bridezilla (Dear

Belle, 2005, p. 64). In my professional experience, I was frequently told by clients that they were determined to hire a wedding planner after witnessing a friend or family member be so stressed out on their wedding day that they were not able to enjoy themselves.

The real weddings have moved again — this time much closer to the front than in the previous issue — not quite as far forward as they used to be but decidedly front of middle.

Clearly, they are trying to find where they work best in the magazine — at least from their perspective — or that of their advertisers. There is one four-page wedding, followed by three two-page offerings. The first wedding features a “rising star” country singer — and has a full page of text about his career (p. 151) before launching into the description of the wedding. This wedding offers 16 photos — the first of which is a full-page shot of the bride and groom. Very

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few details shots are presented, and the overall quality of the photos is medium. Both the photos and the text details are overall rather uninspiring.11 The second wedding features an actor who had a minor role on a rather large TV show — and interestingly enough — their wedding only garners two pages of “standard” coverage (pp. 154-155). Five of the eight photos offer detail shots — however, the text headings that typically describe the details have been eliminated. The remaining two weddings also offer eight photos each, with minimal attention to décor details.

This presents the lack of focus on wedding details that was ubiquitous in the earlier issues of the timeframe.

F/W 2005

The Fall/Winter 2005 issue has “Special Edition 20th Anniversary Issue!” on the cover, as well as four cover models — all donning wedding gowns — and all shown full-body (see

Fig. 14). There is something quite sumptuous about this cover with the four brides, and with the primary textual focus being to “Plan Your Perfect CELEBRATION!” it has much less text on it than all of the other covers in my timeframe, as well. Ironically, although this cover was one of the most noteworthy for me, the content of the issue was lacking in much that was significant.

Again this demonstrates the periodic lack of connection between what is promised on the cover versus what is actually delivered within the issue itself.

11 Uninspiring in this context refers to dull, unoriginal, and very basic details. It is difficult to understand from both the researcher and professional perspective why the magazine would not endeavor to present details that fit into their unique and personalized agendas. 125

Figure 14 Four brides cover (FW05)

In this issue’s letter, editor-in-chief McGill discusses her love of tabloids, as they provide good “water-cooler fodder” (McGill, FW2005, p. 23) as well as keep her abreast of the latest in pop-culture. McGill mentions many of the recent celebrity weddings that have occurred as evidence that “marriage is red hot” (p. 23) and asserts that in the last 20 years there have never been so many options available when planning your nuptials. Her mention of a Psychology

Today article sent me off on a three-hour tour looking for that article, which highlights that the

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current preoccupation with weddings is “creating a personalized ceremony” (p. 23).12 McGill closes the letter by offering up her favourite slogan with a slight variation: “you really can have your wedding day any which way, and we’re here to show you how” (p. 23). This letter is also the first in the time frame (and only one of two) to mention the honeymoon — so while there is always a section of the magazine devoted to honeymoons — with a substantial advertising component — it is clearly not one of her priorities to promote them.

The real weddings featured have stayed put in the same region of the magazine. All four are two-pagers with eight or nine photos — offering both better quality images and quite a few detail shots. Three of the four weddings are actually leaning towards unique — at least in a few categories — and give a sense of personality both textually and photographically.

Sometimes the description from the bride (in the real wedding text) of what look they were aiming for could not be further from the execution. For example, one bride notes that “Very

Gatsby is what we were going for” (Gibson, FW2005, p. 150), yet absolutely nothing appears in the photos or descriptions provided that is remotely Gastby-esque13 — in fact this wedding, although interesting, could not be further from what the mind conjures upon hearing what aesthetic was their goal (see Fig. 15) — making it fairly surprising that the editor included this quote at all. Also, although several of the brides and/or grooms are denoted as “celebrity” or

“style maker” they were not well-known as of 2005.

12 The Psychology Today article indicates the research is from a book by Stephanie Coontz — which I was going to read but it is about the actual marriage, and not the wedding that precedes it, so not relevant for these purposes. 13 When one thinks of “Gatsby” it typically conjures images of opulence, gold, silver, crystals, excessively decorated with embellishments at every turn. This wedding was simple with a clean colour palette of white and apple green and no embellishments to be found. 127

Figure 15 The “un-Gatsby” details (FW05, p. 151)

S/S 2006

The cover of Spring/Summer 2006 issue is quite unique for my time period: it is the first cover to be shot outside, and only one of three, and of those three the only one where the outside

(flowers, greenery, stone wall) is in focus (see Fig. 16). It is also unique in that it features two full-length brides, and one canine attendant in a floral wreath, providing it with a touch of whimsy. This coincides with various trends that were pervasive in the wedding industry in 2006: bright florals, the bride wearing her hair down instead of in an “up-do,” and finding a way to incorporate the family dog into the wedding ceremony.

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Figure 16 Two brides and a dog cover (SS06)

The letter in this issue discusses the fact that McGill has only attended a few weddings since becoming editor of Weddingbells. The first half of the letter discusses a co-worker’s wedding she attended — which happens to be featured in the magazine (although she does not point that out). McGill discusses at quite great length that a great wedding must have heart and soul — asserting that “it is the one thing that will make your event unforgettable for both you and your guests” (McGill, SS2006, p. 15). When viewed through my event professional lens, this 129

statement holds prominence in light of the fact that it is often very difficult to communicate the emotion of an event in the photos. A really good photographer will capture these moments — but even if the photographers of the featured real weddings managed to do this — these are definitely not the shots they chose to publish.

The featured real weddings in this issue have a noticeably much larger “wow” factor than any previous issue. The photos are of the same quality as the rest of the magazine, and they feature very noteworthy and unique details.

Figure 17 Real wedding details - crop (SS06, pp. 100-101)

Besides a feature of the wedding of the editor-in-chief of FASHION magazine (pp. 80-

82), there are three other weddings featured: two on four-page spreads — one of which features the wedding of a Weddingbells production manager (pp. 94-97), and one on two pages of coverage. The four-pagers both have 12 photos, the two-pager has seven photos, and all three include a full-page photo. They average about 215 words of text, and gone are the categories which allowed for more specific information about décor, etc. This is the first issue to have the

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section titled “Wedding Planner” with each real wedding, which offers contact details for the primary vendors (event planner, gown, venue, stationery, flowers, cake, etc.). As the photographer is not listed, these weddings must have been chosen beforehand and covered by a staff photographer, which would account for the drastic improvement in their quality (see

Fig. 17). Figure 17 offers a look at some of the most prominent wedding trends of 2005 and

2006: using a chocolate brown and pink colour palette (chocolate brown and light blue was a close second), using Chinese food cartons as favour boxes, and colourful cakes with a sense of whimsy. All four weddings definitely offer unique details and lots of personality — from choices of venue, linen colour, tablescape details, florals, and stationery.

F/W 2006

The Fall/Winter 2006 issue has the second cover in a row that breaks with their standard formula — this time with a close-up so tight on the model’s face that the reader cannot even see her hair (see Fig. 18). The lighting makes it quite dark and moody, and she is holding a bouquet of jewel-toned roses very close to hear face. It is also the first cover to have the title directly on the cover image, instead of being on a border across the top. Unlike the previous issue, a great deal of text dons the Fall/Winter 2006 cover — even slightly encroaching onto the face of the cover model.

In this letter, the editor-in-chief discusses the frequency with which she hears about wedding regrets. This letter seems more clearly targeted at the reader than any of the letters to this point. Noticeably absent are mentions of celebrities, or colleagues, or pop-culture references

— just a list of tips — her top 10 ways to avoid regrets in the reader’s upcoming nuptials. Based on McGill’s penchant for pop-culture references in other issues of this timeframe, the lack of

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them in this issue is most likely an indication that there were no prominent celebrity weddings or wedding movies while she was composing her letter.

Figure 18 Cover (FW06)

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This issue contains a feature article about choosing the perfect reception venue. The exact same article also appeared in the Spring/Summer 2005 issue. This is one of approximately five articles I noticed were repeated in two or more issues. It also speaks to the average gap between any repeated articles, which in turn speaks to how many issues one particular bride is expected to read. Most of the statistics I have read do not go beyond 18 months, making this a safe distribution for this article — what is old is new again. Although I am quoted five times within the article, a good portion of the rest of the (seven page) article can be attributed to my conversation with the writer (but is not attributed to me). This lack of attribution in this specific article might indicate that this was common practice in other articles as well (that being: a conversation with a wedding industry professional provides the substance to the article without attributing the information as being sourced from that conversation.

The real weddings are now offered as a distinct section of the magazine with a full-page detail shot of the first bride’s bouquet, a header reading “Real Weddings” and a sub-heading of

“Canadian Couples Say ‘I Do’” (p. 93). However, somewhat ironically, now that there is a title page for the section — there are only three weddings featured: a five-page, 12 photo, very aspirational looking wedding with details that are both literally and figuratively very sumptuous and rich looking; a three-page, 10 photo, entirely white, white wedding; and a three-page, 10 photo wedding, complete with fire-throwing dancers and a bride that was air-lifted in by helicopter (wearing a blue gown…hurrah!). And, aside from the one bride wearing an ice blue dress, all of the weddings featured in this issue are very, very white: lots of white attire (on the bridal party as well as the bride and groom [see Fig. 20]), all white linens (see Fig. 19), all white flowers…white, white, and more white. This illustrates the trend during 2006 and 2007 to move away from the very colourful palette seen in the preceding couple of years (chocolate brown and

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pink, etc.) to the other end of the spectrum where all details were white, sometimes even all the guests’ attire.

Figure 19 All white table linens (FW06, p. 105)

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Figure 20 Bridal party dressed in white (FW06, p. 101)

S/S 2007

The Spring/Summer 2007 cover is fresh and pretty, featuring a ¾ (sitting, top of the head to the knees) shot on a lavender background (see Fig. 21). While the majority of the writing on the cover is in brown or muted pink, and the name in white, it is emblazoned in bright yellow with “YOUR DAY, YOUR WAY” which is almost as large as the magazine name, and visually takes up more real estate on the cover. Not only does it take up a lot of real estate on this cover, but it takes up more real estate than any other text on any of the 20 covers in my timeframe. This slogan gains importance by its constant repetition throughout the various issues, but nowhere is its importance more visually evident than on this cover.

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Figure 21 Cover text with dimensions (SS07)

This issue presents Weddingbells as the antidote to wedding planning mayhem and is the first issue to make a big deal of “your day, your way” which becomes a sort of mantra through the rest of the issues in my timeframe. The editor is taking a stance to position the magazine as an integral part of the planning process for all Canadian brides.

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The format of the letter has changed quite drastically from previous issues. It is now called “Editor’s Note” and instead of the headshot of Alison at the top of the page, there is a full- body shot of her eight-person team. McGill begins her letter with a quote from Ferris Bueller’s

Day Off equating the busyness found with new technologies to the busyness of wedding planning. A good portion of the letter is touting the marvels of the new magazine design, and the new website — asserting they now offer everything a bride requires to plan her wedding: “We like to think we do a lot of the work for you so your planning process is breezy and efficient, meaning you have more time to savour the moment” (McGill, SS2007, p. 14).

The issue is still rife with mixed messages, though. In an article ostensibly written to let brides know they do not have to spend a fortune on their dress — it ultimately does little other than to justify spending a fortune on the dress:

Unless you’re a movie star, chances are your wedding dress is the most you’ll ever spend

on a single piece of clothing. Obviously you don’t have to spend a fortune on your bridal

attire, but if you decide to drop dough on a designer creation (say a Monique L’hullier),

you know you’re getting what you pay for. (p. 32)

Although Weddingbells tends to generally focus on mid-pricing for wedding accoutrements, there are still a considerable amount of featured dresses/shoes/jewellery that are definitively high-end (like Monique L’hullier). For the most part their assurances that “you don’t have to spend a fortune” are not borne out in the editorial content. It is fine to assure the bride they need not break the bank to fund their nuptials, but the corresponding material objects should be featured to back up such sentiments.

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Figure 22 Vintage-inspired wedding (SS01, p. 90)

The real weddings in this issue once again have a title page, this time they have dropped the “real” and it is identified with “Canadian Couples Say ‘I Do’” and “weddings.” They feature a four-page, 10 photo wedding, with some quite untraditional details like paper parasols, a vintage car, and chocolate brown details everywhere, including on the wedding gown; a three- page, 11 photo wedding, that while clearly had a very high budget, includes nothing out-of-the- ordinary about it — however, I know from my professional background that the bride is the daughter of one of the magazine’s top advertisers, which is probably why their wedding was featured; a three-page, 10 photo wedding, that although on a pretty lake, also had no notable details; and a three-page, nine photo wedding, which embodies everything you might imagine when you hear about a black-tie white wedding.

All four weddings feature a full-page image — the first of the bride with the bridesmaids blurry in the background, and the others feature the bride and groom. It is also worth noting that

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the attire and décor of the first wedding leans more towards costume-y than the period look they were aiming for (see Fig. 22; Fig. 23), but the focus on some non-traditional elements definitely indicates a shift in the trends during this period of time.

Figure 23 Bridal attire detail (SS07, p. 92)

F/W 2007

The cover of the Fall/Winter 2007 issue is quite striking: it is simple, all the text is in the same colour palette, the bride is shown from head to almost-knee, and the bright pop of colour in the bouquet — hot pinks and oranges — really stands out. The text right under the magazine name offers “487 WOW IDEAS” to allow you to “Plan your day, your way!”. The cover indicates the growing prominence of the “your day, your way” mantra that is noted on most14 of the covers during the timeframe.

14 The occurrence of this focus on personalization is fully examined later in this chapter. 139

In this letter, editor-in-chief McGill discusses some of her functions as magazine editor, and some of the information she has gleaned from readers. The letter also does a great job of describing the audience — or at least who the audience is perceived to be. McGill indicates that she engages with the reader by reading the online forums, through the editor’s blog, and from the results of the annual reader survey. McGill also briefly discusses the results of the annual reader survey — which for the 2007 survey had 1600 brides respond — for example: 44% of engagements take place between December and February, and 56% of Canadian weddings occur between July and September (p. 12). However, as in touch with their audience as the editor purports to be — one of the tips offered later in the issue seems a bit out of step when a celebrity planner from NYC is quoted on how to get the glam of a celebrity wedding without the celebrity budget. The end result is the suggestion to have a standing-only cocktail reception and keep the pace moving. This goes against some of the key factors that most of the readers hold ubiquitous about the white wedding.

The four real weddings featured are presented with the same title page as the previous issue (“Canadian Couples Say ‘I Do’” / “weddings”), on a full-page photo of the first bride and groom. This first wedding is a destination wedding shown on three pages (including the full page) with 10 photos, only three of which are details; the next three weddings are on two pages with between eight and 10 photos, four or five of which are detail shots; however, the vendor details have been paired down to only three categories and direct the reader to the website for more details, and more real weddings. All of the weddings are accompanied by between 175-215 words of text. None of the featured weddings are terribly unique or individual: one is a beautiful venue, but the décor and attire is fairly standard — one of those cases where it feels like a wedding is featured because of who the bride is, not how the wedding turned out — the bride is a

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former beauty queen and founder of a beauty product company; one wedding is purportedly

Moroccan-themed, however, none of the photos really bear that out — the bride in this case is a

Global TV reporter; and one wedding was Canadian themed — they were aiming for a 1950s

Canadian country club vibe (Duck, FW2007, p. 89) — which seems to equate to red napkins tucked in the wine glasses, maple leaves on the table numbers, and little bottles of maple syrup as favours. This Canadian-themed wedding comes across as a performance of what a non-

Canadian would assume a Canadian-themed wedding would look like.

S/S 2008

The Spring/Summer 2008 cover is the most pared down of the entire time range — with a stark white background, a bride in a stark white dress, minimal makeup and a white flower tucked behind her ear, an all-white bouquet, and all the text including Weddingbells in green, black or pink. This is the first time there is any mention of real weddings on the cover: “true love: BEST REAL WEDDINGS.” The appearance of real weddings on the cover indicates the shift in prominence that the real weddings take from this issue onwards.

Although the cover is very white, a great deal of colour is presented within this issue’s pages. I was very excited to see a fashion layout — “Your Wedding Style Essentials” (pp. 59-62)

— that promotes displaying your personality by opting for a wedding gown in a colour instead of all-white. The 10 gowns and five accessories showcased are in fairly muted colours — but colours nonetheless — and this article is given a prominent placement, very close to the front of the magazine. There are actually a noticeable number of gowns in the hundreds of advertised gowns later in the issue that are even bolder: deep red, floral-print, or pink, to name a few. There is also a six-page spread of vibrant jewel-toned cakes and florals.

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Figure 24 Toronto garden wedding (SS08, p. 83)

McGill’s letter in the Spring/Summer 2008 issue is of the fairly generic variety, providing the standard “just relax and enjoy it” sort of advice. McGill stresses the importance of having fun at your wedding, inviting the reader to “savour all the brilliant moments along the way” (McGill,

SS2008, p. 13), yet seems to counter that with a list of her top wedding essentials — none of which seem to have anything to do with weddings (a toast rack…really?!?) — shining a spotlight on advertisers and the commodified over the “fun” wedding planning experience.

The featured real weddings are in exactly the same format as the previous issue: same titles, a three-page wedding followed by three two-page weddings. All four weddings are accompanied by 10 photos, which include a decided focus on details — which is a change from past issues.

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Figure 25 Chandelier and orchestra (SS08, p. 82)

The first wedding, titled “pomp & circumstance” shows a lavish garden party (see Fig.

24) at the groom’s mother’s “majestic” Bridal Path (Toronto) home, complete with six tents, crystal chandeliers, custom designer gowns, and lots of live musicians including a 14-piece orchestra (see Fig. 25). The editor noted that “family and friends were wowed by the couple’s choice of party décor, which included glimmering golden drapes and fine china (the very same pattern [an American president] used at his wedding was on the guest tables)” (p. 82).

The last wedding is an extremely simple backyard affair — unique for the bride’s custom-made pink halter-style peau de soie gown paired with brown flip flops — and I am certain only featured because she is the Executive Editor of FASHION Magazine.

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F/W 2008

The Fall/Winter 2008 cover has a very similar feel to the previous issue: it has a pale background (this time pale pink) with muted text (black, pink, and teal), a bride in stark white with the pop of colour from the bouquet. The cover text once again announces “inspiring real weddings” as well as trends to help the reader “plan YOUR DAY, YOUR WAY” (cover).

The main focus of the letter in this issue is eschewing traditional bridal style (curvy proportions, sharp blunt bobs, etc.), however, a heavy dose of traditional nonetheless remains in the issue. This issue offers a new format for the real weddings and also has a real wedding in the local section at the back for the first time. However, the weddings featured do not actually portray details of the “real” weddings, rather there are editorial details, or “get the look,” offered with each wedding. I feel like this new style of real weddings is not actually featuring “real” weddings. It gives the reader the impression of real weddings without the need for detail shots from the actual event. It makes me think that they can A. incorporate more “real weddings” this way, and B. can entirely tailor the imagery to their liking with the “get the look” rather than relying on actual weddings. It definitely feels like an editorial desire to control the narrative that is presented: if they cannot rely upon Canadians to have weddings illustrating where they feel trends are going, or where they would like to steer those trends, it becomes necessary to shape the message themselves.

This issue includes a substantial increase in the number of featured real weddings: there are six, as well as the addition of a featured local wedding within the regional section at the back of the magazine. For the first time, a text-graphic now appears with each wedding which includes basic contact details for some of the vendors (phone number or website — not both), as well as the URL to find more photos on their website. The first wedding is three pages and

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features the actress that appears on the cover. This coverage has about 300 words of text — most of which describe the proposal, not the actual wedding day, only eight photos, five of which are of the bridal party, and only one offering a glimpse of the reception décor. The next five weddings are presented on a single page, with about 175 words of text, a small photo of the couple, accompanied by a bunch of editorial photos to “get the look” — specifically, no actual details of these weddings are evident. Therefore, if the reader does not go online to look at more photographs — they are not actually privy to any photos of these “real” weddings at all — which is quite an interesting editorial decision — I guess you choose a pretty couple and then you can take creative license as to what the wedding looked like with the accompanying editorial photos.

As an example, one of the weddings entitled “sunshine day” (p. 84) had the colour yellow as their theme. Weddingbells covers half the page with “get the look” showing yellow elements from their preferred local (Toronto) vendors rather than from the actual wedding (see Fig. 26).

Figure 26 Get the look (FW08, p. 84)

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In this issue about 250 pages separates the sixth real wedding from the “local” real wedding. Although the same editor (Roseanne Dela Rosa) has composed the page it has a very different feel from the other weddings: it has five photos, including a couple detail shots, about

60 words of text, and the vendor information is titled, simply, “details” in a compact rectangle at the bottom of the page.

S/S 2009

Spring/Summer 2009 is a very interesting issue for several reasons, both in what it offers, and what it does not offer. For example, although the editor is very excited to harken the return of the sleeve: “I’ve got great news: sleeves — from cap to three-quarter to full wrist-grazers — are slowly but surely making their way back into bridal!” (McGill, SS2009, p. 15), there are not actually any sleeves to be found in the fashion editorials. It is also an important issue because the editor refers to the great impact one wedding can have on wedding culture: in this case McGill is discussing the wedding of John F. Kennedy, Jr. to Carolyn Bessette. In one of my favourite letters so far, McGill really tells a story about wedding trends. This is definitely a crucial letter as it provides a window into some of the machinations of the wedding industrial complex, at least her perspective on it — ascribing a single wedding as the turning point in wedding style for years to come.

McGill also mentions two of the real weddings in her letter — again the cover model is featured, but also the National Ballet of Canada couple that were featured in the previous issue in a fashion layout — which tells me their wedding was going to be featured regardless what it looked like.

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This issue offers tips to help the reader create a romantic atmosphere at the wedding reception. The article discusses crystal vases, candlesticks, luxurious linens, and champagne flutes:

Dining by the light of long-stemmed candles is infinitely more romantic than the day-old

standard of a 60-watt light bulb. Try placing crystal candlesticks close to a crystal vase,

and rejoice in the sparkling reflections that the flame creates. Your guests will enjoy the

ambience, too. Or try groupings of scented pillar candles for a unique centerpiece with a

delightful aroma. (In the mood, SS2009, p. 420)

All of these things are essentially totally impractical. Taper candles are forbidden in all but a handful of venues and scented pillar candles are always a no-no at the dinner table as they interfere with the flavour of the food; while procuring enough crystal vases for the reception can be categorized somewhere between at best totally wasteful, at worst financially punitive. These tips sound like they came from someone who has never had anything to do with planning a wedding.

The Spring/Summer 2009 issue also features seven real weddings and one local real wedding — however, their presentation is quite different from previous issues — a few with full- page images of the bride and groom, and five with editorial details — now called “steal their style.”

The first real wedding features the cover model — an entertainment TV host — with six photos and seven “steal their style” images, about 450 words of text, and a very diminutive wedding planner section with the websites of only six vendors. According to the one detail shot of the reception — this wedding had very plain (basic) décor with house (white) linens, house chairs, and no candles or special lighting.

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Another real wedding features a couple who are both members of the National Ballet of

Canada. The coverage of this one has more “typical” detail shots — and while nothing is terribly unique, it is very elegant and not all white. Half of the 375 words of text discuss their proposal, and the other half their programs which were done at work, the bride noting: “As a way to include our ballet lives in our wedding we decided to format our programs like the in-house programs at the Four Seasons. Both…were listed as cast members and instead of bios in the program we had short stories of how we met.” This is a good detail for the reader — a concrete detail on how to potentially include their work, or how they met, or a pastime into their wedding day.

The four one-page weddings all have about 250 words of text and four photos from the wedding supplemented with five “steal their style” details. Although not visible in the photos, one of the real weddings offers some evidence the couple’s personality was evident in their day, for example: “creating newspapers with funny stories for their guests to read and serving breakfast food for dinner” (Dela Rosa, SS2009, p. 96). Another of the one-pagers features two

CTV news anchors who got married — just the two of them — in Positano, Italy. Just as all the other weddings for two — few though they might be — featured in the ten-year timeframe — it was touted as a much less stressful way to celebrate nuptials: “Our destination wedding was perfect and stress-free. The entire day was about us and our love and commitment to each other.

[We] are very close with our families so it was a difficult decision to have no guests, but in the end we have no regrets” (Dela Rosa, SS2009, p. 100).

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Figure 27 Green details (SS09, p. 358)

For the local real wedding, five out of the seven photos are detail shots. The bride is quoted as saying they wanted a classic but modern wedding, and that’s what is apparent in their photos: a simple, yet striking ivory and chocolate brown cake with fresh green orchids on top; chocolate and green stationery and signage, sleek bouquets, and the bride in sassy apple-green shoes (see Fig. 27).

F/W 2009

The Fall/Winter 2009 issue very much belongs to the editor-in-chief. The letter discusses her own wedding day, the trends focus is on making your wedding day personal, and in the longest article — by far — of all 20 issues I looked at, McGill discusses her own wedding attire

(featuring a dress with sleeves, of course!). The letter depicts McGill’s wedding day — a morning ceremony and lunch — for only three guests. Her theme was black and white with hints of red and she wore a custom dress that was short — but with sleeves (see Fig. 28).

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Figure 28 Editor’s wedding (FW09, p. 78)

McGill was thrilled about her bespoke cake, all the varieties of florals in her bouquet, and the fact that all her guests got to choose their meal (well of course they did…there were only five people to feed). McGill describes her feelings on your wedding day: “I was completely absorbed in the moment — thrilled we were having exactly the wedding we wanted. At Weddingbells, we always encourage you to have “your day, your way,” and I certainly had mine…” (McGill,

FW2009, p. 15). Although the description and detail shots do not really bear that out, McGill is certain her nuptials were both unique and personalized.

This issue also has a letter from the online editor, Stephanie Grey, announcing the relaunch of the website, lauding all of the changes and all of the exclusive content to be found exclusively online. Grey’s musings stick very much on message:

Planning your wedding is a big task, and we know you’re always looking for wedding

inspiration, so we’ve relaunched weddingbells.ca and packed it full of fresh ideas. You’ll

find at least 10 new ones daily! We’ve got more blogs, more guides, more videos, and

more polls and quizzes. There’s also our free weekly e-newsletter, Your Day, Your Way

— sign up and get more web exclusives. Happy planning! (Grey, FW2009, p. 18)

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In the article about her dress, McGill goes into the minutiae of everything from the initial conversations with the designer through the actual fittings to the finished product:

At fitting number five, my dress was alive. I slipped into my glam and gorgeous gown

and felt like a Queen. It was so perfectly me. Just a few more tweaks with the back zipper

and a small cinch at the waist and it was fait accompli. (FW2009, p. 79)

McGill continues on to say that she realizes not every bride has the opportunity to have a big- name designer fashion their gown and she “relished every bibbidi-bobbidi-boo moment” (p. 79).

As McGill informed the readers that she wore a pair of Christian Louboutins for her wedding day, it ties in perfectly with Nicole Keen’s article “Sole Searching” which sensibly offers the shoes as a great place to splurge — something I always recommended to my own clients because it is the only part of the outfit that can be worn again. Keen writes that

“Diamonds may be a girl’s best friends, but there’s nothing like a fabulous pair of shoes to put a smile on your face…Plus, unlike your gown, you’re sure to wear these again — bonjour little black dress” (FW2009, p. 416).

The tips really focus on personalization, and in “celebration IDEAS” Roseanne

Dela Rosa touts the chart-topping wedding trend of the last several years is making it personal, instructing the bride to “step out of the box, infuse your celebration with your style and personality and make it uniquely yours” (FW2009, p. 24) — basically just another reminder of their “your day, your way” mantra.

Quite a few more real weddings are covered in this issue than in the past. These weddings offer nothing too extraordinary or unique and the actual details are once again supplemented, or replaced, by editorial details.

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There are seven real weddings at the front of the magazine, and one local real wedding at the back — this time their formats are very similar. The first wedding has nine photos and 325 words of text on three pages, and the second wedding has eleven photos and about 310 words of text on two pages. The next five weddings are all one-pagers with four or five photos, four or five editorial detail photos — now called “Weddingbells Additions” — and about 175 words of text.

One of the weddings was featured on the TV show Rich Bride, Poor Bride and although the décor and wedding elements were all fairly standard, it is definitely unique in that it featured two sisters having a joint wedding. Another of the weddings quoted the bride as saying her favourite elements of the whole day were the cake and the flowers, yet the reader is not shown an image of either!

S/S 2010

Spring/Summer 2010 is an interesting issue because it is the 25th anniversary issue and it contains a lot of discussion about trends. The cover does not make a huge deal about the anniversary — but has a very sparkly, celebratory feel to it.

In the letter from the editor McGill describes going back through the archives with her staff. McGill remarks on the readership, writing “it’s hard to believe we’ve been the best friend to more than 3.2 million Canadian brides since 1985” (SS2010, p. 15). McGill also touches on some of her favourite topics: how Carolyn Bessette “single-handedly changed the fashion landscape…in 1996 wearing a Narciso Rodriguez sheath dress and unfussy hair” — attributing the disappearance of the wedding-fashion-excess of the 80s and its replacement with brides wanting to be “sleek, chic and simply styled just like Carolyn” (p. 15); how for brides, regardless of the vagaries of wedding style over the years, and the changes to the layout of the magazine

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itself, Weddingbells has “always been here to guide and inspire you in your wedding planning to ensure you have ‘your day, your way’” (p. 15); and finishes with a list of 25 things that will never go out of style, which finishes with having “your day, your way” (p. 15). McGill managed to insert this mantra twice into her letter, reiterating her stance that Weddingbells will help the reader have a personalized fête.

The tips section contains a discussion of bridesmaid style, which fitting in with the personalized esthetic, touts eschewing traditional bridesmaid dresses, à la the movie 27 Dresses.

The writer explains that the movie explains everything that is wrong with traditional bridesmaid attire of the past, calling it “too bright, too big, too costume-y, too loud…just too much in general!” (Modern ladies, SS2010, p. 362), asserting that in order to allow your attendants to feel beautiful it is imperative to “scale things back” when choosing their garments (p. 362).

This issue features four national real weddings and one local. The four weddings consist of one three-page Hawaiian wedding with 10 photos, six Weddingbells Additions details, and about 250 words of text; and three one-page weddings with four photos, four editorial details, and about 175 words each; all four weddings have very reduced vendor details — allocated to a tiny rectangle at the very bottom, only mentioning four vendors. Unlike the previous several issues, each page does not contain instructions to get more details on the website, however, it is mentioned in small print after the write-up of the first wedding. The local real wedding features five, very poor-quality photos. The format is the same as in previous issues — still maintaining the larger, more extensive vendor list, and about 300 words of text. The textual description of the wedding sounds kind of intriguing: inspiration coming from Tudor England with a red and black colour palette, however, the photos look more high school drama class, than the dramatic effect

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the bride was shooting for. This wedding definitely could have benefited from some editorial detail shots.

F/W 2010

The Fall/Winter 2010 issue is a continuation of the 25th anniversary with the letter from the editor focusing on their anniversary soirée. McGill describes their “fabulous” event, and how much work it was to plan. McGill relates it back to the reader, assuming a correlation with the readers currently in the throes of planning their own wedding, assuring them that when it comes to a wedding: “It’s all in the details…there are so many of them. No need to be overwhelmed, though, that’s why we’re here: to keep you looped in about the best new wedding ideas and trends — we do the work for you” (McGill, FW2010, p. 15). With this statement McGill once again positions Weddingbells as an indispensable guide that will alleviate much of the effort, simply by reading its pages.

Another Weddingbells editor, Nicole Keen, provides an interesting look at wedding fashion 25 years ago vs. now, asserting a “major shift” (Keen, FW2010, p. 72), both in styles and availability. Keen provides permission for the bride to circumvent traditional bridal garb, but as presented, that basically just means rather bland choices such as not wearing a veil or adding in some colour. Keen finishes her article rather more boldly, asserting that “almost anything goes as long as you feel like you!” (p. 72). This is a wonderful statement in theory, however, not one that is borne out by the content of the magazine.

In the “celebration IDEAS” (p. 24) Roseanne Dela Rosa suggests using bright, patterned, upbeat décor items. Dela Rosa relays details of the myriad weddings she attended recently, espousing the personal details as the most memorable, and assuring the reader that “whether your party is big or small, your guests will always remember your personal touches so go ahead and

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have fun planning your day, your way — a wedding day that’s true to you” (p. 24). Dela Rosa’s suggestions also correspond with the Real Weddings in this issue which actually feature significantly more actual details of the featured weddings than in previous issues.

Figure 29 Detail shots (FW10, p. 126)

As in the previous issue, there are four real weddings and one local wedding featured.

The photo quality is once again on par with the rest of the magazine, and although there are fewer actual photographs for each wedding, the reader is given a much better idea of the “actual” details (as opposed to editorial detail shots). All four weddings also have more text associated with them, and the reader is given a sense of the personality of the couple. And the weddings seem to have much more personality also: bridesmaids in (very) mis-matched dresses carrying paper parasols, interesting signage, a pop up wedding chapel in Brooklyn designed by Martha

Stewart, a yellow cab as wedding day transportation, a bride wearing a teal blue (!!) knee-length

(!!) wedding dress, a tuxedo-wearing canine groomsman (see Fig. 29), and lots of sweet DIY details.

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Figure 30 Teal blue wedding dress (FW10, p. 124)

The editors did a much better job in this issue of presenting the real weddings. The reader is given a sense of what the couple is all about, what their day looked like, and lots of ideas that do not fit the expected notion of the traditional white wedding. It is an interesting side note that when the non-white-wearing bride entered the hall on her father’s arm — nobody stood up — perhaps although everyone there knew what the bride looked like, they were so conditioned for the white gown that she confused them with her unconventional sartorial choices (see Fig. 30).

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Figure 31 Vendor recommendations (FW10, p. 309)

This issue also offers a new feature in the regional section of the magazine: a page of recommended vendors (see Fig. 31). As a reader, I would probably assume that these are paid referrals, or at the very least, a feature of top advertisers, however, through my professional connections with several of the vendors featured I know that not to be the case. Two of the vendors featured have never advertised in Weddingbells, which from the industry perspective

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gives more clout to these vendors’ inclusion in this section — however, for the reader-at-large, I am not sure if it held any sway — other than offering a bit more name recognition. When looking at the magazine carefully, this “wedding planner” page does indicate the editor’s preference: the photographer, for instance, has had multiple weddings featured in the real weddings section — both national and local — and was later hired to photograph several editorial layouts.

S/S 2011

For the Spring/Summer 2011 issue, McGill’s letter discusses being present at your wedding by taking it all in. The letter also addresses the fact that everyone will have an opinion as you are planning but advising the reader to “fully embrace the philosophy ‘rise above’”

(p. 15). Weddings do seem to bring out both the best and the worst in people so entering the fray with this in mind will undoubtedly be helpful.

As in the previous issue, the fashion editor (Keen) advises the reader to add in some colour to their wedding wardrobe. Keen is slightly more emboldened in this issue, assuring the reader that “all white is all right” (SS2011, p. 65) but encourages taking advantage of the current bridal fashions — both gowns and accessories — which are available in “soft shades of pink, blue, lavender and green” (Keen, SS2011, p. 68). Again, you can see that the editors are trying to create a shift — however small — in the ubiquity of the white gown — but sadly it is not substantiated by the majority of the issue’s content — particularly the advertising.

Another editor (Dela Rosa) offers a coterie of planning tips in this issue. Dela Rosa suggests such ideas as using cakes instead of floral centerpieces, using bold and patterned décor items, or wowing your guests with an untraditional menu — which in this case entails embroidering every guest’s napkin. Dela Rosa informs the reader that she has attended a litany of

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weddings recently, and that it is the little touches that are going to be the most memorable. She asserts that “whether your party is big or small, your guests will always remember the personal touches so go ahead and have fun planning your day, your way — a wedding day that’s true to you” (SS2011, p. 24). The four or five layouts that Dela Rosa is responsible for in this issue all support the “your day, your way” mantra, enlisting the bride to find ways to display her identity on the big day.

Figure 32 Real wedding details (SS11, p. 102)

The real weddings featured in the Spring/Summer 2011 issue follow the same format as the previous few issues: four national weddings and one local. The first wedding is again on three pages, however, the other three are two pages, instead of just one. The three-pager offers 11 photos, with six detail shots, and the vendor information has been expanded — not in number of vendors listed — to include some commentary from the bride. The two-page features have 10 photos with six or seven detail shots. The increase in detail shots does a much better job of conveying the personality of the bride and groom, as well as the personality of the wedding, offering inspiration from everything from A Midsummer’s Night Dream to a carnival to a very lavish gold and purple royal-inspired fête. The inclusion of commentary with the vendor listings adds definite flavour to the overall description of the nuptials and is a decided improvement. It is 159

also kind of interesting to note that one of the national features and the local real wedding were shot by the same photographer — and you can see his eye for detail shots (see Fig. 32).

F/W 2011

The Fall/Winter 2011 issue is very focused on the royal wedding of Prince William and

Kate Middleton — commencing with the cover which announces “Royal Wedding

INSPIRATION” is available within its pages. In her letter, McGill discusses various aspects of the nuptials and predicts its very enduring influence: “…as Editor-in-Chief of Canada’s most- read bridal title I knew the Royal Wedding would be a historic game changer that would shape industry trends for the next decade or more” (p. 17). However, McGill seemed most excited by the fact that Kate’s dress had sleeves. It is worth noting though, that Jellison (2008) commented, in reference to the wedding of Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer, that the “royal wedding did not so much transform women’s image of the ideal wedding as it solidified their already existing picture of the perfect nuptial celebration” (p. 137) and this certainly seems like an apt comment for this royal wedding also.

The tips were full of suggestions to invoke nostalgia — for example, your favourite childhood board game — when looking for unique wedding ideas, as well as the ubiquitous

“Royal Inspiration” article, where Dela Rosa offers ideas on how to incorporate some elements from the royal wedding into your celebration: “From the petite bouquet to the stunning gown, take a cue from the biggest wedding celebration of the century and incorporate some of

Catherine and William’s beautiful ideas into your day” (Dela Rosa, FW2011, p. 45). These tips are not really concrete, actionable items, but rather, more descriptions of some of the actual royal wedding elements that might be replicable in a more modest soirée.

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The number of real weddings increased to six national and one local. The change in focus to (actual) details remains and presents a good indication of both décor and ambience for all seven weddings. All of the weddings have about half of their images devoted to details; however, the commentary has been removed from the vendor listings for all but the first two weddings. It is probably due to space constraints, but it is a shame, nonetheless. It is definitely apparent that the DIY elements have surged in popularity — even DIY elements that you have paid someone money to create for you — the overall aesthetic has permeated all but the most formal affairs — with one of the brides offering a candy station on a ladder (see Fig. 33) as well as personally folding 2,200 paper cranes to be a backdrop for their photobooth (p. 104), and another advising:

“I think you should take time to do the little things that make your wedding your own”

(Dela Rosa, FW2011, p. 316).

Figure 33 Real wedding details (FW11, p. 105)

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S/S 2012

In editor-in-chief’s Spring/Summer 2012 letter, McGill touts originality as the biggest wedding trend of the last several years, and looks to the huge surge in DIY as evidence. McGill writes that in her opinion, “this push in creative party planning is the reason DIY has become such an integral part of so many weddings” (McGill, SS2012, p. 17). McGill then directs the reader to various editorial features to garner inspiration for their own big day.

Figure 34 Generic cover (SS12)

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It seems ironic that in the issue that most heavily promotes originality is donned with the most generic looking cover from the timeframe of this project (see Fig. 34): a very blonde bride in a very stark white dress is photographed in front of a stark white backdrop, with the only punctuation of colour being her pink bouquet, and some pink cover text.

An interesting fashion feature entitled “With This Ring” discusses the history of the wedding band, which the writer insists is “long, rich and storied” (p. 352). The full-page article offers a brief history of the wedding band, some historical and ethnic traditions, and then offers an opinion on current ring trends and guidance on how to go about choosing your own. Even with a history dating back to the third century BC, the editor (Nicole Keen) asserts that wedding rings “remain the ultimate symbol of love, commitment, loyalty and friendship, making it one of the most important wedding investments” (Keen, SS2012, p. 352). This article spotlights the ring as one of the most integral elements of the white wedding, but it is quite unique as there is not another full-page article like this with such a good dose of history about a wedding element in my timeframe.

Another fashion article by Keen is included which is essentially an alphabetical list of various wedding fashion elements with a few photos, entitled “Bridal Fashion A to Z.” It stood out because while it may encourage some deviation from the norm: daring brides to wear a

“pretty pale shade of pink on [their] wedding day instead of traditional white” (Keen, SS2012, p.

76), it concludes by not only suggesting white for the bride, but all of the bridal party as well

(SS2012, p. 77). It definitely feels like one small step forward in the effort to eschew the traditional white wedding, accompanied by several steps back.

The real wedding layout has once again changed with this issue — it has a page introducing the “Real Weddings” and informing the reader that the “the weddings featured in the

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following pages are brimming with creative details to get you inspired” (p. 97). A couple of the most notable changes are that the city and province is no longer indicated on the top corner of the page, and the text has been reduced to about 100 words. There are also substantially more weddings featured in this issue: the first eight are on a single page — now presented with their individual URL so the reader can easily find more details online, then there are two four-page wedding features, as well as an additional local real wedding — this being the first issue to have both a Calgary and an Edmonton wedding feature.

On the one-page weddings, the photos are definitely focused on the personality of the event and the details, and whereas previously the text might have focused on how the couple met, or the proposal, the text is very much centered on one or two details of the reception décor and planning details. The four-page weddings are placed further into the issue, alongside editorials about flowers and cakes. Both have a solid page of only text, and one has 10 photos with only two of the bride and groom, the other having only two detail photos. These two features are more similar to coverage in past issues of celebrity weddings. In this case the first of the two, which offers all the interesting details, fits perfectly with the issue’s focus on DIY.

One look at [their] beautiful celebration and guests could see the two had taken DIY to a

whole new level. Handmade elements included homemade desserts (prepared by friends

and family), rustic wedding signs, cupcake tiers, a make-shift photo booth with an array

of fun props, a photo corner decorated with images of the newlyweds, a swing, and a

mouth-watering dessert shelf. (Dela Rosa, SS2012, p. 142)

This is a rather defiant departure from the polished details of so many past featured weddings, as well as from the ubiquitous notion of the white wedding. Their DIY affair offered lots of colour,

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lots of character, and lots of personality, yet was still found worthy of a four-page feature in a format previously devoted solely for someone famous or influential (see Fig. 35).

Figure 35 DIY real wedding details (SS12, p. 143)

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On the other hand, the second of the two four-page features is thoroughly traditional, with virtually no interesting details, but the bride is a senior editor at FASHION Magazine.15 The implied importance of the bride apparently outweighs the lack of interest demonstrated in the description — but not photographed — of the white linens, white truffle-toting favour boxes, and pale pink florals. Such a contrast to the previous wedding — like the editors wanted to showcase what the current trends are — but also did not want to stray too far from expectations — whether real or imagined.

Both of the local real weddings maintained the same format of the past few issues. While there are only a handful of photos for each, they both manage to convey a sense of whimsy and personality in their décor and overall nuptial ambience.

F/W 2012

Fall/Winter 2012 is a very interesting issue as it is the 10th anniversary issue for the editor-in-chief, Alison McGill. It was not planned that way, but the decade I chose for my project happens to be McGill’s first 10 years at Weddingbells, and her look back over her tenure serves as a great summary of my timeframe also. To mark her anniversary, Weddingbells has undergone a complete transformation: new fonts, new layouts, a cleaner design, and even more wedding ideas — including a new section focused on style for whole wedding, not just the dress and flowers. In her letter, McGill muses that when she “first arrived at the magazine, the wedding was an event that was going through an evolution, but celebrations were still relatively classic and conventional” (FW2012, p. 31). McGill goes on to remark at the dearth of “crafty DIY elements” (p. 31), cake styles and flavours were “demure” and strapless dresses were de rigueur.

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McGill asserts that today, “weddings have become events where truly anything goes — the more imaginative the party, the better” and hopes that her readers will be inspired to plan the “ultimate party” (p. 31). It is also worth noting that this is the first time the letter is actually referred to as a

“letter” — whereas it was previously dubbed a “note.”

In a new section called “Details, Details” one of the editors (Dela Rosa) offers reception and planning ideas, accompanied by a photoshoot that has a very high-end aesthetic — which would be at home in a more aspirational bridal magazine. These ideas would not be practical to execute on a large scale — but it would create a definite mood — focusing on the importance of lighting in décor — including chandeliers, candelabra, and as many flickering candles as possible.

This new section “details, details” encompasses planning ideas, reception décor layouts, and the real weddings. One of the layouts looks like the very high-end, aspirational-only bridal magazines, for example, it is completely impractical to actually execute on a large scale — but definitely creates a lavish atmosphere. For example, one of the examples is a reception table with five chandeliers hanging overhead, as well as towering floral arrangements and candelabra in the center. The article suggests that “with the right items you can transport guests to another mood”

(Dela Rosa, FW2012, p. 100), however, not only would emulating the examples given be extremely cost prohibitive, the four-foot arrangements on the table would completely inhibit any interaction between the guests, as well as make viewing the toasts and any entertainment virtually impossible.

The real weddings have once again changed format — and offer many more details than in previous issues — and the “cover” page identifying the start of the real weddings feature has been eliminated. This issue has fewer weddings than in the previous issue (which was the most

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of any issue during the 10-year timeframe), but about the same total number of pages. There are four weddings with two-page layouts, two weddings with four-page layouts, and two local real weddings. As would be expected in the “details, details” section, the photos primarily feature the wedding details — including signage, favours, florals, and tablescapes — and in the two four- page features one of the two full-page photos for each wedding is a detail shot (see Fig. 36). The accompanying text pays much more attention to the theme, or feel, of the wedding, and how the various details reflect their personalities.

Figure 36 Focus on real wedding details (FW12, p. 168)

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Through the many iterations of formatting for the real weddings over the ten years, there is a marked difference from beginning to end. I remember in my business that at the beginning of this time frame I always had to remind the photographers to take detail shots, and somewhere in the middle the clients started asking the photographer to do so, and by the end of this time period no astute wedding photographer would dream of not taking copious amounts of photos of all the details. While Weddingbells definitely played a role in leading this trend, they were also following a trend that was noticeable outside the parameters of the magazine; this noted increase in attention to, and recording of, the details was a mutual effort — spurred on by the wedding industrial complex, but also by cultural changes in general.

Topical analysis 1: According to Alison

After reviewing the progression of editor-in-chief Alison McGill over the 10 years, certain elements of her history and personality became apparent. It was very telling to look at what

McGill focuses on: to ascertain what influence she actually wields, as well as the areas where she wishes to wield influence, or merely thinks she wields influence. Prior to beginning the analysis I had several assumptions about the editor-in-chief: that she must possess a wealth of knowledge about weddings, that she likely came into her position as a fan of the whole wedding milieu, and that she must exert a great deal of power within the wedding industrial complex. However, all of the clues I gleaned throughout the analysis process reveal that McGill seems to view the wedding as slightly more soirée than societal ritual, and also does not seem aware of the magnitude of the wedding industrial complex — of which she plays a role — albeit a slightly less powerful one than I originally assumed. As an analyst I also made certain assumptions on McGill’s trajectory as identified through her writing: for example, both what she chose to focus on, and what she chose to ignore.

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It is evident in the data that McGill tried to push trends — she did, indeed, want to wield influence — and although she can be said to be responsible for a certain degree of molding the industry that she is part of — her opinions just were not enough to push it forward in any measurable way. This seems evident to me from myriad sources: the data set, the outside literature I reviewed, as well as my professional experience.

McGill’s letters provided insight into how she wanted to shape the magazine — even if there was pushback from other areas — and illustrate her goals for enacting influence. For example, it is apparent that the editor-in-chief would like to influence brides to wear dresses with sleeves; however, if the wedding gown designers who comprise the majority of content in the magazine (and it would follow to assume the majority of advertising revenue for the magazine) are not offering dresses with sleeves, it is difficult for styles to shift and for brides to find a dress that coincides with their sleeved-sartorial vision. McGill promulgated the “return of the sleeve” years before the content of Weddingbells actually agreed with her. The language McGill uses in her letters also demonstrate her developing knowledge of both trends and the industry. In the early issues, her reliance on very generic examples — such as Cinderella — morph into a comfort exploring historical wedding trends. McGill’s language also reveals a grasp of the industry that by the end of the timeframe she seemingly identifies herself as part of. I would also incorporate her own experience as a bride during this timeframe as having an influential role in her ownership and comfort as a steward of the wedding industrial complex in Canada.

Every time I did any analysis on the first couple of issues in my timeframe, I was slightly bewildered by their somewhat stilted, and overall generic feel. It seems probable that McGill began her tenure discussing a recent hit movie about a wedding (My Big Fat Greek Wedding), and the notion of Cinderella — but specifically Walt Disney’s incarnation of Cinderella —

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because that was her basis of knowledge about the industry. At this early juncture in her

Weddingbells tenure, it seems apparent that McGill would be very surprised to learn how very tenacious the wedding industry is, and how much power it asserted during WWII, for example.

The data suggests that McGill has an aversion — rightfully so — to the pouf and floof associated with wedding gowns from the 80s. McGill referred to 80s wedding style with such comments as:

“King Henry VIII-inspired puffy sleeves were de rigeur” (SS2009, p.15), “busy, over- detailed…gowns” (SS2009, p.15), and that they “were not good years for wedding style”

(SS2010, p.15). It seems likely that McGill probably had not seen a nice, sleek sheath gown until the huge amount of publicity that accompanied the very private nuptials of Carolyn Bessette and

John F. Kennedy, Jr. In the Spring/Summer 2009 letter, McGill describes how Carolyn Bessette single-handedly changed the dress landscape:

Today’s strapless and sleeveless designs have not always been the trend in wedding

gowns…[but] when Carolyn Bessette married John F. Kennedy Jr., she changed the

landscape of wedding dresses in a New York minute. Out went the busy, over-detailed,

long-sleeved gowns; in came the sleek and sleeveless sheath, which still routinely tops

the best-seller charts. (McGill, SS2009, p. 15)

Because this seems to have been her first exposure to a culturally-influencing wedding,

McGill therefore ascribed this event as being single-handedly the causation for the change in wedding styles — when, in fact, it was merely correlation. Although McGill only mentions

Bessette in two issues — Spring/Summer 2009 and Spring/Summer 2010 — she nonetheless makes it very clear that this particular bride “single-handedly changed the fashion landscape”

(SS2010, p.15). Bessette was absolutely responsible for a change in the popular wedding gown esthetic but was not the sole factor in the shift in wedding gown fashions. Bessette used to work

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for Ralph Lauren — as did Vera Wang who is discussed in more detail in the Historical

Background chapter — before starting her bridal empire, so it is fairly natural to assume the women have a similar esthetic as successful NYC women working in the fashion industry, for the same fashion house.

McGill is either not aware of Vera Wang’s influence in the bridal industry or has simply chosen to ignore it in her editorials. After reading Jellison (2008) I was reminded about the beginnings of Vera Wang’s business, which made me think about Alison McGill’s (SS2009) repeated assertions about the power of Carolyn Bessette’s wedding on wedding fashion. Based on McGill’s commentary over the 10-year period, it seems plausible that rather than ignoring

Vera Wang, she was simply unaware of her impact. Ten years of text paint the picture of an editor-in-chief that stepped into her job as a woman that had not spent her childhood fantasizing about her own Cinderella moment, and other than attending a smattering of friend and family weddings, did not really have much knowledge about the industry and its machinations.16

In addition to her focus on the impact of the Bessette-Kennedy wedding, McGill also anoints the 2011 wedding of Kate Middleton to Prince William as extremely culturally influential. Of the many facets of their nuptials that could have received focus, McGill revealed yet again, her penchant for wedding dresses with sleeves. Given McGill’s zeal for sleeves in past issues — and on her own wedding dress — it is no surprise that she quickly zeroed in on the fact that Kate’s dress had sleeves asserting that she thinks “she wowed the world with her magnificent Sarah Burton for McQueen gown, but when she stepped out of that Rolls-Royce

16 And an internet search indicates that after graduating from university she only spent a couple of years working at a specialty magazine (for hair salons) before taking her role as EIC at Weddingbells where she still remains today. So, she was not only finding her footing in the world of weddings, but professionally as well. 172

Phantom VI…I knew the dress would have sleeves” (FW2011, p. 17). McGill had been discussing the “return of the sleeve” for several years before the royal wedding, so it appears like she puts such a spotlight on the fact that Kate Middleton’s dress had sleeves to justify her own enthusiasm for the trend. McGill’s take on the bridal identity definitely includes a dress with sleeves. In the issues where McGill pays particular mention of the sleeved wedding gown, the fashion editorials and advertisements do not bear that out, so her zeal for Kate’s dress comes across very much like vindication for her previous declarations on the topic.

Throughout the 20 issues of Weddingbells analyzed for this project the editorial staff, under the leadership of McGill, consistently relied on two rhetorical appeals: ethos and pathos.

For the sake of this analysis I will concur with rhetoricians Mark Longaker and Jeffrey Walker’s

(2011) definitions of ethos and pathos. Longaker and Walker defined ethos as “the apparent character of the speaker…[which] includes “reputation, credentials, knowledge of the subject, intelligence, fair-mindedness, honesty, goodwill, and general moral quality” (p. 45). They define pathos as “the emotion of the audience” (p. 46), going on to write that this pathos can move “a person to take action” (p. 46). Ethos is clearly evident in the professionalism of the magazine — both in the credibility of the editor-in-chief Alison McGill and her editorial staff, as well as in the layout of the magazine. The credibility of the editor and her staff are inherent in their role as part of the wedding industrial complex as well as simply by the fact that they are the leading publication — and by extension — the leading authority on weddings in Canada.

McGill, herself, is granted ethos by nature of her title and perceived position within the wedding industry. While her ethos is primarily earned by virtue of her experience at

Weddingbells over her first decade on staff, at the beginning of the timeframe it is solely a function of her title and McGill would not maintain this ethos outside of the parameters of the

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magazine. However, it is not until McGill is able to identify with the bride that she truly embodies her ethos. In the Fall/Winter 2009 issue McGill writes about her own experience in planning a wedding and her take on the bridal identity. As Burke (1969) wrote: “in being identified with B, A is “substantially one” with a person other than himself” (p. 21). Although

McGill had a very small wedding, she nonetheless takes up the mantle of the bridal identity herself, and from this point forward is more aligned with the identification of her readers, as bride. However, by the end of her first decade on staff at Weddingbells, McGill’s ethos would undoubtedly be recognized at large within the wedding industrial complex, and perhaps even to circles outside the wedding industry — but there is no specific evidence to support this fact in the data.

On the other hand, pathos is utilized with the magazine’s ability to connect to its readers.

Weddings are intrinsically emotional life events, so Weddingbells becomes more effective with its ability to play upon those emotions. There are also certain instances — such as the editor reflecting on her own nuptials — that allows for a greater sense of both ethos and pathos: ethos because she somehow gains just a little bit more expertise by finally tying the knot herself, and pathos because for the timeframe of that one issue at least, she becomes a fellow bride with the readers and can better communicate her own emotions surrounding the planning of a wedding as well as on the wedding day itself.

Between the first issue in the timeframe (Spring/Summer 2003) and the last issue

(Fall/Winter 2012) it could also be asserted that there is an overall increase in the ethos of

Weddingbells with the improvement in the quality of images — which are decidedly lacking in the real weddings in earlier issues, as well as the better choice of fonts and page layouts that occurred after their overhaul of the entire layout (Spring/Summer 2004). Additionally, an overall

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increase in the pathos exhibited by Weddingbells over the decade is evident with its increased connection to the reader through an ever-increasing online presence. At the beginning of the timeframe there is an occasional mention suggesting the reader visit their website, but by the end there are large portions of content that are reserved for the website making it imperative that the reader interact with the website which in turn can create a more intense bond — through their online forums as well as the promise of new daily posts of real weddings and design inspiration.

Whatever else McGill may or may not have had sway over — she definitely spent the decade encouraging her readers to personalize their weddings and was adamant that all brides should be able to experience their big day in their own particular way. The tone set forth in

Weddingbells allows the consumer to feel like she is in charge. It is a necessary fallacy that the reader is in control, but the analysis reveals the power and control that exists both in the wedding industrial complex, and in our culture at large. McGill sets the necessary tone to convince her readers that they maintain agency — that they are making the decisions — even if industry and familial pressures take away your ability to actually effect any meaningful change.

Topical analysis 2: Your Day, Your Way

The “Your Day, Your Way” mantra was the most prevalent theme in the decade of Weddingbells issues from 2003 to 2012. Weddingbells’ assertions to personalize one’s wedding day rely heavily on the consumption of material objects to do so. Viewing this process of consuming material goods to both communicate the cultural underpinnings of the wedding ritual as well as to perform the bridal identity can best be expressed in light of the theory of consumption outlined by Grant McCracken (1986, 1987, 1990, 2005) and Thorstein Veblen (1934). Understanding the various machinations at work in the process of personalizing your wedding day — while never really veering too far from the socially-expected framework — help illuminate the expectations

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created by (and in turn catered to) the wedding industrial complex. The presentation of the “your day, your way” data helps illustrate the elaborate production of what in reality turns out to be a fairly false sense of agency for the bride in the whole wedding planning process.

At the beginning of the timeframe the reader was given one-page checklists to track the budget (SS2003, p. 50), to help plot out the whole wedding day (SS2003, p. 52), as well as to help plan the reception (SS2003, p. 54). While they are too short and generic to be of any help in a meaningful way, such checklists were definitely ubiquitous in other wedding magazines at the time (both foreign and domestic). By 2005, Weddingbells had moved on to offer articles about the wedding planning process which in the spirit of your day, your way help give the reader a sense of agency. The Spring/Summer 2005 issue offers a two-page “advice” column providing the reader with brief snippets of planning advice on a myriad of topics. That issue, as well as the

Fall/Winter 2006 issue, have a much more in-depth article on choosing the right venue. This definitely further equips the bride with agency, as it goes into the minutiae of all the different facets involved, as well as all the specifics to consider. In a somewhat inconsistent fashion, the article initially advises that there is really no shortage of potential reception venues, “both traditional and untraditional” (Campbell, 2006, p. 424) but finishes by advising the reader to remember that the venue choice will set the tone for the whole wedding. In her article, the writer

(Campbell) quotes several wedding planners: it has one quote from a planner in Halifax, one from a planner in Saskatoon, as well as five quotes from me in Calgary. It seems logical that this geographically diverse set of experts will help appease the reader, regardless of where she might be across Canada.

Another planning article appears in the Spring/Summer 2008 issue, offering the who, what, and how of it all for wedding day speeches. The toasts can be a stressful part of the

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wedding — both for the bride and groom in deciding who will speak — but also for the vast majority of those enlisted to speak. Thus, this article furthers the bride’s agency by arming her with information about how things should proceed, as well as tips she can pass on to those giving toasts. Although the article advises that “there are no hard-and-fast rules about who can and can’t propose a toast at your wedding” (Look who’s talking, 2008, p. 472), it briefly outlines the traditional format, as well as offers some untraditional ideas. To give some weight to the recommendations, the article mentions a well-known wedding movie, as well as quotes a speechwriter from Toronto and a wedding planner from Calgary (me).

In the Spring/Summer 2009 issue, readers are offered “helpful hints to building your dream wedding” (Plan your perfect party, SS2009, p. 416) which is a whole page of text discussing dress, time of year, food, music, and florals. The writer assures the bride that although planning can be overwhelming, by giving thought to these issues “the ideal wedding theme will come to you and reflect both you and your future hubby perfectly” (SS2009, p. 416). Clearly this article is intended to both assuage the reader’s stress, and further her agency by offering some guidance to achieve a personalized wedding.

One of the ways that the “your day, your way” theme is brought to the fore is in articles promoting hiring a wedding planner. As can be seen in Figure 37, the Spring/Summer 2011 issue includes an article explaining the benefits of hiring a wedding planner — touted as your own personal “miracle worker” (Help for hire, SS2011, p. 357). Although on the surface this seems to be furthering the bride’s agency, it is really more about furthering the agenda of the wedding industrial complex: the bride will feel like it is her choice to hire the wedding planner, and the wedding planner will execute her wedding desires: “A good wedding planner will step in to make sure everything runs according to plan, which means you can relax and enjoy every

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moment of your day!” (p. 357). However, whether or not the vendor is aware, the wedding planner is really another cog in the wedding industrial complex, helping to further the white wedding agenda.

Figure 37 Wedding planner article next to wedding planner advertisement (SS11, p. 357)

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In my professional practice as an event planner, I always felt like the champion for the bride and groom. I wanted to protect their interests against overspending, against unnecessary wedding traditions, against familial discord, and against having a generic wedding that did not reflect their identity as a couple. Even though my focus always revolved around alleviating their stress so they could enjoy their own wedding day (a feat often much easier said than done), and producing an event that esthetically reflected their personalities and did not look like every other wedding they had attended — in hindsight, through the lens of a researcher, I was nonetheless an advocate for the traditions and the industry I felt I was railing against.

The article is also conveniently placed beside an advertisement for a wedding planner — in a sense saying “hiring a wedding planner is a great idea” and “oh look, here’s one right here!”

You can have your day, your way, but it will also be a little bit the wedding planner’s way, a little bit Weddingbells’ way, and probably a whole lot the industry-at-large’s way.

Figure 38 An example of one of the variations on "your day, your way" (FW 2009, p. 24)

The Spring/Summer 2007 issue was the first to most emphatically take up the “your day, your way” theme. Clearly with the past references to uniqueness and individuality, particularly

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on the cover, it was McGill’s desire to promote the idea of “your day, your way” but it took a few years for the pages to reflect that execution. The wording was not always identical, but the meaning was the same (see Fig. 38).

When pondering the concept of your day, your way as it appears in Weddingbells, it is very interesting to note that although they tout themselves as the essential guide for the bride-to- be, they also heavily promote enlisting the services of a wedding planner. So, in the grand scheme of things, from the magazine’s authoritative perspective, it can be necessary to enlist another person in order to enact your personal agency: that without an experienced event producer you may not, indeed, have your day, your way. The overall impression given by the data is that creating a bridal identity may be fairly easy but creating an actualized bridal identity that truly reflects the individual bride can prove to be much more complicated.

In my professional experience it was often a difficult task to create a bridal identity that reflected both the bride and groom — especially if they themselves had no idea what that should be — but in theory all engaged couples espouse the desire for uniqueness, even if the limited agency permitted by the wedding industrial complex in reality only allows for slight variations on a theme.

Just looking at the 20 covers gives a good indication of the importance of this notion of promoting agency in the wedding planning process (see Fig. 39):

 occurrences of the phrase “your day” or “your perfect wedding” — not in bold: 7

 instances of “your day” — with bold emphasis: 4

 mentions of making your wedding “personal” or how to “personalize” it: 2

 occurrences of the actual phrasing “YOUR DAY, YOUR WAY” — typically in all

caps: 5

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Figure 39 Appearances of the theme “Your Day, Your Way” over the 10-year period (SS03-FW12)

The phrase “your day, your way” is used by the editor-in-chief Alison McGill frequently throughout her letters, real wedding features, and other editorials, and the rest of the editorial staff — particularly Roseanne Dela Rosa — take up this mantle, typically by using the same phrasing, with the occasional instance of rephrasing — but with the same exact gist being evident.

The issue of agency through personalization is presented quite differently in

Weddingbells than in one of the UK bridal magazines that Boden (2001) examined in her article on “Superbrides” discusses the issue of your day, your way — in their vernacular: keeping “your wedding yours” (para 5.2). Boden explained that in order to achieve these ends, brides are

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encouraged to be a “forceful and determined wedding organizer” (para 5.2) which in the magazine’s opinion requires “tactful, manipulative behavior” (para 5.2).

Weddingbells never seems to delve much into over-bearing mothers that make questionable style choices which may torpedo the big day — there might be some of this implied but it never really has the tone of familial warfare being an integral and unavoidable facet of the wedding planning process, like some of the US and UK magazines seem to present as a given.

“Your day, your way” serves as Weddingbells’ ideological expression of the “Bride Self”

(Boden, 2001). This bridal identity is difficult to unpack because self-expression can be elusive when it comes to something so culturally and ideologically entrenched. The mantra of self- expression put forward by the editors of Weddingbells, can be problematic to adopt because it is hard to move this huge ideology around the institution of weddings. Even if the bride is committed to breaking the mold — to putting forward a modern, personalized expression of her bridal self — enacting any change on a culturally entrenched ideology moves at a snail’s pace, making observable changes so miniscule as to be beyond immediate observation. This notion of agency with the bridal identity is, in essence, a sort of false-consciousness that cannot be overcome — where the bride feels like she has agency but is, in fact, powerless.

The “your day, your way” mantra also allows for the analysis of culture versus industry

— especially in the context of both culture and industry attempting to curtail a bride’s agency. It is not merely the power of the white wedding that subjugates a bride’s agency, but it is also the accumulated history of everyone else’s day which can easily override your wedding.

The regional issues do extend more agency to the bride, because without them everything in Weddingbells would be located within Toronto, or at the very least, Ontario. So, by having multiple issues across the country allowing for local content, brides are able to fully engage with

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the white wedding as put forth by Weddingbells serving as proxy for the wedding industrial complex in Canada.

Topical analysis 3: Canadian-ness

When referring to the evidence provided by some of the scholars in the literature review, some of the data in this analysis stood out in contrast: some of the data does not fall within any of the categories used but is attributable to it being Canadian. Only one issue of Weddingbells offers a truly overt nod to “Canadian-ness”: The Fall/Winter 2007 issue features a real wedding captioned “oh Canada!” (p. 89). This wedding was planned with a Canadian theme in mind, the bride offering that the look they wanted “was ‘50s Canadian country club” (Duck, p. 89). From the detail shots of this wedding, it almost comes across as though a non-Canadian was attempting a Canadian-themed wedding: the bridesmaids donned red dresses, the flower girls wore white and red, the bride wore a fur capelet, the table numbers were emblazoned with a maple leaf, and the favour at each place setting was a small maple leaf shaped bottle of maple syrup (at least there were no beavers or hockey pucks!). So, while the easily identifiable facets of Canadian- ness are not plentiful throughout the pages of Weddingbells, the overall sense of it was quite undeniable after analyzing the data — particularly in contrast with typical bridal magazines from the US and the UK.

Weddingbells serves not only as proxy for the wedding industrial complex in Canada, but also as an example of a Canadian women’s magazine. All the outside books and journal articles dealing with magazines in the US and UK — which were discussed in the literature review chapter — present some similarities with each other, and with Canadian publications, but there were some very evident differences as well. As both a Canadian, and as someone who has lived in both the US and the UK, it is not just my reading and this analysis that informed this section,

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but also my own knowledge. During my analysis of Weddingbells I viewed the issues through a

Canadian lens, but also a lens informed by familiarity with the circumstances described in the various analyses of US and UK magazines.

In “Superbrides: Wedding Consumer Culture and the Construction of Bridal Identity,”

Boden (2003) discussed the homogeneity of brides in British bridal magazines. I must say that

Canadian bridal magazines — and more specifically Weddingbells — seem to do a better job on this front — however slight — of offering images of ethnically diverse brides. However, they perhaps do not fare any better with images of brides with fuller figures — with the single exception of the features pertaining to the wedding of editor-in-chief Alison McGill — nor with brides of limited financial resources.

After reading several studies of American and British women’s magazines (Belk, 2001;

Cortez, 2016; Duffy, 2013; Engstrom, 2008, 2012; Glapka, 2014; Gough-Yates, 2003; Loughran,

2016; McCracken, 1993; Moeran, 2004; Tinkler, 2016) the visible minorities and intrinsic multiculturalism offered within the pages of Weddingbells stand out — however, it does not seem like a particularly unique feature of this bridal magazine in particular, but rather a reflection of its Canadian-ness.

Visible minorities are typically more ubiquitous in Canadian media, with Weddingbells being no exception. Weddingbells is more diverse than its US and UK counterparts: in its images of real weddings and in its choices of editorial layout models — it is not all the white-ness and mono-ethnicity that is so frequently alluded to in the assessments of US and UK magazines. So, while Weddingbells is quite unique in comparison to many of the American and British magazines analyzed in the works mentioned above (as well as earlier in the literature review), the diversity of brides, grooms and models featured comes across as merely a facet of its intrinsic

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Canadian-ness. I found quite a lot of relevant literature discussing how ethnicity is portrayed in

Canadian media, and the foundations of Canadian media’s relationship with multiculturalism.

While delving into their findings is rather beyond the scope of this project, I found six journal articles to be the most helpful in articulating the background that establishes how Weddingbells reflects Canadian cultural norms (Bramadat, 2001; Eid, 2012; Gilbert et al., 2007; Mahtani,

2001; Ojo, 2006; Winter, 2015). Through their identification and assessment of the normative multicultural depictions found in Canadian magazines these authors also established the

Canadian-ness of Weddingbells as well.

Another facet of Weddingbells that speaks to its Canadian-ness is the need for regional issues. Weddings in general contain such a strong consumer component, and in order to facilitate brides having access to vendors — which inevitably would all be in Toronto if there were not regional issues — due to the vast geographical size, but small population — the inclusion of regional elements and a large regional section in all issues reflects this.

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Chapter Seven: Conclusions

The reader can see in the issues of Weddingbells that even a genuine desire on the part of the editorial staff to break the mold of the traditional white wedding is met with industry resistance. Even though the magazine is serving as proxy for the industry as a whole — it is possible to see through the machinations of the editorial staff of Weddingbells that making changes to the cultural behemoth that the white wedding has become is a very slow process.

Between cultural norms and familial expectations, one can practically envision those trying to champion changes as mired in thigh-high mud: the changes are possible, and perhaps desirable, but the WIC requires a quorum to change, and most of those making up said quorum do not even realize the powerful grip in which the white wedding is held.

After all of the reading, and all of the analysis of the data, there is no debate about the power of wedding industrial complex and the white wedding. That this cultural ritual has endured for almost 80 years, virtually unchanged is just remarkable (Amnéus, 2010; Engstrom, 2012;

Geller, 2001; Jellison, 2008) — especially when you consider the myriad changes that our society has witnessed. The very notion of the wedding and marriage itself has altered inexorably

— however, the expectations and supremacy of the white wedding endure.

The white wedding is much more than the dress: it is a cultural symbol; it is an identity- forming rite of passage; it is a site of socially-sanctioned conspicuous consumption; it is the almost ubiquitous power of the wedding industrial complex to keep the wedding static throughout fashion cycles and cultural evolutions; and it is the concatenation of the struggle between individualism, the performance of identity, and cultural norms.

As much of the data reveals, once the gown is chosen, the rest of the wedding plans need to fall in line to support the “needs” of the dress. And, in the Spring/Summer 2006 issue, a fairly

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amazing quote appears in one of the real weddings. The first real wedding, “Little White Dress,” features the editor-in-chief of FASHION. She originally wanted nothing to do with a wedding gown — just a great dress — but ended up wearing a quintessential Vera Wang. Due to her professional position, this bride, Ceri Marsh, was offered a great deal more commentary than is typically offered in the real wedding section. Marsh remarked:

Seeing myself in one made me realize how the white dress functions. Not only does it

make you a bride, it gives a visual focus to the whole wedding. This was both soothing

(once this decision was made, I’d have my head around the look of our wedding) and

terrifying (I was about to go through an age-old ritual in front of everyone I love). Each

dress I slipped into gave me a slightly different vision of what our wedding day could be:

the ethereal, delicately beaded dress belonged to a simple, understated dinner; the

strapless gown with a crinoline felt like it needed a bigger party to make sense. (p. 80)

This is a very telling quote because Marsh equated the dress with the bride identity, and asserts that the type of dress must dictate the type of wedding to go along with it. Certainly the parameters of appropriate bridal attire are different for a beach wedding vs. a cathedral wedding vs. a city hall wedding; but it is a fallacy to believe that the dress always dictates the outcome.

However, both my professional experience and the data show that sometimes the dress is not the first item on the planning “to do” list, and other times I think there are competing dreams, where one type of wedding dress and a different type of wedding reception enables the bride to enact multiple long-held wedding fantasies. It seems that even the most tenacious opposition to the traditional white wedding becomes powerless to the siren call of the traditional wedding gown.

Marsh’s quote also made a fruitful comparison with Sex and the City: The Movie where what was supposed to be an intimate affair for 75 guests turned into a three-ring-circus when the

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bride is gifted a one-of-a-kind Vivienne Westwood gown. After it all falls apart and the bride has some time to reflect on the situation, she ends up blaming it all on the dress. Engstrom (2012) also referred to this situation in the movie, asserting that “the replacement designer gown symbolizes the desirability and appropriateness of the white wedding gown” (p. 246), going on to declare that the character got “swept up in the hegemonic, big, white wedding, which appear[ed] to hold more value and worth than her true desires” (p. 246). It is also noteworthy that in the entire piece, Marsh never mentioned her groom’s last name ... not of primary importance, but interesting nonetheless, specifically, the issues of the dress are so important they even outweigh the identity of her groom.

Just as the dress can overshadow the wedding, the pervasive focus on the wedding generally overshadows the marriage that is to follow the wedding. In The Bride Factory,

Engstrom (2012) brought our attention to the fact that bridal media typically ignores the fact that

“the wedding serves only as a celebration of the marriage to come, with the focus on the subsequent relationship seen as secondary to the fancy party and change of habitus promised by the white wedding ideal” (p. 158). Attention to the marriage (vs. the wedding) is notable in its absence throughout the 10 years of Weddingbells that was analyzed. Both in Weddingbells and in the bridal magazines analyzed by other scholars (as discussed in the literature review and

Historical Background), the honeymoon is as far into the marriage as the bridal media seems interested to delve. This can be seen as a reflection of the fairytale imagery that is so rampant in wedding culture: no one wants to dwell on Cinderella after the carriage turns back into a pumpkin. It is absolutely true that weddings portrayed in popular culture — whether that be in magazines, movies, or television — seem to ignore their core purpose, that being the commencement of a marriage. But in fairness, discussing the work required for a successful

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marriage would diminish the Cinderella/magic factor of the white wedding. I universally tried to get my clients to attend pre-marriage counselling if they were not having a religious ceremony that required it — and reactions from the couples rode the gamut from curious to venomous. It is quite curious that this data set is absolutely vacant of discussion of the marriage itself — the shocking absence of the impending marriage that is meant to be celebrated by the wedding. It seems rather a double edged sword when it comes to the conspicuous consumption elements of the wedding: the consumption of the both material objects required for the wedding, and the wedding itself are more palatable because they are meant to celebrate the marriage to follow; yet, the complete lack of planning for a successful marriage, as opposed to merely an esthetically pleasing cultural ritual, makes the consumption somehow more possible. By removing all the realities and messiness of the realities of marriage from the wedding planning experience, the wedding industrial complex manages to further fortify the power of the white wedding.

I chose to research Weddingbells magazine because not only are weddings a key ritual in our society, but also a site of culturally-sanctioned conspicuous consumption — nowhere more evident than in the machinations of the wedding industrial complex. In addition, the wedding ritual provides an intersection of consumption and spectacle. The promulgation of romance combined with consumption makes weddings “the perfect event at which to valorize both”

(Otnes et al., 2003, p. 11). As Leeds-Hurwitz (2002) noted, “in any wedding…the ritual serves as a vehicle for the performance of identity” (p. 129). It also seems apparent that while today’s modern bride and groom might vehemently assert their desire for uniqueness in their wedding, in the end every wedding is just a variation on a theme.

Engstrom (2012) asserted: “As cultural work, the content of wedding media inherently embodies a certain ideology concerning how this public expression of private emotions becomes

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realized” (p. 224), going on to write that the “idealized picture of the white wedding” (p. 224) needs to involve a “sense of the appropriate as well as the acceptable” (p. 224). Weddingbells offers glimmers of the desire — on the behalf of the editorial staff — for unique and personalized weddings — however, as the gatekeepers of the establishment, it must be very difficult to make that a reality.

The wedding experience is rife with Cinderella imagery: everything from a generic fairytale version to the 1950 Walt Disney animated version that is so ubiquitous. As Cortez

(2016) noted, we “read magazines not to see what we have but what we can attain” (p. 178). It is impossible to extricate the fantasy element from the wedding day. McCracken (1993) noted that the consumer envies “not only the glamorous model in an advertisement but herself as she will be in the future after having purchased the product” (p. 36). This applies to not only the ads in

Weddingbells but the editorial content as well — as the bride flips through the pages she cannot help but picture herself in her Cinderella moment. The ideal bride identity — perhaps Cinderella

— perhaps a celebrity — but it seems almost antithetical to desire simplicity on your wedding day. The quest for uniqueness, which was firmly entrenched by 2012, may not have been so much about reflecting the identity of the couple but more to be identified by the guests and the public at large as “different “ than the status quo.

Jellison (2008) offered an interesting dichotomy with the Cinderella associations of the white wedding. Jellison noted that in the “versions of the Cinderella story told and written prior to the late Victorian era, the protagonist was a young woman actively involved in her own transformation from house servant to princess” (p. 55), going on to note that “brides of the 1990s reclaimed that sense of agency, but they used their own purchasing power…to effect the transformation from ordinary woman to princess bride” (p. 55). Jellison loosely equated a more

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Disney-fied Cinderella — specifically, lacking in agency — with brides in the post-war and mid- to late-mid-twentieth century bride. As editor Alison McGill did in Weddingbells — Jellison also discussed the independent cinematic sensation My Big Fat Greek Wedding.17 It should be pointed out that Jellison painted the main character as “the perfect Cinderella” (p. 149) because through her own agency she was able to find “personal identity, career advancement, and a handsome prince” (p. 148). Whereas McGill focused on the over-the-top aesthetics of the wedding, and the invasiveness of the bride’s family, Jellison focused on the triumph of female empowerment that is at the root of the storyline.

Another popular wedding film that Jellison (2008) examined is Father of the Bride.

Jellison delved into both the 1950s rendition, as well as the 1990s version. Jellison skillfully compared the two movies through the lens of the father. Although I have seen both movies, I had not picked up on the father of the bride as a reflection of current societal views on the wedding ritual. Clearly in the earlier film the father is calm and laid back, basically resigned to his role, while the more recent father is stressed and frenetic; these depictions of the father are actually an interesting reflection on how the movies convey the societal view of the white wedding.

Between the editorial content and the advertising, Weddingbells is entirely made up of material objects and services deemed to be essential — deemed to be essential by the publisher and editorial staff, deemed essential for the socially-sanctioned ritual of the wedding, deemed essential by popular culture, essential by the wedding industrial complex at large, and deemed essential by the readers of the magazine to enact the white wedding. This essential-ness resonates heavily with both the ideology of consumption as well as the very essence of the bridal identity.

17 The 2002 independent rom-com that grossed $368.7 million (US) at the box office. 191

Jellison (2010) asserted that one of the reasons that the white wedding persists is that we continue “to invest in the elaborate white wedding as a means to ensure acceptance in a culture that place[s] a heavy premium on consumption, class status, and the image of a happy family”

(p. 92). The photographs of the white gown at the white wedding then also ensures that the proof of this achievement of status — even if it is fleeting — are always documented and available for display.

Much like the ebb and flow of the market adjudicating the acquisition of material goods, hinted at in Bourdieu (1984), there is an ebb and flow to the factors having the largest impact on the material goods involved in the production of weddings. At the beginning of the timeframe

(2003) the market was extensively influenced by the wedding industrial complex itself — whereas toward the end of the timeframe (2010-2012) there were myriad other factors at work.

One of those other factors was the beginning of a huge social media influence on the wedding ritual, which is why the dataset timeframe stops at that point — prior to the explosion of the

Pinterest effect on weddings and the current obsession with making all facets of the wedding

Insta-worthy. It is within the parameters of the “new logic of the economy” (Bourdieu, 1984, p.310) that the current stronghold of the wedding industrial complex exists. It is also where we can see an intersection of Debord (2002), McCracken (1986, 1987, 1990, 2005), Bourdieu and the consumption of the wedding event. Although the leisure class that Veblen analyzed no longer exists, he would undoubtedly take a page from Debord and look to the dynamics of the spectacle.

It is very easy to imagine that were he to be writing today, Veblen would produce a theory of the spectacle class.

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Contributions

A primary contribution of this project is offering the unique perspective that comes with a background as both an industry professional and insider, as well as a researcher. With the experience of having spent 12 years working within the wedding industrial complex, I was able to offer both an insider’s vantage point of the data itself, as well as to offer a well-rounded analysis of the data set including details not readily apparent. Analyzing the data through the lens of both an industry professional and a researcher allowed a more in-depth assessment of the wedding industry and offered a vantage point to better assess the possible motivations behind the editor’s text, behind Weddingbells’ choice of real weddings, and which material objects were promoted to assist in the formation of the bridal identity.

The other primary contribution offered with this research is the elevation of the term white wedding to a theoretical construct. The data was viewed through a lens which acknowledges and understands the enormity of the machinations of the wedding industrial complex and its history. This usage of the term white wedding also allowed the data to be analyzed within a context that accommodates the cultural, ideological, and consumptive aspects that are so ubiquitous within the wedding milieu.

Limitations and future directions

It is a challenge to analyze the modern wedding through a purely economic or communications lens. For many people the wedding is rife with issues of heteronormativity, spirituality, and historical misogyny. These are all very valid and important perspectives on the wedding; however, it is impossible to properly accommodate them within the confines of one project.

There is a corpus of research that analyzes the wedding as it pertains to these issues, utilizing corresponding theoretical vantages that correspond to these particular perspectives. With this

193

project I wanted to create boundaries around the data which specifically excluded these perspectives as I wanted to approach the data from the consumption angle using a communications lens. While this perspective allowed this project to be a contribution in this way, it also created a limitation on the analysis with the exclusion of these perspectives.

Also, while Weddingbells offered an excellent proxy for the wedding industry as a whole, it did, of course, limit the scope of the data. From my professional background there were certain elements of the white wedding that were prevalent in my practice, however, did not come to the fore within the data. Just one example is the issue of branding: upon reflection I felt that a great deal of the planning, designing, and production of weddings revolved around creating a brand for the couple. My goal was always to create an event that was unique to the couple and reflected their personality to their guests. This often included creating a logo for the couple that appeared on save-the-date cards, invitations, menus, seating charts, and sometimes even as a gobo18 shining on the dance floor. This branding process also included developing a unique colour scheme for the event which would be reflected in everything from the printed materials and flowers, to the table linens and bridesmaid dresses. But, I did not find evidence of any of this within the pages of Weddingbells, which I found quite surprising.

When all is said and done — no one really goes against the narrative of the dress. Brides or even individual players in the wedding industry may accomplish a small tweak here and there — but there is only so much one person can do to effect change. Weddingbells effectively communicates both this dynamic, as well as the dichotomy of influencing society and being

18 A gobo is a stencil, usually made of metal, that sits in front of a spotlight. Gobos are frequently used in stage lighting and make an appearance at more detail-oriented weddings. 194

influenced by it. All of the plethora of details of a wedding and the time leading up to it are ingrained in our culture. These details are part of a web — and the minutiae are connected to the larger whole of our cultural fabric.

As we go forward into the foreseeable future — with the current influence of social media

— we will have an ever more problematic extrication from the power and ubiquity of the white wedding and the wedding industrial complex. Social media trends have made expectations exponentially higher — both in society at large and on the individual bride. From approximately

2013-2015 there was a huge swell of wedding imagery on Pinterest that created a few wedding esthetics that many brides felt the need to emulate: most predominantly the “rustic chic” wedding rife with lace, burlap, and drinks in mason jars — ideally served out of a clawfoot bathtub in front of a barn with chandeliers. Since 2016 it has remained all about Instagram: both revealing itself in a particular style of photography, as well as making brides carry an extra layer of stress to ensure that their weddings be Instagram worthy.

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