Springtime is a romantic time of year: blossoms, allergies, weddings. Experts have been predicting for decades that the institution of marriage is dying out. But every spring, I find myself almost running off the road by gigantic white limousines, racing from one wedding ceremony to the next. We live near a spot much favored for wedding photographs and, every weekend for the next few months, the happy couples will be lined up like jets waiting to land.
It’s not so much marriage that is endangered as early marriage, and that’s probably a good thing. Teenage lovers, like Romeo and Juliet, are caught up in a hormonal hurricane; they are helpless. Now, the average age of marriage for men is thirty, and for women, it is twenty-eight, by which time the hormonal hurricane should have settled down to a light and variable breeze. This is a hopeful trend. The older they are when they marry, the less time couples will have to get tired of one another, and the divorce rate will go down.
Many things have changed. The old-fashioned idea of female brides and male grooms has gone out of the window in the face of a more complicated reality. But some things have remained the same. Weddings are never easy. There’s a lot of stress all around. Honeymoons can be even harder, and marriage changes everything. A wedding is pure theater, but marriage is a domestic soap opera with an episode every day of the week. Practical questions crowd in on the couple: how will they file their taxes? How many cats will they have? Will he get to keep his own name? There’s no consumer protection, no guarantees, no refunds. Marriage is a leap in the dark.
But marriage will never die out as long as there are weddings, because the desire to have a wedding is usually much stronger than the desire to have a marriage. One thing tends to lead to another, and both tend to lead to children. So, the traditional family is probably safe if the fifty billion dollar a year wedding industry continues to flourish, unlike some other American industries.
We don’t have many rituals in our modern lives, and rituals are comforting. They remind us who we are. A Protestant wedding is one thing, a Greek wedding is something else again, and a Hindu wedding is something else entirely. We may all wear the same clothes and eat the same food in everyday life, but at a wedding, all the old traditions come to life for a few hours, and that’s good.
Full-scale weddings can be expensive, costing $30.000 and up, not counting the honeymoon. There is some evidence that the bigger and more expensive the wedding, the shorter the subsequent marriage. But the statistics may be distorted by those extravagant Hollywood celebrity weddings that are designed to end in a quick divorce for publicity reasons. Marriages that begin with very simple weddings survive just as well or better, as I know from personal experience. But that’s not the point. A big wedding offers ritual in its most romantic form, a starring role for the couple, and lively entertainment, with food and drinks included for the audience. What’s not to like? In the catering hall, as on Broadway, "The Show Must Go On."
