Wedding consumer heaven unveils new layer of hell
The bells weren’t ringing for the less-than-happy
couples at the Bridal Expo.
AFTER spending four hours of the Bridal Expo, I walked out into
the calm of Carlton Gardens, took a deep breath and thought: “This
is what it must feel like to be released from a car boot after two
weeks.” My companion Daniel said: “I feel like I should be
interviewed by Bruce McAvaney.”
The first thing we saw was a stretch Hummer. Who was the person
who thought: “How can we make the most offensive vehicle in the
world just that little bit more obscene? I know! We’ll make a
stretch version and hire it out for weddings!” Nothing says romance
like arriving on your special day in a military vehicle.
The words harrowing, suffocating and nauseous were what came to
mind as we waded through the soup of Bridezillas, Monsters of the
Bride, Hen-Pecked Bridesmaids and Pussy-Whipped Husbands To Be.
The crushing maze of stalls offered everything from wedding
invitations, bridal gowns and honeymoon locations to personalised
ribbons for any occasion, pole dancing workshops and wedding
protection insurance.
Puppetry of the Penis had a stall, I’m assuming for hens’
nights. I don’t believe they perform wedding ceremonies but you
could ask. The stall to the left was the House Of Elegant Cakes and
to the right was Premium Wedding Movies with a Difference. I looked
at some of the “movies”; they looked just like every other wedding
video. “Oh no, we didn’t have a wedding video, we had a wedding
movie.” That’s the sound of someone winning the My Wedding Was
Better Than Your Wedding competition. The only way to top that is
if you had an Oscar-winning full-length wedding feature film
starring Cate Blanchett and George Clooney.
I started to wonder how else it would be possible to extract
money from people getting married until we came across Your Own
Personalised Wedding Website followed by a service offering to dry,
mount and frame your bridal bouquet.
The preoccupation with image and recording the image is
terrifying. The traditional bride is never powerful or sexy but a
precious delicate princess too often “given away” by an old bloke
in a suit to a young bloke in a suit. The photos all look the same.
You may as well give the photographer an image of the bridal
party’s heads and they could Photoshop them into a
one-size-fits-all album. Not only would it be cheaper but it would
bypass the ludicrous process of spending two hours “having photos
taken”. Documenting the wedding and reception is one thing. But
documenting the documenting illustrates what a bizarre extreme
sport weddings have become.
The fake tan, teeth whitening, micro dermabrasion and gym
memberships smack of “I love you just the way you are, just 15
kilos lighter with cleaner teeth and slightly oranger skin. And
some fake tits wouldn’t hurt either.” As we walked past the stall
for the Grooming Room %26#151; the ultimate grooming experience for
the real man %26#151; Dan said: “Your girlfriend making you go there
is pretty much like saying ‘how about we chop your balls off and
put them in a jar’.” The blokes looked like blokes at Ikea.
Resigned. There were chocolates and mints on most stalls and blokes
seemed to be stuffing their faces purely to prevent them from
turning to their Bridezillas and saying, “Hey you toxic, stressed
out psycopath, give me back my girlfriend.”
There was no camaraderie between the guys. Dan kept trying to
catch their eye and give them a “we’re just doing it to keep ‘em
happy” look. But there was a strong sense of “you didn’t see me and
I didn’t see you”. It seems that what happens at the Bridal Expo
stays at the Bridal Expo.
In the midst of this orgy of consumerism and competitiveness
fuelled by insecurity and lack of imagination there was a stall for
an iron promising to cut your ironing time in half. The hens’
night, the wedding and the marriage seem to boil down to slut for a
night, princess for a day and slave for the rest of your life. And
the bigger the princess, the bigger the slave. I’d buy the iron if
I were you.
Sure, it’s a free country, this industry is providing jobs and
people can spend their hard-earned cash any way they like. But none
of them looked happy. They looked tense, crazed and sucked in. As
if the wrong shade of rose petals, a reckless choice of napkins or
not having a wedding website could jeopardise their whole day. Or
possibly, their whole life. I remember seeing a photo taken inside
the Exhibition Building when it was turned into a hospital during
the Spanish flu pandemic. The people dying on stretchers looked
happier than the people visiting the Bridal Expo.
It’s all so fake, so contrived. Consumerism preying on and
feeding insecurity.
Thousands of dollars spent on clothes they’ll never wear again
and photos taken next to cars they could never afford to own.
Aren’t people good enough? Isn’t love good enough? Why do they need
to spend all this? What are they trying to prove to whom?
