Weddings.

Last night was the big interview with the Runaway Bride, as she has been dubbed by the media (ordinarily, I would link to a related website, but as you'll see, I'm not doing so to protest the ridiculous amount of attention this case has gotten. I well realize, though, that in writing about it at all, I give it more attention).

I refused to watch the interview last night but am familiar enough with the story: girl freaks out about insanely large wedding, girl runs away, girl pretends to have been kidnapped by ethnic minority, girl is found and has to repay police department for the money they spent looking for her. It seems to me that most of the coverage of this story has been of the usual, superficially voyeuristic sort: "Ooh, isn't that weird?!" I'm probably not the first to suggest this, but for me, the real value in this story is what it suggests about the modern wedding industry.

Having experienced the stress of planning a wedding in the recent past, I remember that it didn't take me long to realize how ridiculous most of the expectations were. Bridal magazines, for all their commercial gloss and hundred pages of ads, do warn you that wedding industry professionals will play on various emotions to get you to empty your wallet. My wedding was nowhere near as large at the Runaway Bride's reportedly was and was also consciously non-traditional, so I found that what required the most energy was making people understand, both inside and outside of my family, that I didn't want the usual white-wedding pap. Reactions to this ranged from acceptance to anger to blank-eyed incomprehension. For example, when told that I wanted a vegetarian reception, one potential caterer paused and insisted, "But your guests will be expecting meat. You have to have a carving station." I wanted to shout, "Why are you arguing with me?!"

But as much of a pain as that was, I imagine that acquiescing to the "standard package" of wedding stuff -- carving stations galore, a dozen bridesmaids in dyed-to-match shoes, getting given away by your father -- probably involves its own stresses. Perhaps a good rule of thumb is that if your wedding is wigging you out so much that you have to run away, call it off and elope. Of course it's hard to fight against the desire to have a perfect wedding in the conventional sense. Every woman wants to feel special on that day (men, too, I'm sure); every one wants to feel as though his or her wedding is the most extraordinary, pulls out all the stops. I just wish there was an understanding that you can accomplish that without mimicking what's in the bridal magazines. There's limited room for variety in the conventional wedding, and no room for contesting all those wedding norms. If you choose to do so, it'll be a long road and a lot of explaining why you don't feel the need to have a carving station. But maybe in the long run, it's worth it.