Bridal Showers Research Articles

Book Review: Something Old, Something Bold: Bridal Showers and Bachelorette Parties. By Beth Montemurro. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006, 224 pp., $65.00 (cloth); $21.95 (paper)

Book Review: Something Old, Something Bold: Bridal Showers and Bachelorette Parties. By Beth Montemurro. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006, 224 pp., $65.00 (cloth); $21.95 (paper)

Dreaming is a Girl's Best Friend

Dreaming is a Girl's Best Friend Sarah A. Leavitt (bio) First, full disclosure: I was married in a white dress. And though I do not usually refer to my wedding as a "binge" (3), I can certainly bear witness to the claim raised by authors Cele C. Otnes and Elizabeth H. Pleck: the lavish wedding is flourishing. Reading Cinderella Dreams brought back memories of dozens of weekends spent with friends and family affirming one of America's most treasured rituals. From the Las Vegas strip to a Manhattan social club; from beachside California to a backyard in upstate New York; from historical mansions and botanical gardens to a ski resort, my friends' weddings clearly conform to the same set of rules presented in this book. And that, in essence, is the point: most of its readers will find here something familiar. As the authors reveal, close to 90 percent of adults in the United States will get married in their lifetimes (5). Otnes and Pleck try to explain that universality in this engagingly written book that is well grounded in academic thought. The basic argument of the book is that "people want lavish weddings because they want to experience magic in their lives" (12, emphasis in original). Otnes and Pleck suggest that modern couples see the wedding as a transformative event in which ordinary things become magic. Candy-covered almonds are not inherently special, but wrap them in tulle and place one on everybody's plate and voila!—something magical occurs. Although to some readers, "magic" might not seem to be a good enough answer, the careful explanation here of how, for example, bridal salons manage to turn an ordinary dressing room into sacred space, guides readers through the steps of realization that, though the magic is in some cases manufactured, it is also quite real to its devotees. Otnes and Pleck, professors of, respectively, business administration and history at the University of Illinois, state quite clearly that their purpose is "not to evaluate the rights and wrongs of the lavish wedding" (23). The authors address the historical background of each wedding tradition while at the same time challenging the assumptions that because something is middle class and materialist, it is also meaningless to its users; or that because something is a fairy tale it cannot also be real. This simple idea of "magic" is a refreshing departure from much of the recent academic writing on weddings. Sociologist Chyrs Ingraham's White Weddings: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture (1999) presented the wedding as an exercise in society's heterosexual performance. English professors have tackled the subject: Jaclyn Geller's Here Comes the Bride: [End Page 114] Women, Weddings, and the Marriage Mystique (2001) was joined by Elizabeth Freeman's The Wedding Complex: Forms of Belonging in Modern Culture (2002), which considers centuries of wedding fiction and film and finds that weddings—deemed "queer" in part because of their focus on lace, jewelry, and clothing—are often more about pageantry than heterosexual love. Popular treatments include writer Carol Wallace's look at the history of weddings in All Dressed in White: The Irresistible Rise of the American Wedding (2004). These works complement the work of Cinderella Dreams, but Otnes and Pleck are interested in different issues. This book takes weddings as "democratized portals" (15), magical rituals that have meaning to millions of people, rather than as troubling social constructions with hidden meanings only few understand. The authors respect the agency of modern brides; indeed, one of the most important contributions of Cinderella Dreams is the way in which it acknowledges the "ability of consumer culture to generate meaning" (19) and takes that concept seriously in a world where many academics would call it into question. The book is filled with interviews and evidence from online sources, but sometimes reads as if the authors had queried their friends about their own experiences. Such sentences in the chapter on bridal showers as "One invitee in her twenties, who rarely cooked, was stymied by the hostess's request to bring her favorite recipe" made me wonder if I was reading anecdotes or scholarship (74). Similarly, such statements as "by the middle of the...

Add Men, Don’t Stir

The bridal shower is a ritual that dates back to sixteenth-century Western Europe. Traditionally, the bridal shower was a gendered ritual, organized by women, for women. Evidence suggests that the gender barrier for showers may be disintegrating as “couples” or “coed” showers make their way into the prewedding routine. However, it is unclear whether the presence of men at wedding showers is indicative of gender convergence or if couples showers replicate traditional gender roles. It is necessary to look at men’s presence in showers empirically to understand the ways in which gender and traditional gender roles are either deconstructed or reconstructed in this ritual. I find that rather than indicating gender convergence, coed showers are markedly different from traditional bridal showers. In essence, the traditional bridal shower is transformed and masculinized so that it is an event men can participate in without stigmatization or threat to their “manliness.”

“You Go ‘Cause You Have to”: The Bridal Shower as a Ritual of Obligation

Getting married is one of the most celebrated and revered transitions in a woman's life. Therefore, many rituals and events exist to prepare a woman to become a wife. The bridal shower is one of those that is most steeped in tradition. It may be viewed as an event in which women friends and family members must participate. Women often attend bridal showers out of “duty.” Interestingly, many women find them boring, socially awkward, or otherwise uncomfortable. In this article, I identify the primary stressors of bridal showers for the three major participants: brides‐to‐be, hostesses, and guests. Finally, I explore the persistence of this ritual, despite its apparent lack of appeal for participants. This study draws on interviews with fifty‐one women who are recent brides or who have recently hosted or attended bridal showers, as well as participant observation at five bridal showers. I discuss the bridal shower as a ritual of obligation, one that is grounded in tradition and gives women the opportunity to express care and support for other women as members of a gender community.

Gender, resistance and play

Abstract — This article explores the multivalent messages of the bachelorette, whose popularity in Atlantic Canada, where the study is set, is eclipsing other premarriage customs, such as the bridal shower. It argues that while the bachelorette may be read as a hyperbolisation and enforcement of a narrow conception of women’s possible roles, it also can be understood as resistance to culturally constructed gender values. Through “implicit coding” that includes trivialization (how can something called a “bachelorette” be taken seriously?), appropriation of the male model (the stag party), juxtaposition to the shower that outfits the bride for her role as a homemaker, and the use of humour to both distract and subvert, the bachelorette challenges the patriarchal category of “woman.”

Getting Started: Outfitting the Bride in Seaside

This paper examines the outfitting of brides-to-be, the period of liminality during which a ‘maid’ is converted to a ‘matron’. Bridal showers are defined as potent women’s rituals which teach the expectations and meanings of the role of wife and the ideal of married domesticity. The form of these rituals is changing; these alterations reflect changing gender arrangements.

Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book: The Aesthetics of American Food in the 1950s

Since its publication in 1950, Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book has Oproven a perennial favorite, the gift of choice at bridal showers, especially in the deluxe, ring-bound edition that once sold for a mere $3.95 (or $3 with premium coupons from cake-mix boxes). Second on the all-time culinary bestsellers' list-where it noses out The Joy of Cooking (1931) and The I Hate to Cook Book (1960) - the familiar red-and-white volume with the old-timey, Early American designs on the cover broke records that first year when it outsold Kon-Tiki, The Lonely Crowd, and Hubbard Cobb's Your Dream Home. In the spring of 1951, delighted General Mills executives presented the millionth copy to the American Mother of the Year and the distributer, McGraw-Hill, shipped another 950,000 units to retailers. A year later, with the book in its seventh printing, sales had passed the two million mark and there was no end in sight.

The Groomal Shower: A Variation of the American Bridal Shower

This article describes and analyzes an innovative variation of the traditional bridal shower, called the groomal shower. While retaining many ceremonial elements of the bridal shower, the groomal differs in several ways, most notably in that the honoree is a man. The implications of these differences through this new form of ritual are explored. The elements of initiation, ordeal, and reciprocity are examined to provide an understanding of the meaning of this activity for the participants. The groomal shower is a reflection of our changing attitudes toward marriage and another indication of the move toward greater equalitarianism. Viewed as a form of anti-ritualism, the groomal may be seen as representing a move toward greater ethical sensitivity in human relations.

Online searching:Measures that discriminate among users with different types of experiences

— This article explores the multivalent messages of the bachelorette, whose popularity in Atlantic Canada, where the study is set, is eclipsing other premarriage customs, such as the bridal shower. It argues that while the bachelorette may be read as a hyperbolisation and enforcement of a narrow conception of women’s possible roles, it also can be understood as resistance to culturally constructed gender values. Through “implicit coding” that includes trivialization (how can something called a “bachelorette” be taken seriously?), appropriation of the male model (the stag party), juxtaposition to the shower that outfits the bride for her role as a homemaker, and the use of humour to both distract and subvert, the bachelorette challenges the patriarchal category of “woman.”