What she was writing about actually was the huge cost of modern weddings. In all honesty, I haven't noticed anything like that at all here. Perhaps the Rocky Mountain West remains a hold out of common sense in these regards, or perhaps we just don't have the money for it. I'm not sure which. Anyhow, I don't think I've been to any weddings that were really out of control, expense wise. About the only exposure to this I think I've seen is from the seemingly endless television shows about brides buying dresses; television fare so boring that I can't understand why anyone on the planet watches it. My theory is that the shows only exist in order to broadcast torture to Al Queda prisoners.
Well, okay, I know that's not true as the female members of my household watch them. No idea why, but they do. Suffice it to say, however, I've found the prices for dresses alone to be absolutely shocking.
The general point of this blog is to sort of track history over the past 125 years or so, with the goal of amassing data for a novel I'm slowly writing. Slowly is the key word here. But in that context, I've often posted here on social history. And, of course, a real, and so far forlorn hope, is that others will comment and add. Anyhow, on this topic, there is a true evolution here, even if weddings haven't gotten completely out of control, like they have apparently elsewhere, expense wise. When you look at photos of weddings up through the 1960s men's dress is just formal. Suits and ties. No tuxedos. That's what my parents' weddings photos are like, and that's what everyone in their generations photos are like, unless we're talking about the very wealthy or royalty. Now, every man wears a tuxedo. This seems to have become the rule in the 1970s. Oddly, it became the rule about the same time it became the rule for high school proms. I wonder what happened?
