Women grow up to be brides. Men grow up to be bewildered by brides. Women sometimes flower at their weddings. Men can wilt at theirs. A woman often thinks of her wedding as the first day of the rest of her life. A man can regard it as the day after the last great fling in recorded history. What happens when a woman becomes a bride? What specific biochemical transformation takes place? Why all the organdy, crepe de Chine, raw silk and veiled intentions? We thought we'd best investigate this whole bride thing to see if we could make sense of it.
First, we assembled a group of brides and potential brides and photographed them in their natural habitat. In doing so, we had to dispel our notion that in some ways all brides are alike. We noticed immediately that they do not all dress in the same fashion. Some dress in as many layers as a chrysanthemum has petals. One woman told us that when she was shopping for a wedding dress, she found herself standing on a raised platform in a large room dressed only in her underpants, while ladies ushered in a steady stream of dresses.
Having the gowns coaxed over her head was, she said, an eerie sort of pampering. There she was, one moment swathed in this exquisitely crafted garment that made her look terrific, and the next moment she was like a naked Barbie doll waiting for another outfit to come out of the chute. We see on these pages that bridal outfits can be abbreviated to great effect. Brides and bridesmaids tend naturally to cluster around one another even before the ceremony. This is when certain behaviors are learned, whatever the stated purpose of the gathering.
That may be to fine-tune a guest list, to mull over flower arrangements and caterers and to wonder how to tell the dozen or so men still calling up why you are no longer in circulation, but what takes place is the assimilation of feminine protocols that distinguish married women from party babes. Brides are full of secrets, which they share with other brides.
These secrets include practical advice on matters of decorum and how to lay out perfect place settings with all that silver, china and crystal that pours in around this time. When a bride walks down the aisle with stars in her eyes, confident that she is the most beautiful woman in the room, she strides purposefully toward the man of her dreams.
The knows, however, from talking with other brides, that someday in the future this may all change. And change, after all, is what a bride is trained to effect. When asked who makes most of the changes in the people around her, the bride answers, "I do."
