{"id":12167,"date":"2018-05-17T20:44:55","date_gmt":"2018-05-17T20:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=12167"},"modified":"2018-05-18T20:50:05","modified_gmt":"2018-05-18T20:50:05","slug":"in-the-us-fairy-tale-royal-weddings-clash-with-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/in-the-us-fairy-tale-royal-weddings-clash-with-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"In the US, fairy-tale royal weddings clash with reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

Laurie Essig<\/a>, Middlebury College<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Unless you\u2019ve been living in outer space, you probably know that on May 19, Prince Harry will marry Meghan Markle. Many Americans will be setting their alarms<\/a> to wake up early to watch the wedding, and some are even flying to London<\/a> to partake in the big day. <\/p>\n

Of course, there are always those who insist that none of it matters<\/a>. <\/p>\n

But royal weddings do matter. Since the wedding of Queen Victoria to Prince Albert on Feb. 10, 1840, they\u2019ve shaped the expectations Americans have about their own nuptials.<\/p>\n

In my book on romance and capitalism<\/a>, I look at how engagements, weddings and honeymoons went from small affairs to spectacular, pricey events. Even though most Americans are unmarried<\/a>, most of us would like to be<\/a>. But marriage means a wedding, a ceremony that needs to be \u201cperfect\u201d in every way \u2013 an unrealistic standard that\u2019s been shaped, in part, by what people see when they watch royal weddings and other celebrity weddings.<\/p>\n

Like a Disney movie<\/h2>\n

At her wedding, Victoria wore a white gown, rejecting the traditional red dress. Within a few years, American women\u2019s magazines were promoting<\/a> the white wedding dress as a symbol of purity and innocence.<\/p>\n

Victoria\u2019s wedding was arguably the first celebrity wedding. It received massive media coverage<\/a>, with stories circulated by telegraph to newspapers and magazines around the world. Upon learning about the trumpeters and the music, the glittering decor and luxurious attire, readers could imagine what a perfect wedding might look like. <\/p>\n

\n \"\"
\n Queen Victoria famously eschewed the traditional red wedding dress, instead opting for white.<\/span>
\n Royal Collection<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Queen Victoria also wore a diamond engagement ring. Like the white wedding dress, the diamond engagement ring would eventually become a nearly mandatory item for a perfect love story. Of course, decades of clever advertising<\/a> from De Beers also helped.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to Charles and Diana\u2019s wedding in July 1981. After decades of social upheaval and a sexual revolution, divorce rates in the U.S. had peaked<\/a>. <\/p>\n

But Charles and Diana offered a public rebuttal to the social forces that were rejecting marriage. Their wedding played out like a Disney fairy tale, from Diana\u2019s arrival in a white dress with a 25-foot train<\/a> to Charles\u2019 Prince Charming-esque military attire<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Lady Diana Spencer waves to crowds from a horse-drawn carriage en route to St. Paul\u2019s Cathedral on the day of her wedding.<\/span>
\n AP Photo<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Around the world, 750 million<\/a> people tuned in to watch the vows. In the U.S., spending on weddings soon began to climb<\/a>. <\/p>\n

While it\u2019s hard to know whether the subsequent rise in spending on U.S. weddings was tied to the royal ceremony, perhaps couples longed to mimic, in some small way, Diana and Charles\u2019 dream wedding. <\/p>\n

Any little girl can marry a prince<\/h2>\n

In 2011, the next royal wedding took this fairy tale narrative one step further when Prince William chose \u201ccommoner\u201d Kate Middleton as his bride. Kate came from a middle-class background<\/a>, and this was a central component of the media narrative. <\/p>\n

I went to London for Kate and William\u2019s wedding to conduct research for my book on romance<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Nearly everyone I interviewed in the crowd that day talked about how the wedding gave them hope during troubled times. And a lot of the people I met were Americans. One young American woman told me she came all the way to London to see the wedding because it was a happy ending \u2013 and she needed happy endings. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t go to a movie unless I know it has a happy ending,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t read a book unless it does.\u201d <\/p>\n

Another young American studying at Oxford told me, \u201cIt\u2019s a true life fairy tale, isn\u2019t it? A commoner marrying a prince.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n \"\"
\n Prince William drives his wife Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, away from Buckingham Palace after their wedding at London\u2019s Westminster Abbey.<\/span>
\n AP Photo\/Daniel Ochoa de Olza<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Indeed, the couple followed the formula of any good fairy tale romance: An ordinary woman is plucked from her life in squalor by a dashing prince. <\/p>\n

Now, with American Meghan Markle set to marry Prince Harry, another fairy tale plot twist is in the works. Meghan, who has a black mother and white father<\/a>, shows that any little girl \u2013 no matter her race<\/a> \u2013 can marry a prince.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s fitting that this royal wedding will take place exactly 50 years after Loving v. Virginia<\/a>, which overturned bans on interracial marriage in the U.S. <\/p>\n

Happily ever after \u2026 or not<\/h2>\n

The end? Not quite. Reality tells a different story.<\/p>\n

Even as Americans might claim that love is blind, when we do marry, we continue to marry people who are pretty much like us<\/a> \u2013 with the same education level, similar levels of earning power and mostly from the same racial background.<\/p>\n

And even as Americans are spending more<\/a> than ever on weddings, fewer and fewer<\/a> are actually getting married. <\/p>\n

Perhaps it is because many cannot afford their \u201cperfect\u201d wedding, so they\u2019re simply putting off marriage. I\u2019ve interviewed a number of couples who have already been living together, and maybe even have children together, but are just now getting married. The reason? They wanted to be able to afford their dream wedding.<\/p>\n

But it seems that all of the time, energy and money spent on weddings isn\u2019t actually making us very happy. In fact, research has shown<\/a> that the more a couple spends on a wedding, the more likely it is that the resulting marriage will end in divorce.<\/p>\n

In the 2017 World Happiness Report, economist Jeffrey Sachs wrote<\/a> that Americans were looking for happiness \u201cin all the wrong places.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheAttempting to mimic the luxurious pomp of royal weddings \u2013 as if it will somehow negate the work needed to make a marriage truly successful<\/a> \u2013 might just be one of those wrong places. But it won\u2019t stop many Americans from trying.<\/p>\n

Laurie Essig<\/a>, Director and Professor of Gender, Sexuality, & Feminist Studies, Middlebury College<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Laurie Essig, Middlebury College Unless you\u2019ve been living in outer space, you probably know that on May 19, Prince Harry will marry Meghan Markle. Many Americans will be setting their alarms to wake up early to watch the wedding, and some are even flying to London to partake in the big day. Of course, there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":12168,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[314,4508,4507,4505,4506,4509],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12169,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12167\/revisions\/12169"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}