Say “no” to the dress and “yes” to marriage
According to Brides.com, this Vera Wang gown sells for $9,500.
Cable channel TLC has a reality show titled “Say Yes to the Dress.” I happened to catch an episode today and was shocked at the prices the bridal boutique charged for the wedding dresses the participants were buying. Many of them cost more than I paid for our used car a few months ago. According to a Web site that monitors the average prices of weddings in each community, the average bride in my little Florida town pays from $700 to $1,167 for her dress alone.
It was difficult for me to watch how the brides-to-be were joking about selling kidneys to pay for their designer gowns. The hardest part was understanding how angst over a dress that sells for $6,500 correlates to the process of getting married.
Marriage is sacred, whether it’s celebrated in church or in the courthouse. You find the person you want to spend your life with and you make a commitment in front of your friends and family to that relationship. It’s not about spending everything on your dream dress. In fact, many of the dresses the brides-to-be chose didn’t look modest enough to wear in a house of worship.
What the bond between a husband and wife has to do with wearing a strapless gown that costs thousands of dollars is hard to fathom. In the old days, women married in simple dresses and marriages lasted longer than they do now. When everything rides on the dress and the perfect reception, it’s hard to overlook the days, months and years of marriage that follow.
Our 25th wedding anniversary is coming up this year and it didn’t matter that my cocktail-length dress came off the rack at a department store. I felt beautiful marrying Kevin because I loved him; our relationship is stronger and deeper now than when we married almost a quarter of a century ago.
If the cost of the gowns and the agita over paying for them were substituted for a sound commitment to the marriage, there would be fewer broken marriages and more intact families. It’s marriage itself that is beautiful, not what the bride wears.
