‘Superbrides’: Wedding Consumer Culture and the Construction of Bridal Identity

Abstract

This paper examines the role of the media in articulating and sustaining the tension between romance, fantasy and reason as key dimensions of wedding consumption. Two types of media are analysed as evidence of the development of a popular wedding consumer culture in Britain. First, I cite examples of the coverage of celebrity and unconventional weddings in the popular presses to highlight the current media emphasis upon the wedding as a spectacular, within-reach consumer fantasy. I then provide a more sustained analysis of six British bridal magazines, part of the ideological output of the contemporary wedding industry, which do not exist in a vacuum from those other media sites transmitting wedding imagery. In doing so, I deconstruct the recently formed consumer identity of the ‘superbride’ to reveal two underpinning aspects of her personality: the rational ‘project manager’ existing alongside the emotional ‘childish fantasiser’. This leads me later in this paper into a more general discussion about the roles of reason and emotion, rationality and romance in wedding consumption.