Wedding Season 1: Newlyweds vs. “Parasite Singles”

It's wedding season! "Living Single" readers have been emailing me their favorite stories of wretched excesses by newlyweds, such as this one. I've always wanted to share the section of Singled Out on weddings, but it is long for a post. But now I can't resist. So I'll break it down into a series of posts. This is the first.

Around the time I was writing Singled Out, Japan's single women were getting a lot of attention. Here's what I said about them on pp. 107-108:

They have jobs and they are marrying later than Japanese women ever have before. In the meantime, they live at home and maintain close ties with their parents, as so many Japanese women have done before them. A story in The Washington Post noted that new single women also nurture and value their friendships with each other. As one woman told the reporter, "In Japan we treat our girlfriends well. Boyfriends come and go, but girlfriends are your sustenance, your life."

Groups of Japanese single women dine together regularly, and at some of the upscale restaurants, the tables of single women outnumber the tables of couples. They often travel together, too. The Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay Hotel offers them a popular Cinderella package, complete with a sumptuous room, and an invitation to the pool, sauna, and some aromatherapy. Some of the women drive luxury cars and buy themselves pricey presents for special occasions.

The Japanese sociologist who put these single women on the map, Masahiro Yamada, had a name for them. He called them "parasite singles." Of course, that's just another version of the myth that single people are selfish and self-centered.

Starting on p. 114 of Singled Out, here's the beginning of what I had to say about that:

If single people really were immature and self-centered, what would their behavior look like? In considering this question, I tried to come up with a situation involving actual children in which self-centeredness would be very much on display. A birthday party seemed to be just the thing. Many children are endlessly indulged on their birthdays. They are the special person, and it is their special day. They get their favorite cake, sometimes grandly decorated, along with all sorts of other tasty treats. Lots of friends and relatives come and bring them presents. The birthday kid will often dress up for the occasion and the other kids who come to the party might dress up, too. Occasionally, one of the special friends cannot make it, and the birthday child might pout. That's allowed. It is a special day. Others may try to comfort and cheer the child. Some kids like to go someplace special on their birthdays, and that wish, too, is often granted.

How, I ask you, is this scenario any different from a wedding?

OK, that was unfair. To the children and their parties. In the race to ever more staggering displays of self-celebration, weddings beat birthday parties hands down. Couples planning their nuptials can be far more self-indulgent, self-centered, and self-promoting than most children could ever get away with. In extravagance, newlyweds also leave "parasite singles" in the dust. But they are rarely called on it. Their splurges are not deemed selfish, but romantic.

I realize that weddings do not have to be garish. In theory, they can be tasteful, meaningful, and sweet. Two adults come together in a simple and soulful ceremony. Friends and family offer modest gifts to the newly wedded couple (or perhaps to a favorite cause, if the couple prefers). The two are grateful for the presents but even more grateful to have people who are important to them, and who will continue to have a cherished place in their lives from that day forward.

The weddings I just described really do have a place in the contemporary cultural landscape. I've even been invited to a few. But they are not the ceremonies that bridal magazines glorify or celebrities boast of, and they are not the ones that television networks stage during sweeps weeks. They are not even the everyday weddings of the boy or girl next door.

The first hint of nature of the typical turn of the 21st century wedding is the price tag. In 2002, the median income for an American adult was $22,794. In the same year, the average cost of a wedding was $22,360 - honeymoon not included. For that, a Baltimore newspaper noted, a person could pay for three years of in-state tuition and fees at the University of Maryland.

Instead, couples treat themselves to a day of music, flowers, photography, videography, a reception, a limo, and costumes that would be preposterous in any other setting - and indeed are never worn again. Those are some of the components of the basic wedding package. Many couples want much more. More days, more uniqueness, more drama.

In 2004, USA Weekend magazine described some of their favorite ways in which "brides- and grooms-to-be are upping the wow factor at their nuptials." Rent special-effects equipment, the magazine suggested, so you can have fog, mist, haze, or wind at your ceremony, or even snow in the summer. Have your initials "projected in lights on the dance floor." Go to City Hall, get a special event permit for your wedding, and close down a street. Get in touch with a talent agency and book their most stunningly beautiful clients to file into your ceremony as if they were your attendants. "Your guests' jaws will drop as these gorgeous men and women walk down the aisle." Then your real wedding party can enter.

The indulgences that couples bestow upon themselves are not the only offerings they will receive in commemoration of their special day. In 1997, newlyweds received an average of 171 wedding gifts. By 2004, the average total that an individual guest (not a couple) spent on a wedding gift and a shower gift was approaching $200.

That's the tab for the ordinary wedding guest who lives in town. For those with a special role in the ceremony, it can be just the beginning. For example, The Wedding Gazette suggested in 2005 that bridesmaids set aside up to $900 for gifts, showers, parties, dress-up clothes and travel.

On top of the presents and parties, couples sometimes get kickbacks from the stores where they are registered. At Macy's, for example, guests who select gifts from a wedding registry pay full price, then the couple gets a 5% reward back from the store.

As newly wedded couples receive more and more from their guests, their appreciation does not always grow accordingly. Something more akin to entitlement seems to have sprouted. The gift registries were just a baby step in that direction. Now couples want more than bed linens. One guest complained to Newsweek about the wedding invitation she received that included a request for help with the expenses of the honeymoon: "They're basically saying, ‘Pay for us to go have sex in a really nice spot.'" A bridesmaid unloaded on "Dear Abby" about the bride who called her several times on her wedding night "demanding a gift of money!" This was after the bridesmaid had already spent four weeks doing alterations for free. Such stories have become so commonplace that when a new reality TV show called Bridezilla was launched, no one needed an explanation for what the neologism meant.

[References are all in Singled Out. Watch this space for the next installments of the Living Single series on Wedding Season.]