"Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly," wrote Voltaire. Apparently, things were different back in the 18th century.
Today, it takes an extreme measure of courage -- not to mention money, ingenuity and a dose of monomaniacal neurosis -- to embark on a wedding. This, at least, is the conclusion that you might arrive at if you'd turned on cable TV this month. The reality television industry has distilled every ounce of drama from the monstrous $25-billion-a-year wedding industry and delivered up an open bar of new offerings for June, the high season of weddings.
There's "Buff Brides" and "Bridezillas," "The I Do Diaries: Instant Wedding" and "For Better or For Worse," "Secret Weddings" and "A Wedding Story," "Vegas Weddings Unveiled" and "Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?" And that's just the beginning.
Each series purports to track "real" nuptials in all their quirky glory. But bear in mind that this is reality TV, which has turned even the most mundane subject -- say, finding a job -- into a Darwinian competition for survival. Suffer through a few hours with these brides and grooms, and the contemporary wedding starts to resemble a war -- one that demands emptying the royal treasury and a year of battle planning. Forget about love: Weddings are a blood sport.
Sit through even half of these shows, and you'll be forgiven for eloping. Sift through all of them, though, and they begin to fall into four subgenres, which vary wildly from cynical to romantic, materialistic to chintzy. But all are top-loaded with abundant tulle and torpid cliche.
Beware: All that pink champagne is guaranteed to leave behind a vicious hangover.
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Sweetly sincere
Though it may be hard to believe, there are still people who believe in pure romance. For this ever-dwindling population, there exist utterly earnest shows such as "Wedding Secrets" (Discovery Health Channel), "Real Weddings From the Knot" (Oxygen) and "A Wedding Story" (The Learning Channel), which walk you down the aisle alongside happy, normal, well-adjusted couples.
Take Barb and Miguel, an Arizona couple recently profiled on "A Wedding Story." They first share the riveting tale of how they met -- "My friend said I should go talk to him. So I did." -- while the camera, its lens blurred with Vaseline, stalks them walking hand-in-hand down the beach. They have a rehearsal dinner, where the family ardently discusses the proper ingredients for paella. They practice walking down the aisle. Finally, synthesizer music kicks in and they say their vows. Everyone cries. The end.
