Pomp and Tradition

Listen to the violins playing Pachelbel’s canon. Watch the adorable little ring bearer trailing behind the lineup of attendants. Count ‘em: 12 ushers, 12 bridesmaids. Admire the bridegroom in his morning suit and the bride, who is actually blushing behind a demure net veil. Now it’s time to sit down to a stately, four-course dinner in the most elaborate setting available. Then, after all the formally clad guests have gone home, the bride will unpack her trousseau and put on her new satin peignoir.

She is the neo-traditional, 1990s throwback to the decades-ago bride--someone for whom all the old values and virtues are suddenly new. For her, it’s not enough to have the piece of paper. Or, once she gets it, to invite her nearest and dearest over for a casual little brunch.

The celebration has become significant once again. Couples say a sit-down dinner, preferably at a grandiose hotel that bows to all the formalities and traditions, shows respect for the institution.

They say they feel more, well, married when the bridegroom dresses in tails and the pristine white bridal gown has a long, sweeping train and, of course, a veil. They say there’s something comforting, more permanent even, about doing it right with champagne toasts and first dances--even if the price tag for a black-tie-and-Moet-Chandon-style reception starts at $20,000, although $50,000 weddings are routine.

The 22-month-old Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, which oozes European refinement, has become one of the city’s most popular locations for weddings and receptions. The average cost of a four-course dinner in the hotel ballroom, which holds 250 guests, is $32,500, and that just covers food and wine--not the flowers, music or other embellishments. The hotel is the setting for about three wedding receptions per weekend and is now nearly booked through the first half of 1990.

Advice columnist Abigail Van Buren, who has entered the fray with her book “Dear Abby on Planning Your Wedding” (Andrews & McMeel), explains why the return to big, traditional weddings--and it’s not strictly sociological.

“We’re living now in a video age. The brides are staging their weddings like one would a production. It will be on tape,” she says.

“Some kids,” Van Buren adds, “really save their hard-earned money to put on a show because they want to make these beautiful memories. It’s not real. They’re playing a part.”

Whatever the reason, wedding parties have become filled with flower girls, ring bearers and enough bridesmaids to fill a sorority house. Formal dress has become de rigueur for the bridegroom and his ushers, even on weeknights. And the bride wants to look like a bride; no longer does she want a dress she can wear again.

When actress Delta Burke, one of the stars of television’s “Designing Women,” marries actor Gerald McKraney in May, she’ll wear an utterly traditional gown of white silk satin and French lace, tiny seed pearls and a long train custom-made for her by Anita Bachofer. No glitz for her.

Bachofer’s Beverly Hills bridal shop specializes in the seamless French lace overlay technique, and all her gowns, which start at $2,500 and go up to $55,000, are lined in silk taffeta and underlined in silk organza.

“Brides want something reminiscent of old times,” Bachofer explains. “They want lace, and they want good lace. I don’t have a bride who doesn’t wear a blush veil, the one the bridegroom puts back for the big romantic kiss. In the ‘70s no one wore veils, because they said they wanted people to see their faces. And now everyone wants trains. They’re the most popular thing.”

The days when professional women on the road to matrimony planned their weddings their way are becoming as dated as having your dog as best man or the Carpenters singing “We’ve Only Just Begun” over the loudspeakers. Today, wedding how-to books have become best sellers, and the new matrimonial buzz word (after commitment) is: etiquette.

“I like the return of the traditional wedding, and I’d say we’re pretty much going by the book,” says Lynn Tobey, an advertising manager for Coldwell Banker, who will marry Detroit Tiger baseball player Torey Lovullo on Saturday at St. Cyril’s church, followed by a formal dinner at the Bel-Age Hotel. She will wear a traditional white gown; he will wear tails.

Tobey received three etiquette books as shower gifts and consulted them all to discern the fine points of such minutiae as the addressing of wedding invitations. “If you’re inviting a family and there’s a child at home over 18, he’s supposed to get his own invitation,” she learned.

“We’re returning to more normal values now,” says wedding book author Martha Stewart, who adds that “the hippies and barefoot mountain-top weddings are gone. Ralph Lauren has made us conscious of the genteel culture,” she believes.

“Brides want to know the proper way to do things,” says Helene Fernandez, co-owner of Magic Moments, a bustling bridal shop in Encino. That includes what the bridal party will wear.

“According to the general rules of bridal etiquette,” Fernandez explains, “both the mother of the bride and the mother of the bridegroom should wear the same-length dresses. If the bridesmaids are wearing short dresses, the mothers should also wear short, but if the bridesmaids are wearing long, the mothers can wear short or long.”

Ferndandez lets out a small, confused sigh. “You wonder, who’s going to know? Are they going to be with the Vanderbilts in New York? I wonder if kids in the ‘60s and ‘70s knew who Emily Post and Amy Vanderbilt were, but now the security of knowing you’re doing it right has become important to people.”

Van Buren maintains that “there really is no proper and improper. That’s why they write to a ‘Dear Abby’ for permission” to make up their own rules. Still, she finds that even in their quest for social correctness, many couples are “selective” about the traditions that suit them “and discard the others.”

These days, for instance, it’s not unusual for couples to shop together for the wedding dress. “I just feel I’m half of the wedding,” says Michael Lew, who accompanied his fiance Kristen Sakaida to a recent bridal show at Bullocks Wilshire.

Advertising executive Lynn Tobey says her fiance wanted two best men at his side--his brother and his friend--which would put the total number of his ushers at seven. But Lynn had only six attendants. “Most etiquette books say you’re supposed to have an even number of attendants,” she explains. “It was killing Torey, so we asked our priest.” He said odd was OK.

Most improvisation, Van Buren says, occurs among couples whose parents are divorced. Some women, for instance, choose to have their mother give them away rather than their father; some want to be given away by both their mother and their father.

Aside from the occasional, unorthodox twist, the clock has indeed turned back to a kinder, gentler time, and one sure sign is the re-emergence of mother--and mother’s advice--even for brides who are accustomed to making their own decisions in the world.

The day after she became engaged, Nancy Paul, who runs her own public relations and special events business, ran out with her mother to buy matching wedding work books--spiral notebooks with subject dividers for key phone numbers, china patterns, things to do.

“We talk almost every day about something wedding-related,” Paul says.

Lisa Engler, retail director for Esprit, confesses that it was her mother who envisioned the style of her wedding gown (strapless, full-skirted) and the designer (Arnold Scaasi). The two then flew to New York and ordered it for her upcoming July 3 wedding.

“Your mother does know you better than anyone else in the world,” explains Engler, who also left most of the other nuptial details to mom.

Fernandez of the Magic Moments store observes: “I’m always surprised to see the approval they’re looking for from their mothers. Even if it’s an older girl, she seems to want to please her parents.”

That may explain why the most popular wedding gowns today are no longer sexy, spangled numbers suitable for the Academy Awards, and why kooky, iconoclastic dresses of, say, scarlet red are for the rare few.

The most significant contemporary bridal look was worn by Caroline Kennedy when she married Edwin Schlossberg in 1986. Her short-sleeve, round-neck organza gown was designed by the queen of conservative, Carolina Herrera.

“Caroline’s dress had more influence on the bridal market than any of the English princesses--they were too overdone for the American bridal market,” bridal designer Jim Hjelm says.

Patti Miller, bridal buyer for Bullocks Wilshire, says the store is inundated by women wanting similarly elegant gowns designed by Herrera, who has since entered the bridal market and whose creations are available in Los Angeles exclusively at Bullocks Wilshire.

Miller says Herrera is preferred by women from 20 to 30 years old, but brides over 30 gravitate toward dresses by Arnold Scaasi--Barbara Bush’s choice as the designer of her inaugural gown--which are slightly more sophisticated. Both Scaasi and Herrera gowns sell from $2,000 to $5,000.

And, yes, mothers approve.