Older AND Bolder : Trends: People interested in marriage patterns report that women in fortysomething weddings have a new motto: Big is in, and white’s all right.
Carol Tishler knew that there would be mixed responses even before she announced that, at age 44 with one divorce behind her, her second wedding would be bigger and glitzier than her first.
Etiquette or no etiquette, Tishler wants her upcoming wedding to have it all--the long, white gown with veil and cathedral train, the walk down the aisle, the tossed bouquet.
“His parents think we’re crazy to have a big wedding,” said Tishler, a Los Angeles real estate agent who is planning to marry a 38-year-old Newbury Park physicist at the end of June. “People think when you’re having a second marriage, you shouldn’t be so frivolous,” she said. “But I think the way you start out is important.”
Tishler, it seems, isn’t the only middle-aged bride who thinks so. The U. S. Census Bureau doesn’t keep statistics on such things, but people with an interest in marriage trends report that weddings involving both divorced and never-married women in their 40s have changed.
These days, they say, fortysomething weddings are displaying a new motto: Big is in, and white’s all right.
“It used to be that if you were over 40, you got married in a quiet, little ceremony in a tasteful, little suit. You certainly didn’t advertise it and make a big to-do about it,” said Tracy Cabot, author of the recently published book “Marrying Later, Marrying Smarter.” “Nowadays, though, a lot of older brides are having fun with their weddings. They’re going all out.”
Editors at Bride’s magazine in New York deemed the trend toward bigger weddings for older brides pronounced enough that, six issues ago, they created a new section called “Marrying Later, Marrying Again.” The section addresses issues that middle-aged brides probably gave little thought to 20 or 30 years ago--including what’s tasteful in dress lengths, creative places to register for gifts and whether ex-spouses should be asked to care for children during the ceremony.
“A lot of them wonder what type of ceremony is appropriate,” said Millie Martini, Bride’s associate editor. “They want to know if they have to be quiet about it. But we think the wedding experience can be just as wonderful for an older bride as for a younger one.”
Locally, ministers, bridal consultants and wedding photographers also report that living-room ceremonies for the over-40 bride are on the decline. Even women making a second or third trip to the altar, bridal store owners say, are opting for large, formal ceremonies and shopping for long, white wedding gowns.
“It’s surprising how many want to walk down the aisle,” Emily Zajak, owner of the Wedding Party in Santa Barbara, said of older brides.
Of the divorced women who come into her store, Zajak said, the majority “are going for the full gown and veil because they didn’t do it the first time.”
Such is the case for Tishler, whose first wedding was a small civil ceremony when she was 17. Tishler, who is Jewish, said that, at the time, no rabbi would perform the ceremony because the bridegroom was not Jewish. Her future in-laws refused to attend because their son was marrying a Jewish woman.
“I think of wearing white now as spiritual purity,” said Tishler, whose upcoming marriage will be performed in a “conservative Jewish ceremony” in Thousand Oaks. “Besides,” she said, “when someone gets married today, I figure who’s a virgin anyway?”
There is another reason why older women are bucking the unspoken tradition of keeping their weddings small and sedate. After years of raising children alone, struggling in the workplace, and finding themselves in and out of unsatisfying relationships, many said they began to believe that marriage wasn’t in the cards. When they discovered that they were wrong, they decided to celebrate in a big way.
“At one point, I was willing to settle,” said Deanna Burski, a Moorpark bank manager who divorced 15 years ago, at age 31 with two small children. “You get so depressed because you can’t find that person. You wonder if you’re asking for too much.”
In February, at the urging of her daughter, Burski placed a personal ad in a local newspaper. The next morning, her husband-to-be opened the paper, looking for a good deal on a used truck.
They met at a restaurant a few days later and “closed the place.”
“At first, I thought maybe I should get married in off-white,” Burski said, laughing. “So many people say you shouldn’t be married again in white. Even my mother said that. But then I talked with wedding consultants and they said, ‘No, this is the ‘90s.’ They said to do whatever I wanted.”
Burski is planning to wear a long, white gown in a large, church ceremony next month.
Wedding-related professionals say an increasing number of middle-aged brides are digging into their bank accounts to ensure that things will be exactly the way they want them to be.
“One of the biggest things now is that the bride is often picking up the whole tab for the wedding,” said Helen Cherry, a photographer in West Hollywood who specializes in photographing older brides. “I did one wedding that cost $27,000, and she paid for it all.
“They’re too old to ask their parents, and a lot of them are successful in their careers,” Cherry said. “They can afford it.”
One 43-year-old environmental consultant in Los Angeles, who had never been married and asked not to be identified, said she gladly paid for her $10,000 wedding to a physician on Valentine’s Day last year. The cost included a pearl-studded white dress from Italy, an orchestra, opera singers, $3,000 worth of flowers and a sit-down dinner for 125 guests. She also paid for their honeymoon to Bali.
Author Cabot, who was a first-time bride seven years ago at the age of 42, attended the woman’s wedding and said she could relate to the extravagance.
“You think you’re old and you’ll just get married in a suit, and then you figure what the hell,” she said. “You’ve had this fantasy for all those years, and it doesn’t matter what it costs. You want it the way you want it, and you don’t mind paying to get it.”
Although many fortysomething weddings now rival the size of their twentysomething counterparts, one element does appear to be different. Several bridal consultants and ministers said older brides tend to plan their weddings between November and May, perhaps to avoid problems of finding available reception halls or florists during the busy summer months.
Cabot, who has a Ph.D. in philosophy and works in Sherman Oaks as a consultant to single women looking for husbands, has her own theory. “The last thing an older bride wants is to be on a honeymoon with her husband, on a beach in a one-piece bathing suit and get run over by a bunch of 22-year-old brides. I mean, would you?”
Not unless the 22-year-olds are male--which brings up the issue of older brides and younger men. These days, marriage-related professionals say, it’s not as unusual as it once was to see women in their 40s marrying men who are anywhere from five to 20 years their junior.
“Maybe it’s the creams they’re using,” joked the Rev. Richard Henniger, a minister at the Cameo Wedding Chapel in Ventura, who said he has seen a noticeable increase in September-May marriages. “It’s sometimes a shock to discover this is a 40-year-old woman marrying a 22-year-old man.” The women, he said, “often don’t look that old.”
Henniger’s wife, Shirley, has witnessed something else in over-40 weddings at the chapel.
“We’ve had several pull up their gowns, get on the back of a Harley and then ride off into the sunset,” she said.
“For them, I guess it’s their traditional storybook wedding.”
