What Marketing Hath Wrought Let No Man Tear Asunder
On Sunday afternoon, when other guys were engaged in manly pursuits like watching baseball on TV and slugging down beer, Paul Kuhn was dutifully seated next to fiancee Nanuet O’Halloran at a bridal fashion show in Woodland Hills.
He saw the models, female and male, prance down the runway in beaded wedding dresses and tuxedos. He listened to schmaltzy songs--Natalie Cole’s “Unforgettable” and Rod Stewart’s “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?” And he heard 100 women--all brides-to-be--make shameless wolf calls at the male mannequins.
He priced crystal unicorns, kissing swans and frolicking dolphins--the latest alternatives to the traditional Barbie-and-Ken bride and groom figures atop that oh-so-trendy raspberry mousse wedding cake.
The things we do for love.
A few years ago, the show’s organizers say, Kuhn would have had a bachelor party, picked up the tab for the rehearsal dinner and that would have been it.
He surely wouldn’t have been part of the pre-wedding process. His fiancee’s mother, or perhaps his own, would have accompanied O’Halloran to the bridal show as she fussed over her gown, the invitations and floral arrangements.
“I really must love you a lot,” he said as they walked through the Warner Center Marriott’s doors. “Because I’m here.”
Kuhn was one of about 1,000 people who visited Bridal Expo’s “one-stop mall for wedding services” at the hotel Sunday. Local merchants offered everything from castle-shaped wedding cakes to Hawaiian honeymoon trips.
There were even one-day designer wedding gown rentals for women who prefer to pay $300 to wear a dress that otherwise would cost $8,000.
Everywhere the couple turned, someone had something to sell. There were photographers galore. Deejay music thump-a-dumped. Videos of dream weddings flashed on monitors. Mary-Kay ladies offered free make-overs.
“They’re like sharks,” O’Halloran said of the pamphlet-bearing armies of cake-bakers, flower-arrangers and makeup consultants that swooped upon her. “I’m overwhelmed.”
Head spinning, she was another target of sophisticated marketing techniques.
But in the wedding business, marketing means survival. The recession, along with an increasingly complex maze of mating mores, has cut to the heart of the bridal industry.
This is the ‘90s, babe, when women wait longer to marry and men have a say in the wedding bash. When couples, not the bride’s parents, pick up the tab. When there are fewer brides out there--now that the baby boomers have paired off or, as studies show, opted to fly solo.
A recent Ohio State University survey suggests that more women than ever are staying single by choice.
There is a multitude of theories, many blaming the ‘80s “man shortage” scare as well as fears over the high divorce rate.
Also, women no longer need men to provide for them. They can provide for themselves. The number of “Murphy Browns”--single working women with babies--more than doubled over the past decade, according to the Census Bureau.
Nearly a quarter of 18- to 44-year-old women, close to 4 million in all, who have never been married have at least one child. The sharpest increase in single parenthood is among college-educated (to 14.6% from 6.7% in 1982) white (to 6.4% from 3%) professional (to 8.3% from 3%) women.
But if women are getting altar-shy, those same studies show that most men want marriage. Married men tend to live longer, studies show. (The same can’t be said for women--another disincentive.)
Lovebirds Kuhn and O’Halloran are unwitting statistical stereotypes. She’s 31 and has a career as an advertising account executive. He’s 28, a buyer, and is helping to pay for the wedding.
Sometime in the next year or so, they’re goin’ to the chapel and they’re gonna get married. They’d better bring along their Visa card-- and their American Express--because happily-ever-after carries a hefty price tag.
The cost of the average wedding has risen to about $13,000, according to Chris Evans, owner of Moorpark-based Bridal Expo Inc., California’s largest bridal-show organizer, who put the fair together.
That’s just your average wedding. A top-shelf affair can easily reach $30,000 or more, according to Dana Blanco of Southern California Wedding magazine.
About 3,000 brides-to-be are expected when the show hits the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim this weekend. At $13,000 per bride, that’s millions worth of cleaving together, Evans calculates.
Since more couples are paying for the nuptials themselves, more grooms now show up at bridal shows because they have investments to protect, says Bridal Expo Vice President Doug Jackson.
In simpler times, O’Halloran’s fiance would have been surprised the first time he saw her in the wedding gown, a frothy white vision floating down the aisle. Now, he’s helping her pick out the dress.
In doing so, he was already making the transition from boyfriend (who often become boyfriends because they were attracted by a flashy front) to husband and protector of his blushing bride. He nixed the vamp wedding dress outright.
It was a slinky sequined number, with cut-out shoulders, slit up to here with a train down to there, and it set O’Halloran cooing.
“It’s trashy,” Kuhn pronounced as the model sashayed down the runway, exposing what he considered way too much thigh for a demure bride.
