Wedding paradoxes

Individualized Conformity and the 'Perfect Day

Bibliographic Data

ID3344908
AuthorsJulia Carter (0000-0003-1845-1670, Canterbury Christ Church University, corresponding author), Simon Duncan (University of Bradford)
Year2017
Volume65
Issue1
Pages3-20
Publication date2017-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Sociological Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/1467-954x.12366
OpenAlexW2383895888
LanguageEN
Citations received35
References cited26

Marriage rates in twenty-first-century Britain are historically low, divorce and separation are historically high, and marriage is no longer generally seen as necessary for legitimate sexual relationships, long-term partnership or even parenting. Yet at the same time weddings have become more prominent, both as social aspiration and as popular culture. But why have a wedding, especially an ornate, expensive and time-consuming wedding, when there appears to be little social need to do so? Similarly, weddings have never been more free from cultural norms and official control - so why do these supposedly unique and deeply personal events usually replay the same assumed traditions? We draw from a small qualitative sample of 15 interviews with white, heterosexual celebrants to address these questions. While existing accounts posit weddings as a social display of success, emphasizing distinction, and manipulation by a powerful wedding industry, we argue that weddings involve celebrants necessarily adapting from, and re-serving, tradition as a process of bricolage. This shapes the four major discourses interviewees used to give meanings to their weddings: the project of the couple, relationality, re-traditionalization and romanticized consumption. At the same time many couples did not want to be distinctively unique, but rather distinctively normal. This is what we call 'individualized conformity

Aesthetics · Art · Bricolage · Conformity · Consumption (sociology) · General partnership · Political science · Queer · Social science · Sociology · White (mutation) · Gender Politics and Representation · Gender Roles and Identity Studies · Gender Studies · Law · Marriage and Sexual Relationships · Psychology · Social Psychology

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