Busy Brides and the
Business of Family Life
Journal of Family Issues
Volume 29 Number 5
May 2008 639-662
© 2008 Sage Publications
10.1177/0192513X07309453
http://jfi.sagepub.com
hosted at
http://online.sagepub.com
The Wedding-Planning Industry
and the Commodity Frontier
Kristin Blakely
Loyola University Chicago, Illinois
As work traditionally located in the private sphere, wedding planning, like other
domestic functions, has become commodified. Building upon Hochschild’s
work on the commercialization of intimate life, this article explores the relationship of feminism to the commercial spirit of intimate life to understand wedding planning as a commodified domestic service designed to meet the
competing demands of work and home for women. In its marketing, the industry makes use of feminism, harnessing liberal feminist ideals of “having it all”:
The solution for busy, engaged career women is to outsource their wedding
planning. Thus, both the problem and the answer are rooted in a capitalist version of liberal feminism. Based on interviews with six wedding planners, an
analysis of the online advertising of 280 planning businesses, and an examination of the industry, this case study of wedding planning illuminates the connections between liberal feminism and the commodification of family life.
Keywords: wedding planners; feminism; commodification; family work
relationship; weddings
O
ver the last half century, the commodity frontier has expanded, particularly into the domestic realm. Family functions from child care and
cleaning to birthday-party planning and dog walking are increasingly being
absorbed into the market economy. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild (2003)
describes this phenomenon as the commercialization of intimate life. Many
middle-class couples hire babysitters and employ nannies—often, foreign
Author’s Note: Thank you to Judith Wittner for her help on earlier drafts of this article and to
the anonymous reviewers for their instructive comments and suggestions. Address correspondence to Kristin Blakely, Department of Sociology, Loyola University Chicago, 6525 N.
Sheridan Rd., Chicago, IL 60626; e-mail: [email protected].
639
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domestic workers from the Philippines and the Caribbean—to look after
their children and the home, whereas many other middle-class professionals (single, childless, or not) are ordering their groceries off the internet,
using a weekly maid service such as the mobile Merry Maids, making frequent trips to the local dry cleaner, and replacing cooking with takeout.
There is a growing supply of commercial services to meet the demands of
home and intimate life, and as these market niches are carved out and developed, so too are jobs and professions within them. This terrain of the marketplace is referred to as the commodity frontier, which Hochschild defines
as such:
Janus-faced, [the commodity frontier] looks out on one side to the marketplace and on the other side to the family. On the market side it is a frontier
for companies as they expand the number of market niches for goods and
services covering activities that, in yesteryear, formed part of unpaid “family
life.” On the other side it is a frontier for families that feel the need or desire
to consume such goods and services. On the company side a growing supply
of services is meeting a growing demand for “family” jobs. (pp. 35-36)
In this article, I focus on one such profession, or family job: namely,
wedding planning. Like the dog walker, nanny, home organizer, personal
cook, and so forth, wedding planners are a form of outsourced labor; the
unpaid work of mothers and daughters is transported from the home to the
public marketplace. These jobs and professions are responding to the time
crunch produced by work–family conflict. As Jacobs and Gerson (2004)
show in The Time Divide, a growing number of Americans have jobs with
excessive time demands. The 40-hr workweek is no longer the American
average. People are working either too much or not enough, with increases
in downsizing, outsourcing, and corporate preferences for part-time and
contractual work. At both ends of the spectrum, individuals and families are
suffering. It is the overworked group, predominately composed of professionals and managers, however, who have shaped the debate and terms of
the public discourse on time dilemmas. In this group, more than 1 in 3 men
and 1 in 6 women who are professionals and managers work at least 50 hr
per week, compared to 1 in 5 men and 1 in 14 women in all other occupations. Women, especially, are faced with time dilemmas stemming from
seemingly impossible demands of work and family. The lion’s share of
domestic work continues to be performed by women, and with women’s
labor force participation at an all-time high, this work is done either during
her second shift or by someone else. Although all women are faced with
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time dilemmas, some are more likely to employ commercial substitutes for
household labor. Hochschild (2003) explains:
This expansion of market services applies mainly to executives and professionals—
both single men and women, and “professional households with wives” as
Saskia Sassen has called them. Often faced with long hours at work, many
employees see the solution not in sharing or neglecting wifely chores, but in
hiring people to do them. With the increasing gap between the top 20 percent
and bottom 20 percent of the income scale, more rich people can afford such
services, and poorer and middle-class people are eager to fill jobs providing
them. (pp. 36-37)
Employing a commercial substitute is an increasingly popular remedy
for these time-crunched persons. Although hiring the services of a dog
walker, chef, nanny, or wedding planner is largely a class-bound phenomenon, the widespread consumption of dry cleaning and takeout (such as KFC
and Boston Market’s family meals on-the-go) as substitutes for laundry and
cooking mark a significant change in American families, not just in “professional households with wives.” Moreover, the family has moved from a
unit of production to one of consumption, and as the market advances, the
commodity frontier will continue to expand into the domestic realm, transforming family functions, or “wifely chores,” into consumer services
(Hochschild, 2003). It is interesting to note how little theorizing has been
done on the relationship between the family and the commodity frontier. In
the work of critical theorists, the family has been overlooked as a site of
consumption (Fraser, 1989; Hochschild, 2003).1 False divisions have been
made between the family and the marketplace when, in fact, gendered patterns of consumption reveal how the two intersect. Women perform many
roles, for instance, as the primary consumers of household goods that link
the official, formal economy and the family.
Wedding planning as commodified domestic work is an instructive case
study, insofar as it contributes to our understanding of the commodification
process of family life with a profession that has recently emerged and
grown rapidly within the commodity frontier. Second, the weddingplanning industry’s targeted marketing to modern career women provides
insight into the work of Hochschild (2003) on the relationship of feminism
to the commercialization of people’s intimate lives. She parallels the
relationship of feminism and the commercial spirit of intimate life to
Protestantism and the spirit of capitalism. Just as the Protestant work ethic
provided the orientation for and was key to the development of capitalism,
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feminism plays an analogous role to the commodity frontier and the market’s
expansion into the private sphere. Although Hochschild does not specify a
type or branch of feminism in her analogy, I argue that liberal feminism has
provided the ideological groundwork for the commodification of family
life, and I make the case by examining the marketing strategies of wedding
planners to modern career women.
This article begins with an overview of the wedding-planning profession
and looks at how in its short history, it has become a multi-million-dollar industry in the United States. In the discussions to follow, I expand on wedding planning as commodified women’s work and present findings to show that the
wedding-planning industry harnesses liberal feminist ideals of having it all
within existing social and economic structures in its marketing to modern
career women. Here I build on Hochschild’s Weberian-based analogy (2003),
connecting the commodification of wedding work and the existence of the
planning profession to the virtues of liberal feminism. I conclude with a
brief discussion on the disenchantment of the commodification of the weddingplanning process and the supposed liberating effect of such commercial substitutes for women. I also suggest some future areas of research on women’s
participation as consumers in the wedding industry that will broaden an understanding of the family’s material and ideological relationship to the marketplace
and the connections between feminism and the commodity frontier.
Method and Data
As is the case with many sociologists, my interest in the wedding industry
comes out of personal experience. After being engaged, and getting married, I
have become exposed to the world of weddings. My first trip to Barnes &
Noble to pick up a couple of wedding magazines was quite an awakening. No
less than 20 magazines and the better part of a book aisle were dedicated to
the industry. I discovered that books, magazines, Web sites, and television
shows are in abundant supply to offer brides-to-be advice on everything from
dress selection and honeymoon destinations to trends in centerpieces and
writing thank-you cards. As a sociologist with an interest in learning about this
world from the inside, I entered Brideland, or the fantasy world that according
to Naomi Wolf (1995) is created in the pages of wedding magazines.
My interest in wedding planners specifically stems from a research visit
to a Web site that serves as a portal for wedding-industry services:
UltimateWedding.com.2 The site has an online quiz designed to determine
if a bride requires the service of a wedding planner. The first question reads,
“Do you have unlimited time to work on the wedding of your dreams?” I
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wondered how any bride could actually answer yes and decided that I
needed to learn more about wedding planners and how they are utilizing the
time crunch in the marketing of their services.
The present study is based on a set of semistructured tape-recorded
interviews with six Chicago-based wedding planners in the spring of 2004.
I connected with the first two planners through their advertisements in the
back pages of a local wedding magazine, Chicago Weddingpages, and the
rest of the sample was created by using the snowball sampling technique.
Interviews ranged from 1 to 2 hr; half were conducted over the telephone
and the other half, in the planners’ homes. The interviews were informed by
my subscription to a home-based self-study program in bridal consulting
through Thompson Educational Direct.3 It provided me with information on
industry language, the different components of the industry, and the job
expectations of a wedding planner. I asked the interviewees about what
their job entails, their clientele, and specifically, their marketing techniques
and strategies for “sealing the deal” with prospective clients.
In addition, I examined the Web sites of the major wedding-planning
organizations—including the National Bridal Service, the Association of
Bridal Consultants (ABC), the Association for Wedding Professionals
International, and the National Association of Wedding Professionals—and I
looked at and coded for the online advertising of wedding consultants in all
50 states and Washington, D.C., through the Web sites of Partypop.com and
AllWeddingCompanies.com.4 Both are major advertising portals for the wedding industry and have a combined list (some ads are duplicates) of over
3,000 wedding-planning businesses in the United States. There are, however,
ads for about 10% of the companies on which my sample is based (i.e., something more than the listed company name and contact information). In each
of the 280 wedding-planning advertisements, I looked at
• the role of the planner—to save time, look after details, make dreams come
true, stay on budget and save money, have event run smoothly, and so on;
• the justification for the planner—because of the time involved (present lives
are so busy), the stress involved (present lives are so stressful), the knowledge of the industry (present lives are too busy to do the prep work and necessary research); and
• the targeted audience—the couple or the bride or groom alone.
Wedding Planning: An Overview of the Industry
The wedding-planning industry began in the United States around the
late 1970s and early 1980s. This was a period of unprecedented marriage
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rates, with the bulk of the baby boom generation in its prime matrimonial
years. Women’s participation in the labor force was soaring as a result of
the gains of the women’s liberation movement, and women were thus
spending less time in the home (although still performing the lion’s share
of the housework) and investing more time and energy on their careers and
education. When these trends were coupled with the expanding consumer
society, which includes the modern bridal industry, the stage became set for
the outsourcing of wedding planning. A professional service marketed
toward “busy brides” emerged as a visible and viable form of wedding
retail (Ingraham, 1999; Otnes & Pleck, 2003).
Before the modern-day wedding planner, however, there were other specialized personnel whom brides sought out for help in planning their big
day. Beginning in the mid- to late 19th century, the elite began to hire
masters of ceremonies, who assisted in the day-of coordination of the wedding. In the 1920s, some bridal salons began adding bridal secretaries to
their employee registry. These women specialized in giving advice to brides
about etiquette, protocol, and the services and merchandise available in
their local areas (Otnes & Pleck, 2003).
In 1951, the first association for bridal consultants was formed. The
National Bridal Service became the leader in bridal consultant training,
operating courses in 41 states by 1954 and certifying a new crop of bridal
secretaries in the how-to’s of wedding coordination. These early consultants earned commissions from the vendors whom their clients hired for
their weddings. Although those who obtained the services continued to be
predominately members of the elite, the growing number of professionals
and the expanding middle class did widen wedding planners’ clientele, considering that more and more people could afford their services. By the late
1970s, the wedding consulting industry began to really take off. Women’s
increased labor force participation, the demographic boom in men and
women of prime marrying age, and the larger pool of disposable income
among middle- and upper-class families were key forces behind the industry’s development during this period (Otnes & Pleck, 2003).
Today, the industry is quite sizable, with an estimated 10,000 weddingplanning businesses in the United States and four major associations: the
National Bridal Service, the ABC (formerly the American Association of
Professional Bridal Consultants), the Association for Wedding Professionals,
and the National Association of Wedding Professionals. The increasing
opulence and cost of weddings, particularly in the last decade, has helped
to establish the planning industry as a recognized occupation in the mainstream. Moreover, as weddings become more like events, or spectacles
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(Boden, 2003; Debord, 1995; Wallace, 2004), the need for “professional”
help to pull one off increases. Otnes and Pleck (2003) describe the lavish
wedding as becoming now more of a standard than a luxury:
The lavish event has now become a necessity, a right, and even an entitlement
for middle- and working-class women in North America. Moreover, an
increasing appetite for luxury throughout the culture, as well as the relaxation
of etiquette, has contributed to the spread of the opulent wedding. (p. 265)
Tricia Thomas (2003), president of the Worldwide Association for
Wedding Professionals, claims that “what was once considered a luxury has
become a present-day necessity” (n.p.). In a similar vein, an ABC advertisement in the back pages of a local Chicago wedding magazine reads,
“Your Affordable Necessity . . . Call an ABC wedding professional.”5
Thomas goes on to say that it is no longer sufficient
to host a cake and punch affair at the Junior League. Instead the pressure on
the bride and groom is greater than ever to produce an “event,” a virtual testament that signifies “who you are” in the grand scheme of evolution. (n.p.)
According to Gerard Monaghan, president of ABC, “the cookie cutter is
gone” (quoted in Postrel, 2004, p. E2).
A recent article in The New York Times commenting on the growth of the
wedding-planning industry is aptly titled “With So Many Choices, No
Wonder You Need Help” (Postrel, 2004). Filet mignon or chicken cordon
bleu, roses or freesia, engraved or letter-press invitations, fondant or buttercream icing—the choices are endless during the wedding-planning
process, and the choices are made help to define the message that the couple wishes to send to their guests. For instance, serving beef over chicken
is a statement about status; it says, “We can afford this.”
Wedding planners are trained through the major associations as well as
through local community colleges, long-distance study, and online schools
that offer programs in wedding consultation. I subscribed to the program
through Thompson Educational Direct as part of my research. Like the other
programs, it is a self-study home-based course that you complete at your own
pace. Although costs vary, programs in general range from $300 to $1,000.
The largest national organization is ABC. With over 2,900 members, it
is the largest credentialing body and leading authority in the industry. ABC
offers three levels of designation—professional, accredited, and master
bridal consultant. These levels are consistent (albeit with different titles)
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across the profession, and the certification process is similar across the
accrediting associations.
ABC’s five-part home-study program on professional development—like
the other home-based study programs, such as the one through Thompson—
requires the successful completion of courses in etiquette (touching on such
topics as invitation wording and second weddings), sales and marketing
(advertising, finances, and the business side of being a consultant), the wedding day (a course in organizing the ceremony and reception), weddingrelated services (a course in flowers, photography, fashion, and other services),
and finally planning and consulting (the details of organization, carrying out
the role of the consultant, and “understanding the bride’s emotions”). Upon
completion, for which there is no time limit, members may use the designation of professional wedding consultant. After 3 years of cumulative membership with the designation, members can then advance to the level of
accredited bridal consultant, provided they pass the proficiency exam and
essay question; participate in any association seminar, workshop, or annual
conference; and have letters of recommendations from three peers and three
clients. The most senior level requires a publication, television appearance, or
association service at the state level; more recommendations; and a cumulative 6-year membership, with 3 years at the accredited bridal consultant level.
Most wedding planners are women who plan between 10 and 20 weddings per year. Typically, they work either out of their homes or small
offices, have one assistant who helps on the day of the wedding and is usually apprenticing with plans to begin her own business, and are members of
one of the major professional organizations. In terms of what the job
entails, wedding planners coordinate almost every aspect of a wedding—
the budget, location, invitations, photography, flowers, musicians, ceremony rehearsal, and reception details (e.g., favors, place settings, and
menu). Their job is to ensure that everything runs smoothly, especially on
the day of. I asked each of my interviewees about the accuracy of the depiction of planners in Jennifer Lopez’s film The Wedding Planner (2001). All
agreed that aside from falling in love with the groom, Lopez—as pictured
with a headset and clipboard while cuing the ceremony musicians, fluffing
the bride’s dress, overseeing the setup of the reception, and ensuring that
the ice sculpture will not melt before the guests arrive—is fairly accurate,
albeit for an above-average lavish wedding.
Even though the wedding-planning industry is female dominated, those
planners who have reached the senior and master level and hold high positions in the associations are disproportionately men. As in other femaledominated occupations, such as nursing and teaching, the glass-escalator
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phenomenon, as identified by Christine Williams (1992), is present in the
wedding-consulting business. For example, the most sought-after and highestpaid consultant in the business is Colin Cowie—the South African–born
celebrity-wedding coordinator whose up-front fee is $12,000 (Passero,
1997). The current president of ABC is Gerard J. Monaghan; the president
and founder of June Wedding, an association for event professionals that
offers training in wedding planning, is Robbi Ernst; and the current director of the Association for Wedding Professionals International is Richard
Markel. Incidentally, he estimates that only 2% of his members are men.
In my interview with Carey, a wedding planner of 9 years in a Chicago
suburb, she commented that gay male consultants in the business are in the
most demand. She remarked, “I think that [brides] are hoping to work with
a Franck—you know, that character from the movie Father of the Bride.”6
She believes that gay men are able to command a higher service fee because
of preconceived, stereotypical notions that brides have about working with
them. This is an interesting finding that merits further inquiry. Future
research on brides as consumers in the wedding industry could explore this
preference and the ideologies of gender and sexuality that underlie it.7
With approximately 2.3 million weddings in the United States annually
and with estimates that 10% of them use the services of a wedding consultant, there are approximately 230,000 professionally planned weddings
each year (U.S. Census Bureau, 2003). The wedding industry as a whole is
estimated at $42 billion (although some claim it to be as high as $70 billion; Chaplin, 2000) with the total cost of an average wedding, according to
industry experts, for 125 to 150 guests at $17,500. In larger metropolitan
areas, the average cost of a wedding can be as much as $35,000 (which was
substantiated in my interviews with Chicago-based planners). These averages seem to hold up across racial and ethnic lines as well, according to
Linnyette Richardson-Hall, founder of the Association of Minority
Wedding Professionals (Parrish, 1999).
Wedding planners typically charge a fee of 10% of the total cost of the
event (although this is often higher—for instance, 15% is more the average
in Chicago and other major cities) or a flat fee ranging from $2,000 to
$5,000 (Tiffany, 2001). If we take the industry standard of 10% and calculate the total fees for 230,000 weddings at a cost of $17,500 each, we can estimate that the profession of wedding planning grossed at least $400 million in
fees last year, amounting to 10.5% of the total wedding industry. This is big
money, and according to industry projections, planners and other wedding
retailers are optimistic about the future of their businesses. Ingraham’s
concept (1999) of the “wedding industrial complex” really captures the
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magnitude of the wedding industry as a global, transnational capitalist phenomenon. It encompasses a web of interconnected social institutions (media,
state, religion, and popular culture) with primary, secondary, and tertiary
retail markets. The primary wedding market includes everything from diamond rings and wedding gowns to wedding-planning services and honeymoons. The secondary and tertiary markets refer to the advertising and media
built around weddings, ranging from bridal Barbie and Disney movies to
ads using wedding imagery to sell life insurance.
The predicted growth of the wedding industry is largely related to the
millennial generation, who are the children of the baby boom generation,
born after 1976. Millennial children are or will be soon of average marrying age (i.e., between 25 and 30 years old). This is a generation of approximately 70 million people, many of whom are busy career women. As will be
seen, it is these women who are largely the target clientele of the weddingplanning industry.
Findings
Just as the microwave and the dishwasher were marketed as time-saving
appliances for busy women and just as the dog walker and nanny can take
on caring for the family pet and children, so too is a wedding planner an
outsourced solution for busy middle-class professional women. From
Hochschild (2003), we can understand these forms of the commercialization of intimate life as being related to feminism, albeit a liberal institutionalized version of it. With Hochschild’s analogy of feminism and the
commercial spirit of intimate life to Protestantism and the spirit of capitalism, it follows then that liberal feminism—along with the decline of the
family, church, and community—is the precondition for the expansion of
the commodity frontier into the domestic realm. In other words, the tenets
of liberal feminism that espouse that women can have it all within existing
social and economic structures legitimates the commercial spirit of intimate
life and, in turn, makes use of feminist ideals. By making use of feminism,
the commercial spirit of intimate life transforms it: “Given this backdrop, a
commercial culture has moved in, silently borrowing from feminism an ideology that made way for women in public life” (p. 24).
Whereas Hochschild (2003) herself does not specify a particular feminist
tradition, it is important to explore how liberal feminism, more so than
other traditions, is linked to the commercialization of intimate life. Utilizing
wedding planning as a case study will clarify this connection.
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Liberal Feminism Defined
Liberal feminism developed out of the tradition of sociopolitical thought
known as liberalism. Often linked to theorists John Locke and John Stuart
Mill, liberalism is a theory about individual rights, freedom, rational choice,
and personal privacy, which today dominates much of American political
discourse, notably through neoliberalism or compassionate conservatism.
Within the context of feminism, Kirk and Okazawa-Rey (2004) explain,
Liberal feminists explain the oppression of women in terms of unequal access
to existing political, economic, and social institutions. They are concerned with
women’s rights being equal to those of men and that women have equal access
to opportunities within existing economic and social structures. From the midnineteenth century onward, much feminist organizing—for example, for the
vote, equal pay, and women’s access to education and the professions—is
based on this view. Many people hold liberal feminist opinions though they
may not realize it. Despite the disclaimer “I’m not a feminist . . . ,” the comment “but I do believe in equal pay” is a liberal feminist position. (p. 13)
Liberal or institutionalized ideals of feminism play up the sameness end
of the sameness-versus-difference debate. In other words, women and men
are alike in terms of their capabilities and potential, and likes should be
treated alike. The differences between women and men arise out of gendered
socialization and the disadvantages against women in the public sphere that
relate to their primary responsibility for child care and the home.
Liberal understandings of gender equality view equal opportunity measures, such as pay equity, as a remedy for the oppression of women in the
workplace. The focus tends to be on legislative solutions and changing individual attitudes. Liberal feminist thinking might, for instance, posit the
power suit as a marker of a successful career woman. She is able to play on
the same field, so to speak, with men and in the same attire (hence, the
power suit as the female appropriation of the business suit). To play on the
same field, however, that woman might be employing a nanny to care for
her children and outsourcing a host of household chores so that the home
and family can run via stand-in mother and wife substitutes.
Liberal feminism is critiqued for minimizing racial, ethnic, class, and
sexual differences among women; shying away from solutions that call for
massive social structural change to eradicate gender inequalities; and privileging the values and experiences of White middle-class heterosexual
women as the norm. Other strands of feminist thought—notably, Marxist,
postcolonial, and antiracist feminisms—work from a different premise and
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recognize women’s multiple social locations. Instead of accepting existing
social institutions as they are and working for women’s equal access within
them, other feminists challenge the institutions themselves. Their objectives involve major transformative change. Pay equity and power suits are
superficial markers of success; what is needed for workplace equality are
more structural changes, such as on-site sponsored day care, shorter workweeks, family-friendly policies, and equality on the home front.
Wedding Planners as Commercial Substitutes
Domestic labor has always been the responsibility of women; so, as
women’s participation in the labor force has increased, the commodity
frontier has expanded to offer commercial substitutes for women’s work. It
also offers substitutes for women themselves. For instance, a child care
worker becomes, in a sense, a stand-in mother; or a Merry Maid, a substitute albeit temporary wife. Wedding planning, like other domestic sphere
activities, is traditionally the work of women. The preparation work of
weddings—like that of other family celebrations, such as Thanksgiving and
children’s birthday parties—is done by women. In particular, it is the
mother of the bride upon whom the onus of planning her daughter’s nuptials typically falls. Even when outsourced, wedding planning is done by
women, given that the majority of professional planners, according to the
major national associations, are women. The profession of wedding planning, like those of nursing and teaching, is feminized.
As stand-in mothers, wedding planners accompany brides to meetings
with vendors, for everything from dress fittings to cake tastings. Although
dress shopping and choosing flowers might have traditionally been a shared
experience between mothers and daughters, today more and more brides
are choosing professional planners. My interviewees told me of their meticulous attention to detail, professional organizing skills, and network of contacts in the wedding industry, in effect positioning themselves as “better
than the real thing.” Hochschild (2003) remarks that commercial substitutes
for family activities are often better than their real-life counterparts. For
example, the dry cleaner presses a shirt better than Mom, or the storebought Entenmann’s dessert tastes better than homemade. “In a sense,”
Hochschild explains, “capitalism isn’t competing with itself, one company
against another, but with the family, and particularly with the role of the
wife and the mother” (p. 37).
The wedding planner can ensure that the design of the icing on the
cake replicates the beadwork on the dress’s bodice (as Carey, one of my
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interviewees, did for one of her brides) and might be able to negotiate a
better price for the dress than what Mom could achieve (which is often the
case). As industry insiders who have established relationships with vendors
and venues, wedding planners can negotiate prices that in the long run may
prove more cost-effective for couples, even when factoring in a service fee
(U.S. Event Guide, 2005). Family members and brides, unless they are in
the industry, do not have the insider’s edge, which enables planners to get
such deals. In my interview with Laura, a planner for 6 years who is based
in midtown Chicago, she described how these deals really work.
Many of the events that Laura attends for ABC’s Chicago chapter are
sponsored by local wedding vendors (and I am presuming that this occurs
in other chapters as well). It was at one such event that Laura met a florist
whom she now uses almost exclusively. “They give my brides the best deals,”
she said. “Plus, they’re really good.” In turn, the florist refers prospective
clients to Laura. “They were doing the floral for a shower and I got a referral through them to do a day-of coordination for that bride.” Through networking with industry vendors at these chapter functions, wedding planners
form many strategic business relationships that can save couples money on
services such as flowers and photography.
Cathy, a 30-year-old planner based in the western suburbs of Chicago
who has been in the business for a couple of years, saw herself in an emotionally supportive role—in particular, with two brides-to-be who had
recently lost their mothers. “I guided them through the process like their
mother,” she told me. Cathy also recalled a wedding where the mother of
the bride hired her because the mother had just lost her husband and
believed that she was just not able to help out and give her daughter the kind
of attention that she would need in the wedding-planning process.
Likewise, Laura remarked on her mothering role with brides who were new
to Chicago and whose mothers lived out of state.
Given that wedding planning was an activity located in the domain of the
private sphere, wedding consultants attempt to overcome the perception of
wedding planning as a family affair—or, to be specific, the work of mothers
and daughters, aunts and grandmothers, sisters and bridesmaids. Planners do
so by positioning themselves as the authority on the practice: “If you want the
event to run smoothly,” I was told by one of my interviewees, “you need
someone who knows what they are doing.” Dion Magee (2002), president of
the National Black Bridal Association, explains, “Aunt Melba, Sister Rita or
Cousin Lucie aren’t professional wedding planners. Upfront, let me say that
some family members are capable of producing a great wedding. However,
most aren’t experienced enough” (para. 4). She goes on to describe a nightmare
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Journal of Family Issues
wedding scenario of cold food and a hard cake, thanks to the bride’s mother
and grandmother stepping into the role of planner.
I heard similar cautionary tales from my interviewees, who as troubleshooters on the day of have to deal with the different problems that can
arise. Carey told me about one couple who had arranged for a relative to be
the DJ. Shortly into the reception, the DJ told Carey about his discomfort
behind the microphone and asked if she would make the announcements for
the evening. In her words, “I was so flabbergasted. . . . That’s like a pilot
telling me that he’s afraid of heights.” As a result, Carey took on the role of
master of ceremonies for the evening. The moral of her story was that you
cannot depend on family members to do wedding work in terms of the planning and the actual jobs on the day of.
Laura told me about a day-of coordination that she described as a “floral disaster.” The mother of the bride, who had taken on the role of wedding
planner up until the day of, had asked her sister to do the flowers, because
flower arranging was the sister’s hobby. (I am inclined to think that this
might have also been a cost-saving technique on the part of the bride’s
mother, although Laura did not mention that.) It turned out that the sister
did not buy enough flowers, which meant that there would either be no centerpieces at the reception and no bouquets for the bridesmaids. The bridesmaids ended up walking down the aisle empty-handed, thereby illustrating
the problems, according to Laura, of having a nonprofessional at the reins
of organizing a wedding.
For wedding planners, positioning themselves as the better choice for brides
over their families is an integral part of the commercialization of intimate life.
In short, to be in business, wedding planners depend on women choosing the
commercial substitute over their families. Wedding planners also depend on
womens’ feeling the need for professional help in the first place.
Targeting Professional Women
On the whole, men have not picked up their share of domestic labor
since the women’s movement, despite the mass entry of women into the
labor force. Hochschild (1989) calls this the stalled revolution. It has, in
fact, benefited wedding planners, who rely on the presence of multiple
demands in women’s lives and an unequal gendered division of labor in
terms of the planning process to legitimate the existence of their occupation.
The wedding industry embraces the notion that planning is women’s work
by focusing its advertising efforts at women. The planners in my sample, for
instance, advertised in local wedding magazines and participated in bridal
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shows. Wedding planners market themselves as specialists who specialize
in making “[the bride’s] vision a reality.” Elegant Weddings and Special
Events by Marianne in Dallas, Texas, advertises,
Because a wedding is a once in a lifetime occasion, the brides’ wishes are
paramount . . . our first priority. We strive to develop a meaningful relationship with each bride and her family while assisting in creating the wedding
of her dreams and staying within each individual budget.8
The emphasis on her is particularly important because even though the
wedding planner is hired to help the couple (at least in theory), the actual
work and time spent with the planner seems to rest with the bride.
In my interviews with Chicago-based wedding planners, they all stated
that their clientele consisted of professional couples; however, most planners
talked almost exclusively about their working relationships in terms of the
bride. My data from surveying the online advertisements of 280 weddingplanning businesses supports this finding. Only one quarter of ads target the
bride, with the remaining ads referring to the couple or you. However, a
closer read reveals that the you for whom the message is intended is likely
the bride. Consider the following advertisement from New York–based
Always a Bridesmaid:
At Always a Bridesmaid we believe that the wedding planning process should
be fun, not stressful! We know how busy our clients lives were before they
engaged, and how now you are even busier trying to make your dream day come
to life. Let us help you realize your vision and help you create a personalized,
unique day. Our consultants are fun, stylish, experienced professionals who
know how important it is for your wedding to be about you two! For brides who
need less help, consider our wedding coaching sessions, where we help you
budget, manage your time, find great vendors and streamline your wedding
ideas in a 3 hour coaching session with a certified wedding consultant.9
This ad reveals how the wording is often about the couple (“we know how
busy our clients lives were” and “for your wedding to be about you two”),
but the message is intended for the bride. Note the lapse at the end of the
ad: “for brides who need less help,” not “for couples” or “for clients.”
Not one advertisement in my sample singles out the groom. One study
found that only 1 in 10 grooms is actively involved in wedding planning,
with most preferring to stay out of the bride’s way in making the decisions
(Thompson, 1998). Otnes and Pleck (2003) write, “There seem to be many
reasons why grooms do not embrace the idea of wedding planning, and
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Journal of Family Issues
they all stem from the fact that shopping, decorating, beautifying, and contacting kin are still largely women’s domain” (p. 93). The work of consumption is a feminized activity in general, with women being the primary
consumers in the household. However, wedding work is an even more gendered practice than, say, grocery shopping because all of the buying and
detail work for the wedding occurs in emphasized feminized spaces, such
as bridal salons, stationary stores, flower shops, and bakeries. Geller’s discussion (2001) of the registry at Bloomingdale’s, in her demystifying
account of the contemporary American wedding, speaks to this point:
Here, the domestic woman takes her first faltering steps toward wifely authority.
Here, soothing maternal wedding consultants school female consumers in the
art of purchasing. Here, women wander among display cases accompanied
by uxorious aunts, mothers, and mothers-in-law, selecting items to personalize those shrines of coupledom, their homes. Although the store has veered
toward egalitarianism in shortening its name from the “bridal registry” to the
“registry,” this is a service offered to and utilized by women, an arena in
which men clearly have no place. (p. 155)
Bloomingdale’s linguistic change from “bridal registry” to “registry,” as Geller
notes, is an attempt to construct the wedding as being about the couple; but as
seen in the advertisements of wedding planners, although the wording may
address the couple, the message and services are intended for the bride.
Liberal feminism is not about radical, revolutionary change; rather, it is
about reform within existing social and economic structures. Thus, women
can achieve equality with men but not without hard work, creative multitasking, and savvy choice making. This might translate into buying groceries
online and outsourcing child care and the planning of a wedding to be able
to do it all. As stated earlier, this is a socially stratified phenomenon, and as
statistics reveal on the wedding-planning industry, White middle-class professional career women are the biggest client group. In one insider’s guide
(Tiffany, 2001) to the industry for prospective wedding planners, the marketing section solely discusses targeting professional women.
One demographic segment which many wedding consultants serve successfully is professional women. These corporate executives or business owners
often hold advanced college degrees and have high incomes. Because they
don’t have time to plan their own weddings, they’re more likely to favor fullservice packages that make it possible for them to turn all the details over to
an experienced planner. Since full-service packages are usually a consultant’s
highest priced offering, this can translate into significant profits. (n.p.)
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In my survey of 280 advertisements for wedding planners through Partypop
.com and AllWeddingCompanies.com, two dominant marketing themes
emerged in my coding for both the roles and the justification of and for planners: the wedding planner as time-saver and the wedding planner as dream
maker. The advertisement for Arizona-based Weddings With Attitude demonstrates this first theme of planner as time-saver and reveals how wedding
planners play to the career and time anxieties of professional women:
Bold brides like you are: Outgoing, Fun-loving, Exuberant, and DEFINITELY
BUSY! Planning a wedding can become the equivalent of a second job. . . .
When you add the numerous details that planning such an event requires, it’s
easy to see how quickly it is to become buried under it all. Allow Weddings
With Attitude to remove that burden and help make your day memorable.10
Denver-based Table Six Productions illustrates the second marketing
theme, planner as dream maker:
As you plan your wedding day, creativity, personalization and inimitable
taste are all important elements to making your wedding day unique . . .
stunning . . . you! From personalized cocktails and fabulous décor to clever
ideas that will have your guests “oohing and aahing” over every last detail,
Table Six Productions can offer you all the help you could possibly need to
make your event exceptional. We want to hear your ideas, dream your
dreams, and make your wedding day the most fabulous day of your life!11
Jewel Occasions in Michigan also illustrates the dream-maker theme:
Behold your prince awaits you at the end of the aisle. With the exchange of
vows and rings, the moment you’ve dreamed of has finally arrived! Hand in
hand, you walk into happily ever after. . . . Let the royal attendants from Jewel
Occasions help you plan your special day. Our professional staff will ensure
all the important details are completed according to your specifications.12
Often, these two themes are combined with advertisements highlighting
the time involved in planning, the overwhelming details and choices available, and the planners’ ability to provide the couple (specifically, the bride)
with a wedding day of their dreams that they will remember for years to
come. At Cherished Moments Event Planning, in Orange County, California,
the two themes are combined:
Planning a Special Event, such as your Wedding, can be a very stressful task,
but Cherished Moments Event Planning can make the process a lot easier for
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Journal of Family Issues
you, and fun too! It’s all about YOU; just tell us your style, ideas, and visions
and we will do the rest for you. Let us make your next event your most
Cherished Moment.13
In my interviews, the wedding planners frequently referred to the planning process as a full-time job. Gladys, an accredited bridal consultant with
12 years of experience, told me that one of the strategies that she has used
to seal the deal during the initial meeting with the prospective couple has
been to ask the bride if she would like a second full-time job. Likewise,
Laura recalled “jokingly” asking the mother of the bride during a telephone
consultation if her daughter had considered a planned leave from work
(something comparable to a maternity leave), in the event that the wedding
would be done without the help of a professional planner. On a Web site for
brides that offers links to consulting services and serves as a portal for the
wedding-planning industry, an online quiz to help brides determine if they
need to hire a wedding planner embodies this strategy of planner as timesaving helper. The quiz begins with the question “Do you have unlimited
time to work on the wedding of your dreams?” Certainly, as I mention earlier, every bride would have to answer no, and answering no to three questions is, according to the quiz, a sure sign that she could use the help of a
planner (!) (Hall, 2007). These types of tests are in abundant supply on the
Internet and in bridal magazines.
Shelli Alred of Alred Wedding Consultants in St. Louis, Missouri, states,
“Women are just as focused on their careers as men. They need someone to
act as their advocate in wedding planning when their schedules don’t allow”
(Wedding-Club.com, 2007b, para. 6). Wedding planner Josie Littlepage, also
of St. Louis, claims,
The bride of today is more aware of time management and understands the
benefit of having more time to do her own things. Women were always busy
doing their work, but in the recent past we were expected to take everything
on ourselves and execute it; now we understand that we can delegate to people
who are professionals in these fields. (Wedding-Club.com, 2007a, para. 7)
These comments illustrate how wedding planners appeal to professional
women’s sense of prioritizing work and career in order to stay ahead in a
labor market that has never been kind to women. By delegating and outsourcing domestic responsibilities, modern brides can have it all without
having to disrupt existing patterns of gendered work. In other words, wedding planning remains as women’s work and the responsibility of women,
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but as a commodified service, it enables women—as with other family
functions, such as paid child care—to spend equal (or at least more equal)
time and energy on their educations and careers in comparison to those of
men. The solution for brides who are trying to balance a work life and pull
off a wedding is, of course, not to involve their grooms in the planning
process but to hire another woman to respond to the competing demands of
work and intimate life. The advertisement below, from Virginia-based
Affectionately Yours Bridal Consulting and Event Planning, illustrates how
the industry is communicating this message directly to brides:
As a member of today’s professional society, you already lead a very busy
and demanding life, going to school, studying for finals, working long hours
and dealing with the stress of long commutes. Why add more stress to your
life? . . . That’s where Affectionately Yours can help. From selecting your
wedding gown to selecting the ceremony venue, from selecting the menu for
the reception to planning your grand exit, I work with you to plan and coordinate every detail of your wedding, leaving you more time to spend with
your friends and families.14
In describing how she seals the deal with new clients, Gladys explained
to me,
You know, I often wink at the brides when I tell them how much work goes
into planning a wedding and then look right at the groom. I’m letting her
know that I understand, woman-to-woman, about how “helpful” men can be.
Cathy told me how she subtly tells her brides how some of her past clients
have received promotions and finished their degrees during the weddingplanning process. “I tell them how most brides would see these accomplishments as totally remarkable. Lord knows how much time most
do-it-your-selfers put into planning.” The obvious implication behind the
career and academic successes of Laura’s brides is that her presence made
such achievements possible. In other words, having a wedding planner do
all of the time-consuming prep work enables brides to focus on other
things, such as getting ahead in their respective careers. Do-it-yourselfers,
however, or those brides without a planner, miss out on opportunities for
advancement at their jobs and they fall behind at school. These brides are
hampered then from “having it all”—that is, successes in their careers and
intimate lives. Thus, both the problem and the answer for busy brides-to-be
are rooted in a capitalist version of liberal feminism.
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Discussion and Conclusion
Like other commodities, feminism, as it is used in the marketplace, has both
an exchange value and a use value. Landry and Maclean (1993) argue that feminism’s use value “lies in its emancipatory potential, the way it can help
[women] as a group to think through solutions to everyday problems” (p. 51).
But having it all comes at a price when used within the existing structures.
We see this clearly with working mothers who look to “liberating” forms
of help in commercial substitutes. Motherhood and career are fundamentally at odds with each other. The public sector provides women with few
if any child care supports; maternity leave means sacrificing opportunities
for promotion; and the stalled revolution means that women are still doing
the bulk of the domestic labor. Women are faced with the choice of focusing on their careers at the expense of their families. In her article “The
Nanny Dilemma,” Susan Cheever (2002) writes, “If there’s a good woman
behind every great man, behind every great woman there’s a good nanny.”
Women who choose day care or hire nannies (in other words, utilize commercial substitutes) face scrutiny for allowing their children to be raised by
“strangers.” Our social expectations of motherhood provide strict rules
regarding how women are to nurture and care for their children. Women
face the stigma of being “bad mothers” if their version of a home-cooked
meal comes out of a box in the freezer or if it is the nanny who takes their
children to and from school. Is the same then true for women who utilize
the services of a wedding planner? Are brides stigmatized or admonished
for opting for the commercial substitute?
This is an interesting question for future inquiry, with room for comparative work on motherhood and societal attitudes toward mother and wife
substitutes. Does the stigma hold up for brides as it does for mothers who
employ commercial substitutes? Cultural ideals of motherhood have real
currency in contemporary society. They are embedded in traditional familial ideology and gender roles, reinforced through law and policy, and transmitted through socialization. As the wedding-planning industry grows and
the commodity frontier continues to expand into emotionally significant,
intense, and “once in a lifetime” events (or twice or three times), future
research on societal attitudes of brides who deploy professional planning
services will contribute to our understanding of the commodity frontier and
the material and ideological relationship of the family to the marketplace.
This study has focused on wedding planners and not specifically on brides.
However, it has brought to light the need for future research on brides as
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consumers of wedding planners’ services and on brides’ consumption of
feminism as it is used in the marketplace. The profession of wedding planning harnesses institutionalized ideals of feminism in its marketing, as the
findings from my interviews and survey of online advertisements reveal.
Wedding planners market themselves as time-savers and dream makers to
busy, career-oriented brides who, upon hiring the commercial substitute,
can have it all—the job, the husband, and the perfect wedding. Wedding
planners have carved themselves out a niche in the marketplace, made possible by the commodity frontier’s takeover of work in the home and the
activities of our intimate lives. The virtues of liberal feminism, namely,
having it all, within existing social and economic structures serve to justify
the commodification of wedding work, the necessity of the wedding planner, and even the existence of the occupation itself. As such, wedding planning as a case study confirms Hochschild’s thesis (2003) that feminism plays
an important ideological role in the expansion of the commodity frontier.
Hochschild’s Weberian-based analogy (2003) parallels the relationship of
feminism to the commercial spirit of intimate life with that of Protestantism
to the spirit of capitalism. With this in mind, if we conceptualize professional wedding planning as a commercial substitute for work traditionally
done in the domestic sphere, then the bridal consultant takes on new meaning as a specialist without spirit. Whereas all the planners I interviewed
reflected on the emotion work inherent in their profession—that is, the counseling and consoling of the bride—and although many referred to their
clients as newfound friends, often attending their bridal showers and staying
in touch by phone, they are nonetheless specialists and service providers in
the capitalist marketplace. Likewise, the women who employ their services—
predominately White middle-class educated professional women—become
what Goethe called “sensualists without heart.” Boden (2001) and Geller
(2001) identify the media, including coverage of celebrity and unconventional weddings as well as bridal magazines, as having helped construct the
consumer identities of contemporary brides. The “superbride,” according to
Boden, encompasses the existence of the rational project manager, with
methodical attention to detail, alongside the emotional childish fantasizer.
The superbride is thus part bridezilla—an extremely picky and uptight bride
who has left nothing unplanned or unorganized—and part Cinderella—
indulging her childhood fantasies, acting spoiled and pampered, and being
treated like royalty.
The infusion of market principles into emotionally significant events such
as weddings speaks to the inescapability of the iron cage of rationality.
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Journal of Family Issues
Women’s consuming material fantasies, striving to outdo the last wedding
they attended, and living out their Cinderella dreams, as Otnes and Pleck
(2003) describe them, appear (at least on the surface) as lacking heart.
There is no denying that in the body of bridal magazines, Brideland (Wolf,
1995), and the enchanted realm of consumer wedding fantasies, the wedding planner positions herself as dream maker, or the Cinderella bride’s
fairy godmother, and that the bride herself hopes to be Cinderella (at least
for the day). But all this work of production and consumption seems to me
to be lacking in both spirit and heart. There is much to be learned from
studying women who deploy the services of wedding planners in terms of
the effect of the commodity frontier on emotionally significant events and
the women consumers’ experiences of them. Does the market’s usurpation
of liberal feminist ideals provide what it is, in theory, supposed to provide
for these women—namely, liberation, satisfaction, and the happiness of
“having it all”? Or does it produce the opposite of what it promises—
namely, domination, disenchantment, and detachment? Future research on
brides as they navigate their way through the increasingly commodified
wedding industry will provide important insights into the motivations for
deploying a commercial substitute, in turn providing an evaluative opportunity of wedding planners’ co-optive strategies of feminism. As consumers in
the wedding industry, women are not mere dupes blindly fulfilling Cinderella
wedding dreams, but they are not free agents, either. Exploring women’s
experiences in the wedding-planning process will provide some nuance to
what are often dichotomous discussions of liberation and domination,
romanticism and disenchantment.
Notes
1. Building on Marx, critical theorists have argued that individuals were reified in the
process of consumption (Lukács, 1923/1999). The cultural and ideological forces that produce
and reproduce notions of capitalism’s naturalness inevitably shape the human consciousness to
become complicit within a system of domination and oppression. Horkeimer and Adorno
(1972/2002) refer to a calculated mass culture, and Marcuse (1964) focuses on the construction
of false needs and consumption that manipulate individuals into social conformity and suppress
political opposition. The insights of critical theorists into consumption have been important,
particularly in terms of broadening our understanding of capitalism and links from the culture
industry and consumption to capitalist production and profit to the maintenance of the status
quo by the power elite. However, their critique of the culture industry has ignored the realm of
the private sphere and the interdependence of the family to the consumer marketplace (see
Fraser, 1989, for a developed critique of this oversight, particularly in Habermas, 1981).
2. See http://www.ultimatewedding.com.
3. Thompson Direct has subsequently changed its name to Penn Foster; see http://www
.pennfoster.edu/bridalconsultant/index.html.
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4. Web sites of noted organizations: National Bridal Service, http://www.nationalbridal
.com/; Association of Bridal Consultants, http://www.bridalassn.com/; Association for Wedding
Professionals International, http://afwpi.com/; National Association of Wedding Professionals,
http://www.nawp.com/; PartyPop.com, http://www.partypop.com/Categories/Wedding_Coordinators
.html; All Wedding Companies, http://www.allweddingcompanies.com/consultants/ index.html.
5. This ad appeared in Chicago Weddingpages (July/August 2003), p. 201.
6. Franck Eggelhoffer was played by Martin Short in the 1991 film The Father of
the Bride.
7. Ingraham (1999) examines the ideologies of gender and sexuality in the wedding
industry more generally, discussing heterosexual supremacy in white-wedding culture. She
offers a sustained critique of weddings as institutionalized heterosexuality. Ingraham also calls
attention to the need for research on brides and the meaning-making processes involved in
their experiences of the wedding industry.
8. See http://www.partypop.com/Vendors/4091724.htm (retrieved April, 6, 2006).
9. See http://www.partypop.com/Vendors/4061125.htm (retrieved April, 6, 2006).
10. See Say I Do.com: An Online Resource Guide for Brides and Grooms, http://sayido.com/.
11. See http://www.partypop.com/Vendors/4110572.htm (retrieved April, 6, 2006).
12. See http://www.partypop.com/Vendors/4076647.htm (retrieved April, 6, 2006).
13. See http://www.partypop.com/Vendors/4104126.htm (retrieved April, 6, 2006).
14. See http://www.aybridalconsulting.com/ (retrieved April 6, 2006).
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