Cinderella dreams: The allure of the lavish wedding

Cinderella Dreams: The Allure of the Lavish Wedding. Cele C. Otnes & Elizabeth H. Pleck. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. 384 pp. ISBN 0-520-24008-1. $19.95 (paper). Dreams, fairy tales, and other illusions. Cele Otnes, associate professor of business administration, and Elizabeth Pleck, professor of history and community development at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, have produced an impressive collaboration in their examination of "romantic love and excessive consumption" in that great taken-for-granted: the "lavish" wedding. Known by many as the white wedding tradition, this ritual and the meanings that we attach to the various aspects of its pervasive practice have, until recently, been largely unexamined by scholars (see note below for some examples of this work). Otnes and Pleck situate their extensive study in the context of earlier efforts examining the wedding, while attempting to leave no ring unturned in extending the reach of wedding scholarship. One of the most significant contributions that this book makes to the growing body of wedding research is the authors' marriage of the disciplines of business and history. In exploring the object of their affection-the lavish wedding-Otnes and Pleck demonstrate the value of discussion for the success of a good marriage. The rich analysis they provide makes use of both theory and method from their respective disciplines, while infusing their findings with insights offered by other disciplines (e.g., sociology and anthropology). Scholars can learn a great deal from the authors' collaborative efforts because they demonstrate the incisive value of interdisciplinary work. In the end, their examination of the lavish wedding provides strong evidence about the marketing and meaning-making practices surrounding the production of the lavish wedding. From a sociological standpoint, the chapters that focus on marketing are particularly interesting, given the role of business and marketers in creating what develops and becomes socially constructed as tradition. Otnes and Pleck's work on the investment of business and markets reveals the ideological underpinnings of the lavish wedding and how powerfull advertisers' messages are in naturalizing social relations. For example, Otnes and Pleck further debunk the tradition of the diamond engagement ring by linking the history of its evolution with the extraordinarily effective marketing campaigns that naturalized its necessity: "... what really caused the tradition of diamond engagement rings to take off was ... a marketing campaign as brilliant as the gemstones themselves" (p. 62). In addition to the role of marketing, they mention the powerfully oppressive role of race and colonialism in the history of the lavish wedding. The development of the diamond industry and its reliance on the oppression of Boer men, women, and children, and African (often Zulu) labor is made visible in their chapter "The Engagement Complex." Additionally, they mention the role of whiteness in the evolution of the white wedding gown as linked to white supremacist beliefs in relation to Queen Victoria, as well as the white beauty ideal that escalated in the creation and consumption of the Barbie doll. Additionally disturbing in their excavation of the production aspects of the lavish wedding is their description of the ways that marketers make use of the sacred to create desire for their products. …