Sulagna Misra’s past prognostications can be found here.

2025, the Year of the Appropriated Wedding

The TV show “Say Yes to the Dress” will become diversity-inclusive, including not just white dresses, but red dresses like Chinese and Indian weddings, or green dresses like Muslim weddings, as well as black tuxes and sherwanis. This complicates things when everyone starts asking for cultural wedding dresses from cultures they aren’t from – like in Rachel Getting Married – because “Saris are so in!” and “China is a thing now!” The show expands to stores in Queens and Edison, NJ for these much desired dresses, expanding markets of influence on the wedding economy. J.Crew drastically changes their business model when it turns out their cookie-cutter bridesmaid dresses are not selling as well as they should, adding non-Western clothes not only in their bridal section, but in their casual wear as well. The lines between “Western” and “non-Western” clothing blur as everyone starts wearing everything from business suits to kurtas to ball gowns at work and school and weddings.

2043, the Year of the Perfect Wedding

Everyone in the wedding party – any brides or grooms, parents of the couple getting married – go into the Wedding Simulator ^®, where their particular version of the perfect wedding appears. Your mom gets her perfect beach wedding, you get your nerdy Harry Potter themed quirk-a-thon, your significant other gets their destination wedding. Meanwhile, all those invited get to go to a small party as they wait for the newly married couple to join them. Studies are written up about the correlation between your wedding simulation and your new spouse’s and your mom’s. Turns out if you have different simulations, you have similar chances of divorce or a lasting marriage as couples who go through the same simulation. Young couples that are pressured by their parents to share in one big simulation among the wedding party have a much harder time of marriage. Nearly all couples that can’t decide on whether to share their vision or divert in their simulations get divorced.

2062, the Year of the Ring Heard ‘Round the World

A strange thing starts happening this year: a gong sounds during the wedding at the most crucial moment: the wedding kiss. At first, people wonder if it’s part of the wedding package they purchased, a new quirk to the industry, or an annoying uncle who just got a new app on his phone. But it turns out it’s a man going around ringing gongs at random weddings. Since wedding interruptions outside of the whole “speak now or forever hold your peace,” bit are now a federal crime, the FBI is on the case. They find a pattern among the gong couples: they all got their engagement rings from the same company, Love of Lasers. By hosting a fake wedding, they finally capture the mysterious gong man, who they find out was a scientist in the factory. In exchange for safety from a nefarious gang of people called the C.L.A.I.R.E.s, the scientist tells them the secret of the engagement rings: they are installed with chips that react at the simultaneous sound of a gong when the wearer is going through a highly anxious and exciting time – which usually reaches the peak at their wedding kiss. The chips release a toxin in the engagement ring wearers’ blood that causes them to become susceptible to the control of the C.L.A.I.R.E.s, an organization whose acronym is never explained. Before the C.L.A.I.R.E.s can do anything about it (turns out they had a plan to take over the world but were procrastinating on follow-through) the scientist and the FBI create an antidote: True Love. Just kidding! It’s fondant icing. From then on, cakes are made primarily out of fondant icing to remember this confusing, weird time. They taste terrible, but they look gorgeous!

2085, the Year of the Triple Threat Wedding

The government splits the wedding into three parts: the religious ceremony, the civil union (basically what you go to the courthouse for), and the wedding party. The Wedding Industry is undeterred by this, and declares it a chance for America to try the Triple Threat Wedding. Three parties over the span of the year! Invite your family to the religious ceremony, invite your co-workers and professional contacts to the civil union, and invite your friends – your real-life, actual friends, who make you laugh until you cry – to your actual wedding. Suddenly, your wedding year becomes an excellent bargaining chip. If used correctly, your more annoying family members will become kinder to you in order to be invited to the party, your friends will ask to go to the civil union so they can meet potential dates and employers outside of their social circle, and your co-workers will beg to go to the religious ceremony because it requires the least amount of small talk and most amount of gossip around you. The year of your wedding(s) will be the year you and your significant other become Frank and Claire Underwood – use your power wisely.

2107, the Year of the Altruistic Wedding

Thanks to overpopulation, the start of a marriage is required by the government to be accompanied by a good deed towards the environment or society. Weddings become tax write-offs, and people tend to have them in locations such as local parks or community centers or wherever they build Habitats for Humanity. After a season, this natural, community service element is threaded into the ceremony. The wedding ceremony is no longer a walk down the aisle, with an official officiator. Instead, you rock climb together, the mountain acting as the officiator – it’s only if you can survive the trek up that you will be officially married. You do have to survive the trek down, too, but at least if one of you dies, the other is taken care of now. A surprisingly large number of enterprising newlyweds try to kill each other on the way down the mountain. As a result of these new wedding dangers, pre-wedding couples therapy rates skyrocket.

2122, the Year of the Wedding

After the second apocalypse in 2121, only a handful of people are left in the world. Two of them fall in love. They decide to indulge in small joys by having a party to celebrate their love, and invite all the people in the world.