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.
Tags: humor, sulagna misra, the future, weddings
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…are green wedding dresses for Muslims really An Actual Thing? I come from a very Muslim background and I’ve never heard of anything like that. The closest I’ve got is that green was allegedly Muhammad’s favorite color.
Also, thing I do know about re Muslim weddings: in non-Muslim countries, they already have three parts like the kind described in the piece. Is my family from the future?
That should probably be “like SOME Muslim weddings,” because some of my Muslim friends have been to/had weddings with silk green dresses. Looking that up, it seems more of a South Asian (esp. Pakistani) thing than a Muslim thing…sorry about that 🙁
I’ve been to weddings where all three things happen in quick, awful succession, but have also been to wedding receptions without going to the traditional religious wedding, which seemed much better.
But your family is probably from the future anyway.
FWIW I’m of a south Asian, Pakistani-tinged background and I’ve still never heard of it, lol. A lot of brides wear green to their Mehndi/Dholki ceremonies, though.
From what I see, most Muslims tend to go with their cultural backgrounds rather than their religion when it comes to wedding outfits.
WHAT. Firing all my Muslim friends immediately. (Maybe I just had one friend who had a mom who wore green to her wedding and she was like, “it’s traditional!”)
I’m glad you commented because now we all know. Otherwise I would’ve accidentally become complicit in spreading LIES D: And yes, I think you’re right about the cultural notion. Some Indian brides wear pink instead….
Also, what does Pakistani-tinged mean???
I mean that none of my grandparents were born in Pakistan (and only two in India; one was born in Burma and the other in Mauritius), but my mom was born in Pakistan and my dad lived there a while so there are some things we do that are more Pakistani than Gujarati. It gets very messily Subcontinental with us.
If my online stalking of soccer players has fought me anything, I think the three-part (or at least two-part) wedding is standard in Germany. They always have pictures of the civil part, which is pretty low-key, and then the church wedding where the football wife-to-be wears the big poofy dress.
This is also true in France. A friend of mine married a Frenchman over there, and there are photos of her looking all rad and business-suity at the civil ceremony, and then all poofy-bridey at the church.
Depends: do you all live in the same time zone?
I will take mysterious mind control over eating fondant.
I think american fondant and british fondant might be different things, because I LOVE fondant.
Is your fondant thick, dense, and, for all intents and purposes, plastic? Does it serve no other purpose than to make a cake look like it was printed in a lab rather than made by a human?
It’s thick, yes, but sweet. It tastes like icing, but a lot thicker (unless it has lots of black colouring in it, then it tastes mank) and it does cool things on cake.
I think that we just have different views on fondant. (The stuff over here is sickly-sweet and is very thick.)
In general I think brits have sweeter tooths. We sure as hell put more sugar in our chocolates and stuff. I’ve tried US chocolate, and it tastes really under-sweet.
Cultural Taste Differences, yeeeeeah!
Interesting! My frosting tastes tend to run waaaaay less sweet–my favorite frosting is Swiss Meringue Buttercream (egg whites, sugar, mountains of butter, flavorings), which is only barely sweet compared to traditional American Buttercream (powdered/icing sugar, butter, flavorings, liquid).
Now I want to research Sweet Tooths Around The World.
Now I want to research Sweet Tooths Around The World.
Please do, and report back. I’ll be taking notes (and starting itineraries).
I will start writing the grant proposal immediately.
You need a research assistant. I have mad research skills. Plus a helluva sweet tooth and hips to go with it.
Please craft an essay (length irrelevant) detailing your relevant experience with sweet snacks and attach it to a baked good of your choice to be considered for this demanding and challenging position. Compensation will be 50/50 snacks/cash.
I think you’re right, and based on my small, biased sample I think it’s post-WWII. My elderly English relatives all prefer very rich barely sweet desserts, and my English younger relatives all like very sweet things regardless of richness. So maybe American tastes (like our accents) are holdovers from earlier English times?
I suspect the difference is one of two things: the difference between poured fondant and rolled fondant, or the difference between good rolled fondant and crap rolled fondant.
Poured fondant, which one might use to coat petit fours, is a sweet, often light coat of flavored sugar syrup that firms up to a tender outer glaze. Rolled fondant is more like clay made of sugar syrup: thicker, more malleable, denser.
Good rolled fondant, housemade and fresh, is very sweet, but not unpleasantly so, and though I’d never describe it as “tender,” you can actually, y’know, eat it. Mass-produced fondant is edible, and some people do eat it, but the texture is more like PlayDoh than anything else; I usually peel it off and discard it.
Definitely Play-Doh-esque, is fondant.
Random wedding fact: White as a dress colour only really became a tradition after Queen Victoria wore a white dress. Before that, blue was more common, though most women just wore their nicest dress.
Huh, I didn’t know that! I find it really interesting learning how wedding traditions that people treat as Set In Stone are (sometimes very recently) made-up bullshit!
[Not that there’s anything wrong with following traditions that are meaningful to you, but nothing bad is going to happen to you if you deviate from The Script, honest!]
Oh, some women wore white, for sure. But, rich women. White fabric was expensive! Queen Victoria started a *trend*, and new manufacturing meant that middle-class women could afford white.
Blue was the colour of purity, because the virgin Mary wore it.
Most of our traditions around weddings are really very modern. You think some peasant woman in the 1600’s was having a long white dress, a huge party, and a big expensive cake to cut? She was probably back working the next day. There would be a feast of all the best food they could afford, but that’s about it.
Ugh, yes, this is my number one heart-devouring, soul-crushing thing when it comes to weddings. So, so much “well, I want it/we should have it because it’s ‘traditional'” when so, so much is barely a generation old (and the oldest stuff is, like, a century-and-a-half), at least in the west.
Basically, the modern wedding started as a way for rich victorian era families to show off their wealth and social status, and was then sold to the newly-emerging middle class as a way to show/spend *their* new money, with new entrepreneurs adding new “traditions” every decade or two. Do you want your wedding to be about showing off your family’s money and social status? No? Then consider throwing out the Whole. Damn. Playbook. And look upon anything that’s “traditional” with twice the scrutiny, not half.
/rant, thank you/sorry.
I will just say that the value of traditions is not necessarily that they are old, but that they tie us together culturally, and provide a kind of language for our important social gatherings. So of course it’s fine to throw out the play-book, but to say that someone shouldn’t care about tradition because it’s only been happening for X amount of time could miss the point a bit. It’s fair to call marinara sauce traditional Italian food, even though tomatoes came from the Americas.
Plus some things have become traditions because they make sense. Some dear friends wanted to not send any kind of wedding invitation at all because we would all “know what was going on” (their wedding is a two-day multi-part affair, involving parks and the like). After a strict lecture from a friend they finally caved and sent an email so we would be able to look up where the eff we were supposed to be and when. Wedding invites are traditional for a reason.
+1
Cultural traditions do not have to be old to be valuable. Their value is in their repetition and something that draws us together. A woman does not have to be able to trace her wedding-dress lineage back to 1300 to wear a white dress–if her sisters and cousins and mother and aunts and grandmother and friends have all worn white dresses, that cultural signifer of “a white wedding dress” can be enough for her. So it hasn’t been happening for a thousand years? It’s been happening in her lifetime, and that can be enough.
I have considered this line of thinking before, and want to reaffirm my Toast-ie love of great discussions. I do appreciate the reframing of the idea through switching of terms – replace “traditional” with “cultural” in a given sentence, and see past the trees to the forest.
But I’m also stuck at another point. If age does not inherently grant value to a ritual, then what reason exists to counter the nasty origins of that ritual? If news were to reach us of some new blatant conspicuous consumption for its own sake, I would expect near-universal condemnation of it, at least on this page. So then, what argument besides age can be used to support the continuation of a previous generation’s intentional classism?
To frame it another way, I can choose to do something because my grandmother (and other women between us) did so. And perhaps she did it because her mother did so. But my great-grandmother, in turn, only did it because it was how she was expected to show complete submission to the will of her father. Does the length of time in between her life and mine erase the nastiness of the original motive? And if it does not, how then could I defend repeating the “tradition”?
I think maybe time does? Obviously, it’s a bit of an eye of the beholder thing, but a lot of wedding traditions have become totally divorced from their original meanings (white as a symbol of purity as probably #1) and are really just something we do because it feels right and appropriate for the occasion. Like graduation robes – aren’t they based on medieval academic robes? But no one really cares about that at this point. They’re just what you wear at graduation.
I’m all for questioning the traditions and the need for them, and I always love seeing wedding photos with a bride in bright red or whatever. But I don’t think you’re necessarily participating in Victorian-era classism by picking a white gown.
You’re totally right! I mean, it was “traditional” to not let women vote, right?
I think there are lots of factors in the decision to abide or not abide by any particular “tradition”, and people have to weight them for themselves, and those people get to and should make choices. If something is blatantly racist, then it should be tossed out and condemned, even if it has been happening for generations.
I guess I mean, if someone’s over-arching reason for wanting a white dress is tradition, that’s good enough for me. And I don’t think that person has a huge obligation to go back 3 generations and say “that’s just about proving class superiority so it’s garbage and instead I’m obligated to wear any colour BUT white”.
I thought a LOT about this in university. I went to a very small Oxbridge-type college in a very large Canadian university. My college had been around for 150+ years and was full of traditions. I’m not kidding, I wore an academic gown to dinner 4 days a week. I was head of college in my third year, and in that year we did away with a lot of structurally sexist stuff (like separate women’s and men’s student government meetings). People FREAKED out (for “people” read “the young Old Boys’ club”). Someone posted a poem from our secret society’s archives from the 1930’s outside the dining hall (yes, is the picture being painted for you? It looked like Harry Potter). The poem bemoaned whatever change was going on at the college at that time, being like “NOTHING WILL EVER BE THE SAME AGAIN WE ARE LOSING ALL THAT IS SPECIAL ABOUT THIS PLACE”. Of course, 80 years later, after TONS of change that of course was necessary and positive, people were saying the same thing about another set of necessary changes. What was fascinating to me is that the complaints were the same: what about our TRADITIONS?? That we felt the same way after 80 years of change said something, I think. And that something was: changing some of the dysfunctional stuff about our little society did not have to mean throwing out everything we held dear. We could have weird old chants and wear academic gowns to dinner without having structural sexism.
Change happens – out with the bad old stuff, in with the good new stuff. But having and keeping traditions through those processes is totally valuable to lots of people, and I think that’s a good thing.
Even more generally, it’s fascinating how quickly human beings take on new cultural ideas and defend them as traditional, or even timeless.
Yes! This was I was thinking, but you’ve wordified it much better than I did!
I was so surprised when I read that Hairpin (I think?) article about diamond engagement rings and how they weren’t the norm until the 1950s… within living memory for lots of people living today!!!
Not to mention that by choosing white Victoria herself was doing away with the usual royal wedding dress color of SILVER.
I want to wear a silver dress to my wedding, dang it!
have you guys all read Marriage a History? It’s SO GOOD AND SO INTERESTING. Traces the evolution and history of (white and western) marriage back to roman and pre roman times, with a real emphasis on deconstructing how we all came to believe that victorian and 1950s ideas are essentially “traditional” versions of marriage, and sort of at the end, gave me a new perspective on how a wedding today can be either advantageous to a woman or disadvantageous depending on her socio-economic status and that of her partner. It was super good.
Even more random fact: white was the formal color during the Regency, when Victoria’s uncle, the future George IV reigned for his mentally incompetent father, George III. This would naturally include wedding gowns. So this Victoria thing is actually not quite true.
This is great! I am attending a wedding this weekend and I kind of hope it’s like one of these. Sounds way entertaining to be a guest.
The Year of the Appropriated Wedding is going to happen, guaranteed. The question is whether J.Crew et al will include actual people from the cultures being appropriated in the development process as anything other than glorified mascots (spoiler alert: no).
2014: The Year I Stopped Going to Weddings I Can’t Walk or Cab To
I was going to try to invoke that rule this year as well, but then my cousin decided to get married at CitiField and I am too curious not to go. But NO bridal showers. I have officially sworn them off.
Yep! No showers ever. I just give the first excuse that comes to mind, e.g., “sorry, I have to eat a sandwich that day.”
I tried to force myself to go to the last one as a favor to the pseudo-maid-of-honor (who hates them, too). It didn’t work. I have now pledged myself to the forever non-specific “regrets”. As in, “your decision to persevere with this relic of patriarchy-meets-capitalism fills me with regrets”
THIS IS PERF.
I only go to weddings I can Crab-Walk to (misread your sentence, and it came out perfect.).
that’s maybe around 2018, as a pretext to avoid ALL weddings
“Fine then, we’ll have it in your house,” would be the only possible, if terrifying, rejoinder.
Surely the rise in the number of households in america which instituted a “no shoes in the house rule” and the skyrocketing sales of legos and tiny racecars, were merely coincidental as was the rise of brides and grooms preparing for weddings by practicing routes where they ran barefoot around town to all their friend’s front doors.
This was so good and made also better because the Appropriated wedding picture has Tunde Adebimpe who should be on the internet every day.
I’m looking forward to 2025, when I can wear my wedding dress to work and when I go out to dinner at PaneraBreadChilisBurtons.
Or to eat ham, à la Liz Lemon
I need to get to 2043 so everyone around me can stfu and enjoy whatever wedding they think I should have without me having to hear about it. *currently on strike from wedding planning*
I dreamed last night that I was at my own wedding. As I approached the altar, my mother handed me a big bouquet of vegetarian kebabs. The wedding was a fake wedding, but only the groom (my prom date from forever ago) and I were in on the joke. Toasties, the SINCERITY in her face as she passed me the kebab bouquet — I’ve been awake for hours and I still feel a little knotted up with guilt.
Anywhoo, I look forward to some sort of foodie/urban gardener wedding trend where flowers are replaced with sprigs of organic, sustainable, home-grown dill weed.
I am a floral designer, and I often use fruit, vegetables, and herbs in my work. Dill weed as a bouquet? Totally happens already.
Fruit, vegetable, and herb bouquets! That sounds gorgeous, and absolutely like something I could not be trusted with. My problem with a dill bouquet is that I would surreptitiously eat it. Especially if there were also chives.
“after the second apocalypse in 2121…” – The Year of the Appropriated Wedding was the first one, right??? *vomits aggressively at smug imaginary WASPs in kurtas*
I love all of these but the last one warmed my heart in the best way.
“Since wedding interruptions outside of the whole “speak now or forever hold your peace,” bit are now a federal crime,”
lol forever
Sulagna! This was hilarious as always.
Where I live there are all these totally white liberals who LOVE to have aboriginal carvings on their wedding rings. WHAAAAT.
I mean, I wear a bracelet made by an aboriginal carver as jewellery, but it's not a cultural symbol, it's jewellery, and I respect its artisanship. I really really hope that makes it different.
Many (all?) traditions were invented at some point in time. Think about it. Does anybody really think these customs just spontaneously appear in a given culture because, what, they fit right or something? Look up "The Invention of Tradition." Pretty illuminating stuff.
I'm betting in a couple of generations barefoot beach weddings are going to be seen as some kind of tradition here in Australia.
I think I know what you're talking about (and if I don't – god help us, there was more than one wedding like that, ugh humans) and…….it was bad.
C.L.A.I.R.E.s! Sulagna this was highly enjoyable.
C.L.A.I.R.E.s! Sulagna this was highly enjoyable.
that's maybe around 2018, as a pretext to avoid ALL weddings
"Fine then, we'll have it in your house," would be the only possible, if terrifying, rejoinder.
I think with the rise of international couples and people getting married later and alter, the triple threat wedding will be arriving faster than 2085!
… says the person who may have had one of those spread across two continents and five months
Yeah, I have to admit that I am *virulently* ambivalent about everyone appropriating chuppahs (Jewish wedding canopies). They are supposed to symbolize the first Jewish home – Abraham & Sarah's – & always open on all four sides like theirs, so as to always be ready to give hospitality to visitors, & held by four poles, carried by people you wish to honor by emulating. And everyone has grabbed onto them as an excuse to pile up the flowers during the ceremony. If there was ANY OUNCE of respect in this appropriation – if anyone who does this would discuss how *important* they are to them, that would be great, & I would never say a word about non-Jews using them. But, no, it's all "They're SO PRETTY!" Auuuugggghhhh!