Female Respectability, Wedding Labor and Earning the Title of ‘Bride’ in ‘Bride Wars’ (2009)

 

In recent decades, feminist scholars have increasingly taken academic interest in the depictions of weddings and marriage in popular culture, particularly in television and movies. With the success of films such as ‘Runaway Bride’ (1999) and ‘Mamma Mia’ (2008), weddings on the big screen have increasingly become of interest to feminist scholars in many fields, such as sociology, anthropology, and even economics. Though often framed as cheesy and discardable ‘chick flicks’, films that focus on weddings serve as an important resource of societal knowledge on the norms and practices surrounding weddings and marriage rites.

Since these movies are near always marketed towards women, many scholars have concern on how the reinforcement of patriarchal institutions such as heteronormativity and white superiority may be delivered through these films. Usually portrayed as unserious comedies, these types of films act to proliferate the ‘white wedding’ ideal, as well as the exaggeration of stereotypical tropes such as the ‘Bridezilla’. The abundance of these gendered notions in this genre of films can act as a resource to inform scholars on how heterosexual and monogamous norms are reinforced and spread by pop culture films.

Focusing on the romantic-comedy film ‘Bride Wars’ (2009), this paper aims to expand on the current knowledge gathered in the field of feminist and sociological analyses on how film narratives surrounding weddings and marriage serve to uphold these institutions. I argue that ‘Bride Wars’ acts as a prime example of the reinforcement and normalization of societal norms of monogamy, heterosexuality, and gender roles. This occurs by means of the romanticization of the ‘white wedding’ fantasy, depictions of female same-sex friendships strained by ‘Bridezilla’ behaviors, and normalized depictions of feminized emotional and corporeal bridal labor.

‘Bride Wars’ (2009) is a romantic comedy directed by Gary Winick that follows childhood best friends Emma and Liv. In the opening scene of the film, we learn that these two have been fantasizing and planning their dream weddings to be at the Plaza Hotel in June and having both their big days planned by iconic wedding planner Marion St. Clair, where they will be each other’s maid of honor. Now in their late twenties, the two girls are still best friends and end up getting engaged within a few days of each other. Upon a joint meeting with Marion St. Clair, the two girls each snag a wedding date at the Plaza Hotel in June, seemingly fulfilling their childhood dreams. However, an error by the wedding planner leads to both Emma and Liv’s weddings being scheduled for the same date and time, meaning that they could not participate in each other’s weddings.

When neither of the women yield and change the date of their wedding, the two brides end up engaged in a bitter rivalry. As the film progresses, each bride tries to simultaneously outdo and sabotage the others wedding, showing the viewers the increasing strain on their friendships and romantic relationships. At the end of the film, the rivalry comes to a head with a physical confrontation between the two brides in their wedding gowns in front of all of their guests. Emma ends up breaking off her engagement to her college sweetheart with whom she has been grower further and further apart from and attends Liv’s wedding as her maid of honor. The film ends with a montage of Liv’s wedding and the narrator, Marion St. Claire talks about the importance of different kinds of close relationships and ‘finding your person’.

Throughout the entire film, there is an explicit focus on the sanctity and importance of ‘white wedding’ tropes and traditions. Chrys Ingraham (1999) describes the ‘white wedding’ as a lavish event featuring a bride in a white gown and a religious ceremony and reception filled with guests that ends in a honeymoon for the newly-weds. Ingraham also states that white weddings also contribute to the normalization and romanticization of institutionalized heterosexuality while concealing its negative effects, a phenomenon they coin as ‘the heterosexual imaginary’.

A significant portion of the film focuses on the two women picking out a variety of commodities and arrangements for their weddings, usually absent from their husbands. Each of these commodities—the cake, the save-the-dates, the engagement ring, etc.—are all shown as being reminiscent of the bride’s essential personality and ‘making her dream come true’. This serves to reinforce capitalist ideals associated with the white wedding as not only essential to marriage, but also as essential to female identity formation and presentation.

This is further reinforced by the fact that the two women have been dreaming and fantasizing about their weddings since they were young, even making a joint scrapbook entitled ‘Wedding Things: DO NOT TOUCH’ where they documented all their ideas and shared much time bonding over while making. The scrapbook is presented to Emma by her father on the day of her wedding, as a reminder of her early dreams and how she is fulfilling them. While this moment is sweet and emotional, I believe it also works to reinforce the narrative of weddings as something fantastical and essential to the female experience, even from childhood. At the beginning of the film, there is a scene where Liv and Emma are dressed as bride and groom, respectively, and act out their dream wedding in Emma’s parents’ attic. Even though they are both girls, the two are still depicted as bride and groom, emphasizing heterosexuality as the norm even from a young age. As the two end their mock-vows to one another, Emma (the ‘groom’) grips Liv’s hand and says to her, “I will now dance with you until we have six babies and a house”. This shows the viewers that marriage is understood to have a purpose, understood even by children—you get married to achieve the ‘ideal’ American dream life of owning a house and having children in a liberal state.

This romanticization of the white wedding and heterosexuality is not restricted to the fantasies of children, but also extends to the overarching plot of the film when the two friends are adults. When meeting with esteemed wedding planner Marion St. Clair, the pair is told that “your wedding marks the first day of the rest of your life. You’re dead right now.”. This is an obvious nod to weddings as a rite of passage in a woman’s life, something that is needed to ‘truly live’. This also shows to emphasize how the romanticization of the white wedding and the heterosexual imaginary is upheld by the wedding industry and the figures who operate within it, serving to profit from the capitalization of love and the dream of the perfect life.

The ‘wedding planner’ takes on a role of its own in the context of the wedding industrial complex—the intersection of weddings, marriage, and capitalism—as well as in this film, where Marion St. Clair is depicted as a sort of fairy-god mother. Blakely (2008) claims that the wedding industry has painted a lavish wedding as more of a standard than a commodity, wherein professionals influence consumer desire and reinforce unequal and gendered divisions of labor through the promise of the ‘perfect wedding’. This need for elegance is exemplified when Liv is choosing her wedding cake, claiming that she must have the “seven-tiered white chocolate-curl torte enrobed in marzipan with edible pearls and flourishes”. Wedding planners, such as Marion St. Clair, thrive from positioning themselves as superior to other forms of domestic labour often performed by mothers. We get a glimpse into this in ‘Bride Wars’ when Emma decides to wear her mother’s wedding dress instead of buying a new one, but this concept is presented as unsatisfactory and old-fashioned.

Emma and Liv’s friendship is a key theme of the movie, even more so than the romantic subplots with their fiancées. ‘Bride Wars’ has often been described as what Winch (2011) coins as ‘girlfriend flicks’, a subgenre that also includes films such as ‘Baby Mama’ (2008) and ‘Sex in the City’ (2010). A ‘girlfriend flick’ describes a film wherein female same-sex friendship is the main relationship of the film, trademarked by the validation of each other’s identities and an acceptance of traditional femininity. Winch claims that the films act as spaces in which women can explore complex female friendship and the tenets of female identity through the depictions of persistence of female friendship through hardships. These films are also often seen as feminist in that they paint the betrayal of a ‘girlfriend’ as more painful and significant than the loss of a male romantic partner.

‘Bride Wars’ may be seen as a harrowing and inspiring tale of the strength of female friendship through adversity to some. I, however, would argue that the depiction of Liz and Emma’s rivalry serves as a cautionary tale that female friendship is secondary to the pursuit of having an ideal wedding and marriage. Throughout the first thirty minutes of the film, the viewers are shown how Liv and Emma’s friendship has lasted over twenty years. They are known to everyone as each other’s best friend, their fiancées are close due to their relationship. They have been through everything together including college and the death of Liv’s parents during her teenage years.

The notion that the one thing that can tear apart these friends of twenty years is the pursuit of ‘the perfect wedding’ is not a neutral decision, but rather a narrative choice that reinforces that the perfect wedding (and so, perfect marriage) supersedes any priorly established intimate relationships. Throughout the film, we see Liv and Emma get increasingly nasty to each other over things that they once comforted each other about. For example, in an early scene, we see Emma reassuring Liv that she was not overweight in high school, but later on Emma uses this insecurity against her by saying “your wedding will be huge…just like your ass at prom” when Liv refuses to change the date of her wedding. This juxtaposition of the comforting friend using an insecurity to later attain her own goals can spread the narrative how sharing the things that make you vulnerable and emotional is also a source of risk for a woman. It also presents the narrative that women are all innately jealous of one another, and waiting for the opportunity to compete over who is the more ideal woman (Winch, 2011).

As the plot progresses, so does the elaborate nature of the wedding sabotage. Throughout this process, each of the fiancées are hardly present and are usually only shown to critique what they deem to be ‘crazy’ and ‘obsessive’ behavior of their wives-to-be. Liv and Emma’s rivalry culminates on the day of their weddings when Liv replaces the romantic slideshow of Emma and her fiancée, Fletcher, that is supposed to play when they walk down the aisle with a video of Emma blackout drunk and pole-dancing on a bar table in college. Emma stops her trip halfway down the aisle, begins screaming, and barges into Liv’s wedding across the hall to start a physical fight with her in front of all their guests. This seems to be the breaking point for Fletcher and Emma, who decide not to go ahead with their wedding after all, since Fletcher is unsatisfied with the change in Emma’s behavior. The fight resolves with each of the women apologizing to one another, and Emma ends up being Liv’s maid of honor after all while still wearing her wedding dress.

Some film critics state that the fact that Emma and Liv rekindle their friendship at the end of the film reinforces same-sex friendship as a superior form of intimacy and connection over romantic love. However, I would argue that since their reconciliation is rerouted through heteronormative ideals such as marriage and monogamy, it acts to reinforce rather than dismantle gendered notions of heterosexuality and societal roles. Liv’s wedding is still portrayed as the picture-perfect day of her dreams (now complete with her best friend by her side), and the movie is quick to show Emma happy and confident dancing with Liv’s brother at her wedding.

The film ends with a one-year time-skip where we find out that Emma has married Liv’s brother, and the two best friends are pregnant at the same time with the same due date. This ‘fairy-tale ending’ further shows how women’s friendships must be rerouted through their roles as future mothers and adherence to the patriarchal nuclear family to be valid and non-confrontational. In the end of the film, Liv and Emma are brought together by the fact that ‘they’re really not so different after all’. Liv is shown to be more in touch with her emotions while Emma becomes more self-confident and less of a push-over, letting them bond over the perceived ‘sameness’ of idealized feminine qualities such as emotional regulation and pregnancy (Winch, 2011).

Leonard (2018) posits that brides-to-be are subjugated to corporeal and affectual labor prior to the wedding, which acts as a test of her respectability and worthiness of becoming a wife. Liv and Emma act as two varying degrees of feminine respectability, wherein Emma represents the demure and put-together woman who goes along with what everyone else wants while Liv is the tough businesswoman who can ‘have it all’ under liberal feminism. This dichotomy becomes obvious when we compare their wedding dresses and the extravagance of their weddings. Liv’s wedding and her dress are both modern and extravagant, conceptualizing the perfectly put-together image of a businesswoman who can still have the perfect wedding. Emma, on the other hand, goes for more of a traditional approach with her wedding, where her father walks her down the aisle and she wears her mother’s hand-me-down dress. Liv and Emma are both shown to be ‘not ideal’ at the beginning of the movie, since Liv is too cold and bossy while Emma is too unassuming and emotional.

In the spectrum of female respectability presented by liberal feminism, Marion St. Clair is at the end of ‘most respectable’. She is a businesswoman who is heartfelt but also put-together, perfectly navigating the emotional and professional woes and still helping these brides to reach their ‘perfect wedding’. Even when the clerical error is made that puts Emma and Liv’s weddings on the same day occurs, the wedding planner is not blamed but her ‘lonely and frumpy’ assistant.

As the rivalry between the two friends gets heated, we are shown more and more how their emotional regulation fails and they regress into the ‘bridezilla narrative’ of being selfish and hysterical. Liv begins to lose her grip on her usually calm and cool demeanor when she breaks out into tears during a company meeting which ends in her being fired from her job as a lawyer. Around the same time, Emma’s fiancee Fletcher gets upset with her for acting different—being more outspoken and determined, straying from her role as a respectable, demure woman he intended to marry. When asking if her being ‘tense, and wild and excited’ is a permanent change, Emma responds “so in other words, don’t have so many feelings and if you do don’t show them”. This is treated as ridiculous and diminutive of what Fletcher is feeling, and the couple goes to sleep angry at one another. Each of these instances show the negative effects of the loss of a woman’s emotional control, serving as a tale of caution to the women watching.

Leonard (2018) identifies weight-loss and maintenance of ‘good physique’ as the primary mechanism in which corporeal labor is imposed onto brides-to-be, and this comes through loud and clear in ‘Bride Wars’. Most of Liv and Emma’s conversations together include some mention of weight, and those that don’t occur when the two women are seen exercising together. While doing her wedding planning, Liv is seen flipping through wedding magazines as she walks the treadmill in her office. This further reinforces Liv as an idealized version of femininity—she doesn’t only have her job and her emotions under control, but also her body.

Perhaps one of the most iconic lines of the film is from when Liv is trying on her wedding dress and is warned by the sales associate to not put on any pre-wedding weight since “you don’t alter Vera wang to fit you, you alter yourself to fit Vera Wang”. This line is recounted later in the film when Liv tries on her dress a week before her wedding and cries since it does not fit, and she cannot get it altered. Liv feels like a failure when she no longer fits into her dress and sees it as an ultimate betrayal by Emma that she would sabotage her weight. By this point in the film, there have already been multiple acts of sabotage on both sides such as stealing the others scheduled DJ or altering dance instructors. However, Emma is thought to have ‘crossed the line’ when Liv discovers that Emma has been sending her gifts of candy and chocolate to have her gain weight and no longer fit into her wedding dress. This sets both women on a path of sabotaging each other’s appearances, including Liv’s hair getting dyed blue and Emma’s spray tan being orange. This implies that female respectability is inherently tied to the maintenance of the idealized body image, both in weight and other aspects such as hair and makeup. It also implicitly shows that female same-sex friendships are contingent on helping each other maintain physical appearances in many forms, and that one has failed in their duty as a friend if she fails to regulate her friend’s appearance.

Each of these instances normalizes the idealized expectations of what a bride (and therefore, women in general) should look like to be respectable and worthy of marriage. Weight-loss and the maintenance of physique is implied to be an indicator of self-betterment and resolve. It also allows for the implicit narrative of what an idealized body is, considering that Kate Hudson (Liv) and Anne Hathaway (Emma) are both extremely thin and toned white women.

The wedding labor exhibited in the film is explicitly feminized, wherein all of those contributing to the planning and execution of the weddings are either female or feminine men. This is exhibited in the scene where the brides first meet Marion St. Clair where she asks if they would want to discuss the venue booking with their grooms and the two enthusiastically and humorously respond “no”. This shows not only that it is the woman’s job to organize the wedding, but that it is expected to be an anticipated and fulfilling part of her life. The two masculine grooms are hardly present in the planning of the wedding and are incredibly indifferent when they are shown helping make decisions. When the two friends ‘break up’ and their mutual friends agree not to take sides, Liv enlists her gay-coded male assistant to be her ‘Mister of Honour’, and who subsequently becomes the only man explicitly seen to be actively involved in the wedding planning. We are even given a nod that Kevin may be gay at the end of the film, where he responds to the question of his sexuality with “I don’t like labels”, further insinuating that only gay men or women should be involved with planning a wedding.

Overall, the film ‘Bride Wars’ serves to reinforce dominant social norms of heterosexuality and gendered division of labor. This is veiled under the guise of female solidarity and the fantastical, almost healing, nature of weddings. Though sometimes humorous and seemingly harmless, these plot devices serve as an idealization of the role of women in both the wedding industry as well as in fulfilling her duty as ‘the perfect wife’.

 

References

 

Baby Mama, directed by Michael McCullers (2008; Universal Pictures).

 

Blakely, Kristin. 2007. “Busy Brides and the Business of Family Life.” Journal of Family Issues 29, no. 5 (November 12): 639–62. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513×07309453.

 

Bride Wars, directed by Gary Winick (2009; Regency Enterprises).

 

Ingraham, Chrys. 1999. “Lifting the veil.” In White weddings: Romancing heterosexuality in popular culture, 1-19. New York: Routledge.

 

Sex and the City, directed by Michael Patrick King (2008; New Line Cinema).

 

Leonard, Suzanne. 2018. “Almost wives: Emotional regulation, marriage television, and the plight of the modern bride.” In Wife, Inc.: The business of marriage in the twenty-first century, 65-100. New York: NYU Press.

 

Mamma Mia, directed by Phyllida Lloyd (2008; Universal Pictures).

 

Runaway Bride, directed by Garry Marshall (1999; Paramount Pictures).

 

Winch, Alison. 2012. “‘We Can Have It All.’” Feminist Media Studies 12, no. 1 (March): 69–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2011.558349.