Invented wedding traditions?

Lovely Fiancée and I are in the early stages of planning our wedding. Against my better judgement, I've been lurking a bit in the discussion forums of The Knot, one of the more popular wedding websites. It's been a frustrating experience. Some of my annoyance comes from the garden variety internet forum stuff that goes on there. More irksome is the widespread acceptance that there's some timeless set of Things That Are Done when planning weddings. There are discussion threads that go on for days about proper wording of invitations. Anxious brides-to-be frantically ask about the proper timeline for their reception. Inspired by The Knot's wedding checklist, forum posters blithely inform newbies that you pick bridal attendants 8-10 months before your wedding. God forbid you pick your maid of honor a year before you get married.

LF and I met with a wedding site coordinator this past weekend. She told us stories of 1970s wedding factories that would wheel wedding cakes from large non-descript room to large non-descript room, simply replacing the top layers for each party. "Things are much better now. Brides are showing their personalities more." While that's probably true, but it still seems that many brides are working from a set of rules that may or may not actually exist.

The historian in me can't help shaking the feeling that most of these rules and traditions are relatively new developments. Victoria was the first to wear a white wedding dress. De Beers created the tradition of the diamond engagement in the middle of the 20th century. I don't know the history of rehearsal dinners, but I'd be shocked if even 30 years ago brides were encouraged to even pick a color scheme for the rehearsal dinner, to say nothing of choosing one dramatically different from that of the wedding itself. As my friend Ester frightenly revealed a few months ago, the rehearsal dinner has become a time for the "the wedding couple (gloried and sanctified be It) will show slides, listen to speeches, eat all night with the guests to a three-piece band, and have a fancy cake."

One of the more bizarre innovations is the groom's cake. I had always thought that the wedding cake was for both the bride and groom, but not any more, it seems. The wedding day has become almost the exclusive domain of the bride, so much so that the groom need his own cake -- the wedding cake apparently belongs to the bride.

A couple of years ago, a discussion about Thanksgiving at Cliopatra reached the conclusion that, yes, Thanksgiving might very well be an invented tradition, but no more so than any other human tradition. I understand their point, but I do think there is a qualitative difference between those traditions that develop organically and those that are helped along by, say, the diamond industry.

I suspect that many of the traditions we commonly associate with weddings aren't all that old. It wouldn't be terribly surprising to find out that some of them were created out of whole cloth by various elements of the wedding industry; jewelers, florists, and caterers have a vested interest in the development of costly new traditions. Without having read it, I'm sure that Vicki Howard's Brides, Inc. reaches just that conclusion.

In practical terms, I want to see couples think outside the box and have the wedding they want, not the one they feel they need to have because that's the way it's always been.