#12: "Exactly how I hoped and imagined it would be"

     If you're recently engaged, usually the one thing on your mind is the end of the road: the "I do"s. Wedding celebrations are supposed to be grand, beautiful, and happy. The audience always watches in awe as the stunning bride walks down the aisle - white veil train trailing her. The ceremony itself lasts around 10-15 minutes; I think (I am only used to traditional Hindu weddings - which are nothing like this). At the end, the ordained minister announces the new married couple, and the audience gives a warm standing ovation. This whole ceremony is then succeeded by a night in a reception, where family and friends make toasts to the "Mr. and Mrs.". 

Just beautiful, right?

Now imagine all this happening in Las Vegas, where the only thing on the minister's mind is breaking their record time of how fast they can marry another couple. We look to Vegas weddings as spontaneous and unplanned. This is usually true. In Joan Didion's "Marrying Absurd", Didion mocks this type of marriage. She clearly doesn't appreciate the thought of Elvis officiating a wedding. Didion even uses examples of Vegas weddings she's attended to mock the overall culture. Most significant being the example of a young girl's (underage and about 7 months pregnant) marriage reception. Everyone is drunk except for her, for obvious reasons. The bride begins to sob as she exclaims that this is "exactly how [she] hoped and imagined [her wedding] would be". Didion ends her piece on that one quote. Didion, being born in 1932, is not used to Vegas weddings over the traditional courthouse weddings. 

This brings up a big question: what is going to happen to wedding ceremonies over time? If they just happen to be getting shorter and shorter in length, then will we be left with 0-minute weddings? No weddings? Sadly, this depends on Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha. Will we grow up to Elvis weddings, Cabo weddings, or no weddings at all?