Marriage and European Views Fertility

Indeed in the course of modernization—roughly coinciding with urbanization, industrialization, and the rise of the modern state, that is, from about 1750, and with increasing intensity after 1870—there was a gradual elevation in the importance of the wedding. In the earlier social formations, the wedding was the final stage in a marriage process by which two people pledged themselves to one another in the full view of family, friends, and community. The rise of mass society had the curious effect of denying publicity to the marriage while creating a need for it. In the urban world, the newly independent couple re-created the big wedding that had characterized village life. "Stag parties," "hen parties," and "showers" became common and, among an increasingly secular population, the church wedding became an important festivity in the course of the twentieth century. Most women were profoundly influenced by this invented custom that has had a powerful impact on popular consciousness. Mass media—magazines and, above all, movies—glorified the white wedding to make it into a social ideal, not only a right of passage but also a statement of social and individual respectability. This respectability was, of course, deeply gendered as those women who became "brides" were decked out in a glossy, flowing white satin dress and veiled in lace; their outward appearance emphasized purity and innocence upon entering the married state.