From 2009 to 2013, celebrity wedding planner David Tutera produced and starred on a reality television show airing on the WE network. In each episode, Tutera visits an engaged couple and produces the wedding of the bride’s dreams. As with so many reality shows, the narrative progresses the same way in each installment. Tutera surprises the happy couple, questions them on the bride’s vision, assess (snarkily) what they have previously assembled, and at the end of the episode, he presents the bride with her fully realized “dream” wedding.
In this paper, I will examine the ways in which “My Fair Wedding” takes traditional, romantic notions regarding weddings and marriage and reframes them. Within the narrative of the show, “happily ever after” is not about love or soulmates, but about a consumer bride who finds fulfillment through a high-end reception. From this perspective, the bride’s partner is not her soon-to-be spouse, but is her gay wedding planner. By analyzing episodes of “My Fair Wedding,” I will interrogate the ways in which this show celebrates marriage through conspicuous consumption and complicates and reinforces expectations regarding gender performance. I will also question the ways in which this show functions within a larger cultural interest in aspirational reality television (HGTV, etc…) that prioritize American consumerism above all else.
About the presenterSarah Trembanis
Sarah earned a bachelor’s in History from Duke & a master’s and PhD from William and Mary. Her book,The SetUp Men: Race, Culture, and Resistance in Black Baseball, was published in July 2014. Sarah spent the 2014-2015 year on sabbatical at the University of Ferrara, Italy, working on what she hopes will be book two (tentatively titled: Effortlessly Perfect: Teenage girls in 1950s Sitcoms), drinking all the cappuccino, and trying to improve her Italian.