I recently returned from a three-day weekend in Nashville, a city that was once a respectable hub of American music and has since been entirely annexed by bridal parties wearing matching pink sequin fringe. I was there to observe a dear friend’s final days of singledom, a solemn transition that I believed we would mark with quiet reflection, perhaps a restorative bone broth tasting, and a frank discussion about the division of domestic labor. Instead, I was handed a plastic cup shaped like a cowboy boot and forced to participate in what I can only describe as a mass delusion.
We have entered the era of the Dolly Parton wedding-industrial complex, and it is a crisis of taste that we are simply refusing to address.
Across this nation, otherwise sensible women are demanding their bridesmaids don synthetic blonde wigs and march through pedal-tavern traffic screaming the lyrics to Jolene. They are hauling their bridal parties to Dollywood cabins for weekend retreats that cost more than a reliable used sedan. They are commissioning custom neon What Would Dolly Do signs for their photo booths. I sat next to a prominent curator of minimalist tablescapes at a dinner party last month, and she confessed to me, her voice trembling over our endive salads, that she had recently been forced to source eighty miniature bedazzled acoustic guitars for a wedding favor bag.
There is something deeply troubling about watching a twenty-eight-year-old digital marketing manager from Connecticut, who has never experienced a moment of manual labor in her life, scream the lyrics to 9 to 5 while wearing a custom white rhinestone jumpsuit that took fourteen weeks to manufacture. Dolly Parton is a national treasure, yes, but she is not a substitute for having an actual personality. We have allowed the concept of a beloved country music icon to become a crutch for couples who are terrified of sitting in silence with their own aesthetic choices.
The obsession does not stop at the bachelorette trip. It has infected the ceremony itself. I have now attended three separate nuptials this year where the bride insisted on walking down the aisle to an acoustic, slowed-down cover of Islands in the Stream. I have witnessed fathers and daughters weeping while swaying to Coat of Many Colors, completely ignoring the fact that the song is about crushing rural poverty, which feels entirely out of place in a rented botanical garden that costs twelve thousand dollars for the afternoon.
I recently had the misfortune of sitting through a forty-minute outdoor ceremony in the humidity of a Georgia summer, fanning myself with a recycled-paper program, only to hear a groom solemnly promise to his bride that he would always love her, even if she came downstairs looking like the bargain bin at a craft store. He thought he was being charmingly referential to her bachelorette theme. The audience chuckled. I found myself calculating the cost of my flight and wondering if I could slip out before the cocktail hour. We are treating the vows, the very foundation of the marital bond, as an open mic night for country music trivia.
When I gently suggested to my friend in Nashville that perhaps we could spend our Saturday morning visiting a contemporary art gallery instead of waiting in a ninety-minute line to purchase a commemorative pink cowboy hat, I was treated as though I had spat on the American flag.
It is entirely possible to celebrate your legal union without wearing a synthetic hairpiece or referencing a theme park, but trying to explain that to a woman who has just consumed bottomless mimosas out of a plastic disco ball is a losing battle.
Julianne is right, of course. We have lost the thread of what a wedding is supposed to be. A marriage is a serious, legally binding contract between two people, and the celebration of that contract should reflect the gravity of the commitment. It should feature neutral tones, a strictly enforced color palette for all guests, a single, devastatingly beautiful architectural floral arrangement, and an atmosphere of hushed, respectful awe. It should not look like the merchandise tent at a county fair.
If we do not put a stop to this now, I fear for the future of our domestic celebrations. Today it is Dolly Parton bachelorette parties in Nashville. Tomorrow it will be Reba McEntire-themed baby showers. We must demand better of ourselves, and more importantly, we must demand better of our friends’ disposable incomes. When my time comes to walk down the aisle for a third time, I can assure you there will be no rhinestones, no singalongs, and absolutely no joy of this garish, uncurated variety. There will only be taste, the way God intended.