Malcolm Gladwell’s “How I Ruined My Best Friend’s Wedding” has been roiling around on social media.
Republished by the Guardian from a book of essays called “The Moth,” the piece recounts how Gladwell, as a young graduate student, decided to sing an obnoxious ditty at a wedding reception recounting all the previous paramours of his friend, the groom.
He knew the bride would be unhappy if not furious, but went ahead anyway.
“I realize now,” he writes, “looking back with the perspective of history that I hated her. I really did.
“Not just for the fact that she had taken Craig away, but because she changed him.”
Gladwell behaved so badly that he never saw Craig (or his wife) again.
Sadly, this is not uncommon. A couple of years after I graduated college, I attended the wedding of a friend whose frat brothers pulled a similar stunt at the rehearsal dinner.
This obnoxious wedding behavior is a regular trope of bad movies and even good ones, like last year’s “About Time.”
Weddings can be stressful affairs, not least because some of the people involved are turning into grownups and others are being left behind.
All the drama feeds the inclination to have small affairs — destination weddings that not many people can get to, or even a little romantic moment at City Hall.
Wedding vows themselves have become smaller too, less about family and faith and community and more about making others listen to your most intimate thoughts about your future spouse. “I promise to be your best friend, your lover, yadda yadda.”
You’d never know it with all the wedding-themed shows and merchandise, but lots of Americans are disinclined to get married at all. And many of those who do would just as soon keep things manageable.
The Big Fat Greek Wedding is something we see as old-fashioned and exhausting — a kind of comic nightmare we’d all rather avoid.
As sensible as it may seem to keep things small, though, a new report from the National Marriage Project calls the small wedding into question.
Analyzing data from more than 400 participants in the Relationship Development Survey, the authors note, “We found that among our participants, having more guests at their wedding was associated with higher marital quality.”
“Of those with 50 or fewer attendees, 30 percent had marital quality in the top 40 percent; of those who had 51 to 149 attendees, 38 percent had marital quality in the top 40 percent; and of those who had 150 or more attendees, 48 percent had marital quality in the top 40 percent of the sample.”
It’s not just that the people with bigger weddings were wealthier, so it was easier for them to have a strong marriage. A “strong” correlation was present even when the researchers controlled for income level.
What is it about a big wedding that may affect long-term marital happiness?
The authors speculate that “commitment is strengthened when it is publicly declared because individuals strive to maintain consistency between what they say and what they do. We try to keep our present attitudes and behaviors in line with our past conduct.”
If you promise to love, honor and obey (or be best friend/lover, etc.) in front of a lot of people, you’ll feel guiltier than if you only promise in front of a few? Perhaps.
It may not be just a change in the bride and groom’s attitude.
It may be that having all those people at your wedding is a sign you have a large, extended network of family and friends who’ll support you in your marriage — people you can turn to in times of tensions with your spouse.
Or even people you can depend on in addition to your spouse to help you when times are tough, thereby relieving some of the pressure on the marriage.
Sure, one of those 150 people may give an obnoxious toast at your reception. But that leaves 149 others you can count on in the years to come.