While browsing in the Macy's women's department, I happened to stumble on the Bridal Boutique where I saw a young woman in white lacy ruffles with a long silken train, standing on a gold pedestal, admiring herself in front of a full-length mirror. An older woman, whom I assumed to be her mother, was critically examining her daughter, and the dress, from all angles -- looking her up and down, first from one side of the room, then the other. She had a quizzical look of concern on her face, but her daughter was all smiles. I wanted to think that the mother's concern had something to do with the choice her daughter was making for her life, when I knew that it probably had more to do with the fit of the dress. I felt like I shouldn't be staring at them like some sort of voyeur, but I was transfixed. It was the same kind of feeling as when you try to get a glimpse of a car wreck. You know you shouldn't be doing it because it's none of your business and the people involved don't want to be gawked at, but at the same time it's mesmerizing and you can't help but be drawn to it.

When I finally managed to pull myself away, I began to wonder why so much emphasis is put on the wedding day. There is so much planning and preparation involved between the dress, the flowers, the cake, the music, and the reception hall. If so much emphasis and planning was put into the marriage maybe fifty percent of all marriages wouldn't be doomed to fail at an average rate of 7.5 years. I'm sure this question has been raised over and over again as successful marriages become the anomaly in modern society, and yet the pageantry continues. I wondered if the same mother that seemed so concerned over the fit of the dress had ever talked to her daughter about the years of hard work and compromise that lay in front of her. I wondered if she ever thought to tell her daughter to skip the expensive wedding and use that money toward her future. I wondered if the mother ever realized any of this herself, and if so, what significance did this wedding have for her aside from being the Mother of the Bride?

I decided that all the pomp and circumstance has to do with the extension of the fairy tale fantasy: every little girl's desire to be Cinderella. It is the one day where she is assured of being the most beautiful and adored woman in the room. Wearing the most beautiful dress, surrounded by everyone who knows and loves her, she is assured of being the center of attention. Even if the feeling only lasts until the clock strikes midnight, it is worth all the effort.

As a child, my world was full of fairy tales. My parents read stories to me before I went to bed and took me to every Disney movie ever released. I was reading Wuthering Heights and Romeo and Juliet by the age of twelve, and had seen the respective movie versions a multitude of times by the age of fifteen. My childhood and adolescent worlds were full of images of sword fights and dragon slayers, evil step-mothers, fairy god-mothers, and a courageous prince willing to spend the rest of his life searching for his one true love. I remember being very young and asking my father, in all seriousness, if he had slain a dragon in order to marry my mother. He and my mother smiled at each other, laughed, and he replied "sort of." As I got older, I realized my parents' amusement was related to some inside joke, and eventually I learned that there was no such thing as dragons, but for some reason I never gave up on finding that prince. At the time I asked the question, I took my father's response as a definitive "yes" and raised him to new heights of adoration, nothing short of beams of light gleaming off his armor as he displays the dragon's head upon my mother's doorstep. If my mother found such a prince through marriage, so would I.

I suppose all of this could be seen as just part of a little girl's over-active imagination, but these stories had a profound impact on me, as I believe they have on many women. I knew life was not going to be a fairy tale, but I hoped for something as close to one as possible, complete with the wedding day and happily ever. The "happily ever after" ending always frustrated me as a kid, it always seemed like a cop-out. I always wondered what happened next. But like every other fairy-tale junkie, I was willing to settle for the words, trusting that the prince would continue to fight dragons, the princess would be wealthy, adored, and have lots of beautiful clothes, and eventually give birth to beautiful bouncing princes and princesses.

In actuality isn't this what the wedding vows are all about -- simply a reiteration of the fairy tale fantasy? When people take their vows, they promise each other the happily ever after, but unlike the fairy tales, this is not the end of the story. The dress comes off, the band stops playing, the gifts are opened, and the honeymoon ends. What happens next? Reality. Happily ever after, in reality, means getting down to the business of marriage which involves making good on those vows. People rewrite traditional vows nowadays, or even write their own to accommodate the expectations they have of their particular relationships. Maybe we should leave the vows alone and rewrite the fairy tales, not to lose the fantasy, because that's the magic, but to redefine the myth.