Conclusions

Abstract

This book has provided the first and only full-length study of wedding consumption in Britain since the 1994 Marriage Act. It is also the first empirical study of wedding consumption to engage fully with sociological consumer culture literature, providing data on the beliefs and actions of brides and grooms as well as exposing and analysing the commonsenses constructed and circulated in contemporary popular culture that give further meaning to the whole wedding experience. I have sought to document and understand the emotional dimensions of wedding consumption and, in the process, have begun to integrate the phenomenon of the new commercial wedding into sociological theory. More specifically, this book has offered an insight into the workings of a Romantic ethic within both the market-led images of ideal weddings and the actual experiences of wedding consumers. In doing so, I have analysed the gendered and mediated nature of such an ethic (or alternatively, a Romantic ‘habitus’ or ‘disposition’) as well as the socially embedded and embodied consuming actors to which it is inextricably tied. This has enabled, in ways I will go on to summarize in these final reflections, some interesting observations to be made about consumption, emotion and the interpersonal and social relations in which consuming for a wedding takes place.