I recently started binge watching Adam Ruins Everything on Netflix and what every episode addresses or concludes is that marketing had a hand in creating certain beliefs and social standards around products and events (Conover, 2016). After watching the episode “Adam Ruins Weddings” I thought I’d recall my own wedding- since today is my anniversary- and how ideas of love influenced me and those around me.
Before I got engaged, I never gave much thought to what my wedding would be like. However, after I got engaged there was an instant and intense amount of pressure I felt to put this big and memorable event together. There was a problem though. Josh and I would had to self-fund the wedding, so we made choices that we thought were conservative enough to save money. The average U.S wedding is over $30,000 and depends on what city you have the wedding (Jacobs, 2018). New York has the most expensive average at about $70,000, while New Mexico is about $17,000 (Jacobs, 2018). So we decided to get married in my hometown of Chicago (Average $34,000) as it was cheaper than getting married in LA (Average $44,000), and with our families being from the Midwest we took advantage to send them scouting locations, finding décor, and having a free place to crash when we visited for wedding duties.
A few months before the wedding, the pressure felt unbearable. I started saying yes (very click-whirr responses as Cialdini puts it (2008)) to things I didn’t want or care for like a horse and carriage (an unnecessary buy), these expensive chairs (an unnecessary but reusable buy) and a sedan vehicle (a bad buy) simply because my mother wanted it (which she was influenced by scarcity of possibly only ever having one daughter that would marry (Cialdini, 2008)). Josh and I got into many disagreements or awkward tiffs about his involvement in planning which went from no opinions from Josh to Josh second guessing all of my decisions and suddenly being groomzilla. Meanwhile I was still trying to stay financially afloat by working overtime, babysitting friend’s kids, and bettering my future by working towards my masters. Needless to say, I was influenced by the pressure of what I thought a wedding was supposed to be and what others thought a wedding is supposed to be.
Sedan Vehicle
Fast forward to my wedding day:
It rained all day, so I lost money on a permit for a beautiful garden, cancelled the horse and carriage, didn’t use the sedan vehicle (thank goodness!), forgot the expensive chairs for us to sit in at the reception, the reception was not set up when we arrived at the venue (another story for another time), among many other things that went awry. I’m realizing, I didn’t even pick out my dress, my bridesmaids did (I do love it though). And that other elements of my wedding were put together by other people’s ideals, like my social media hashtag #ovothedrakes (which I didn’t understand until my sister explained). Everyone to this day says the rain is “good luck”, but that’s a load of crap people say to make brides feel better about the rain “ruining” their perfect day. However, it was the repeated saying that has made me see the positives of this marketing disaster.
A wedding should make the bride and the groom feel good. And the people invited to the wedding should make the bride and the groom feel good. And on my wedding day, despite everything that was wrong leading up to and during the wedding, I felt a sense of community and the love our family and friends had for us because I let go of the preconceived notions of what advertisement and marketing told me it should be. I also told my family the morning of that I was letting go of their needs because I had to focus on what mattered to me. The aesthetics didn’t matter to me, the wedding politics didn’t matter to me, the rain flooding into the venue didn’t matter to me. By the end of the night, we all had a great time at a big party with food, drinks, music and a dance floor.
And so I would like to propose that we take back certain events that advertisers prey and pray on us buying into, by asking ourselves what really matters?
What other events can you think of that marketers and advertisers have exploited that you want to take back? Which ones are you okay with them exploiting? Do you feel they already exploit everything and why? And lastly, is there something you think they haven’t exploited yet and what is it?
Cialdini, R. B. (2008). Influence: Science and practice (5th Ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Pearson.
Conover, A., & Wilkime, T. (2016). Adam Ruins Weddings, In A. Annussek. Loa Angeles, CA: TruTV
Jacobs, S. (2018). The average wedding cost in American is over $30,000- but here’s where couples spend way more than that, Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/average-wedding-cost-in-america-most-expensive-2018-3
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