Modern options
Andy Manhart/Daily Nebraskan
Calling it off could be costly
Broken bells emotional for couples, nightmare for businesses
By London Bridge
Staff Reporter
Calling off the wedding can be an
emotional experience for the would
be bride and groom, but it’s also a
financial “nightmare,” according to
owners of local businesses specializ
ing in wedding productions.
Robert Jacobs, owner of J ’ Marie ’ s
Bridal Shoppe, 225 N. Cotner Blvd.,
said he hates canceled weddings
because they can cost him money.
Wedding gowns arc a special
order business, Jacobs said. He re
quires a 50 percent deposit on all
dresses and a signature from the bride
promising that if the wedding ts
canceled, she will continue payments
and keep the dress or forfeit her
deposit.
“Even if she has to forfeit the
deposit, that 50 percent doesn’t al
ways cover our cost for the dress,” he
said. “Then we’re stuck with it.”
Jacobs said he has more than 250
unsellable dresses in his shop from
canceled weddings.
“Aftcreightmonthsadressstyle is
no longer current, and a dress that is
two seasons old is almost impossible
to sell,” he said.
He said he has 30 to 40 canceled
weddingseach year, but only sells six
or seven dresses from his back stock
of canceled wedding garments.
The dresses usually aren’t sold
again, Jacobs said, “because most
girls don’t want to buy another girl’s
dress.”
Sandy Rowson, owner and bridal
consultant of Sassi’s At The Wed
ding Tree, 2530 O St., said she had
eight cancellations last year out of
nearly 300 weddings.
Rowson's cancellation policy is
like Jacobs’: Payments must be con
tinued or the deposit on the dress will
be lost. She said she encourages the
would-have-bcen bride to continue
payments on the dress because “she is
choosing the dress because she likes
it and it flatters her.”
“We arc so distressed when a
wedding iscancclcd because we have
worked with the girl for a long time
on such a personal basis,” Rowson
said. “It’s like losing a special
friend.”
When a wedding is canceled,
Rowson said, the dress can be stored
al the shop for a year. Then, if the
woman wants it, she must lake it
home.
Of the 75 to 80 weddings photo
graphed each year by Evans Studio,
1124 N. Coiner Blvd., owner Richard
Evans said he has more date changes
than cancellations. He said two
weddings he was hired for were can
celed last year.
He said he requires a S150deposit,
and if the wedding is canceled, he
credits the customer’s account.
Jim Dingwell, owner of Dingwell
Photography, 2536 O St., said he
doesn’t refund deposits because the
purpose of a deposit is to reserve a
date.
“We’ve probably had to turn that
date down to other customers, and if
it’s canceled we’re out financially,”
he said. “We should be working
every Friday, Saturday and Sunday in
the spring and summer.”
‘I do’ in any language
has similar ring to it
By Lisa Donovan
Staff Reporter_
Craditional wedding ceremo
nies around the world have
become as Americanized as
a McDonald’s in downtown Tokyo.
“The young people (of Japan)
prefer the Westernized type of cere
monies to the traditional,” said
Atsuko Ohara of the University of
Ncbraska-Lincoln Japanese Student
Association.
Ohara, whose hometown is To
kyo, said Japanese ceremonies are
similar to traditional Western church
weddings, except the dress has
changed. Japanese brides and
grooms prefer the Western-style
white dress and suit to the traditional
kimono, she said.
“The atmosphere is much more
relaxed at weddings today,” Ohara
said. “The couples can invite their
friends, and they didn’t used to be
able to do that.”
Although friends arc allowed at
the ceremony now, Japanese couples
do not have bridesmaids and grooms
men.
Egyptian weddings hold the old
traditions like the Japanese.
“It is usually very small and inti
mate,” said Mostafa Khattab, presi
dent of the Egyptian Student Asso
ciation at UNL.
The families of the bride and
groom gather in ihe home of the bride
or at the mosque, depending on the
couple’s religion, Khattab said.
“Then afterwards, friends and
family gather together somewhere,
depending on the families’ income,
to celebrate,” he said.
In Taiwan, couples usually get
married in restaurants, said Tyan
Ming Chu, president of the Free
China Association at UNL.
“The couple invites all of their
friends and family,” Chu said. After
wards, a large dinner is served, along
with the traditional clothes-changing
ceremony, Chu said.
“The couple changes their clothes
several times throughout the dinner,”
he said. “There really is no reason
behind it; it is just our custom.”
Although the wedding ceremo
nies are basically the same, customs
and traditions make the rite culturally
unique.
“Instead of walking down the
aisle, the couple is usually placed in
front of their guests,” Chu said.
The couple usually does not talk
during the ceremony; instead the
master of the ceremony speaks on the
celebration of marriage, he said. The
master then asks the bride’s father lor
permission and the ceremony con
cludes.
In Egypt and Japan, the couple
plays an active role in the wedding
ceremony.
In Egypt today, the engagement
and wedding arrangements arc left up
to the couple entirely.
“It’s the same here as in the U.S.,”
Khattab said.
Couples have a lot more inde
pendence in Taiwan today, Chu said.
“Thirty years ago, marriage was a
matchmaking affair,” he said.
“Families would hire an agent to set
it up.”
People waiting longer to wed
By Pattie Greene
Staff Reporter _
Here comes the bride — she’s
over 25.
Women arc postponing marriage
because they have more independ
ence than 20 years ago, said one
University of Nebraska-Lincoln so
ciology professor.
“The causes for marriage operate
less strongly today,” said Lynn
White, chairman of the UNL sociol
ogy department. “Women arc no
longer required to get married if they
get pregnant.”
White said that a high divorce rate
of 50 percent means more women arc
putting their energy into education
and their careers in order to be able to
support themselves.
Couples who live together gain
the comforts of marriage such as
cost-sharing and intimacy without
the strain of a permanent relation
ship, White said.
While most people expect to
eventually many, White said, it’s
estimated that in western and north
ern Europe 60 percent of young
people never will.
“A larger proportion of people are
reaching age 30 who have never
married,” While said. “The (Kids are
that they never will.”
According to the U.S. Bureau of
the Census, the average age for
brides is 22.5 and the grooms is 24.5
years.
“Marriage and children go hand
in-hand,” White said, but more
people are wailing to have children.
About estimated that one-fourth of
the women born after 1955 will
remain childless, she said.
“This is a major change from 20
years ago,’ White said. “Of course,
with a divorce rate of 50 percent and
most people wailing to have children,
any individual would ask: Why get
married?”
Harpies and doves inspire misogynist’s Top 6
When the harpies came and stole
his furniture, he began to make tapes.
He left his room when they were gone
and stood on the faded piece of carpel
where the couch used to be. He
walked over to the faded piece of
carpet where the overstuffed beige
chair used to be. He sal down there.
Alter about three days he got up
again. It was dark, so he tried to turn
on a lamp that was no longer there. It
didn’t switch on.
In another house, around the
block, down the street and in Kenya,
the lamp went on perfectly for her. A
soft, peaked moon, it made a near
perfect circle on a phone-book page
where she found the number of some
guy she hadn’t spoken to since the
day the couch was dropped onto that
laded piece of carpet in which he now
sat, in another house, around the
block, down the street.
He never wanted a significant
other again. Not ever. He turned on a
radio station that played music that
had been popular when he was in high
school. This made him remember a
story.
This couple had purchased a
hundred doves for their wedding.
They trapped the doves in the rafters
of the cathedral with velvet drapes
and attached a cord so that the drapes
could be pulled out of the way, un
leashing the doves, when the minister
pronounced the couple man and wife.
The picture in the couple’s mind was
of a cascading blur of white, soft
flight at the moment the wedding was
consummated.
The couple’s wedding day was,
unfortunately, a warm one, and the
doves suffocated somewhere around
the time the priest was asking if the
bride wanted to “love, honor and
cherish” until the end of her days.
When the usher pulled the cord and
the curtain pulled away with a flour
ish, a hundred dead doves rained
down on the wedding party.
You may kiss the bride.
So, with the harpies gone, he made
the list of optional love songs, love
songs to prevent these horrible mis
takes from happening again. Anti
love songs. A misogynist’s Top Six.
1. “We Fall”/”Shc’s Mine” —
Psychedelic Furs
To the Psych Furs, the love ritual
is completely mechanistic, and these
two songs—“WeFall”cspecially —
turn love’s basic litanies into night
marish threats. Promises to marry,
-settle down and be with one another
forever in some domestic other-real
ity turn into zomboid recitations that
begin to throb in the head like a
thousand printing presses stamping
“doomed” on a cast-iron door.
2. “Happy Loving Couples”/
’’Different for Girls” — Joe Jackson
Two approaches to the coupl ing of
bipeds. The first is a caustic barrage
directed at hugging, nuzzling lumps
of smiling flesh who sit on the edges
of fountains and lakes wondering
how long it will take for the other
party to realize that all those hours
you spent staring into their eyes were
merely because you couldn’t think of
anything to say.
The second song is just oppres
sively sad. The line, “What the hell is
wrong with you tonight?” that begins
this song sums up a thousand things
wrong with ever telling anyone any
thing about yourself, no less letting
them grab hold of your coronary ar
teries and send your essential bodily
lluids squirting out your belly button.
3. “Frank’s Wild Years” — Tom
Waits
Bui you got married in a storm of
dead doves despite it all arid did the
suburbs thing. You got a job because
you thought it might be cute to be
pewter miniatures of your cute par
ents, and eventually you came home
and discovered your w ife or husband
was subject to constant, whining,
Darvon-induccd petit mal seizures.
Like Frank, you burn down the
house, go tooling onto the freeway,
settle back with some Sinatra on the
local Easy Listening AM and a six
pack of Mickey’s Big Mouths and
chuckle every mile or so about that
stupid dove thing....
4. “Love Will Tear Us Apart” —
Joy Division
Joy Division’s Ian Curtis was
delivered unto this world in order to
show us that there is not a single
human endeavor that doesn't in some
way remind you you’re going to die.
According to Curtis, most of them
make you wish you were dead. Oth
ers kill you. Those that just hurt
remind you of death because death
hurts. Those that seem to be making
you happy are lies that, once they are
exposed as such, w ill make you want
to die even more than you did before.
It ’s just a guess, but I don’t think Ian
C urtis ever listened to Mac Davis’
“Stop and Smell the Roses.”
5. “Havin’ My Baby” — Paul
Anka
This has scared many an intelli
gent young heterosexual out of the
back seats of cars and into the priest
hood or convent.
6. “Unsatisfied”— Replacements
Perfectly self-explanatory. Noth
ing works, so why fix it.
Lieu ranee is a senior English major and
a Daily Nebraskan arts and entertainment
editor.
