On a recent Sunday morning, the Grand Ballroom at the Westin O’Hare Hotel in Rosemont was so crammed with bright-eyed yet slightly hypnotized-looking women that you’d have thought somebody was giving away diamonds.
And somebody was — a pair of diamond earrings, actually, along with free cake, surprise packages tied up in big colorful bows, cocktails that flowed from an ice-sculpture fountain, a chance to win a $25,000 wedding/honeymoon package, and lots and lots of business cards and brochures.
This was one of the country’s many peripatetic marriage markets, a convention known as Bridal Expo! The Wedding & Home Show!, which takes place 28 times a year, in the Chicago and Milwaukee areas. From the point of view of Expo!’s 39-year-old president, Bill Brennan, the exclamation points are more than warranted: brides-to-be are huge spenders, and every year they seem to shell out more for their dream ceremony/dress/reception/honeymoon.
In Chicago, the average nuptial celebration cost “$26,732, up about 17 percent over the last five years,” said Brennan, a lanky guy with a huge smile, who turned out to be a natural master of ceremonies during the day’s fashion shows.
So on this particular day, hundreds of engaged women engaged in the modern ritual of willingly running a rose-scented lace-trimmed gantlet of ardent nuptial vendors.
Poufy dresses on headless mannequins gave way to photographers, “videographers,” tuxedo rentographers and digital deejays, one of whom was preaching to a small crowd of rapt females about the superiority of his services (“… we might play a little ‘Footloose’ … we don’t believe that people over 50 don’t want to dance after 10 o’clock”).
A slender faux bride modeled a Bo Peep-style dress, looking a bit more bored than she might be if it were her actual wedding day. Nearby, a woman was promoting a variety of skin treatments worth considering before getting into the Bo Peep dress, which showed more skin than was proper for the nursery rhyme character.
You could taste fondant cakes, peruse china patterns and bridal-party gifts (a kazoo, a tiny silver bell, a sucker shaped like a rose) and hook up with financial planners, chair cover companies, chocolate fountain folks, florists, limo leasers, and people who will customize the bottom of your bridal shoe with Swarovski crystals for $20.
Still, in spite of all the wedding help, there was a low-grade anxiety in the air. The long line for cake brought out the Bridezilla in some. “Ex-scuse me?” said one fiance to another, who’d apparently cut in front of her.
By the time the 11:30 a.m. fashion show rolled around, many women required glasses of white wine from the cash bar, to drink as they watched.
Jenna Dupuis, a 25-year-old bride-to-be (Oct. 7; 300 guests; reception under tents on family farm; horse and carriage entrance; chocolate fountain) from Kankakee, was one of them.
“I’ve only been engaged for maybe a month now,” said Dupuis, whose entourage included her mother-in-law-to-be Debbi Jarmros, sister-in-law-to-be Dana Zmuda, bridesmaid Meg Danielczyk, maid-of-honor Stephanie Sloss, and her mother, Pat Dupuis,who has a wedding of her own in June to worry about (“I’m getting remarried — mine’s just going to be this itty-bitty nothing”), with 150 guests.
`I don’t want to do this’
“I feel a lot of pressure …” continued the first-time bride Jenna Dupuis. “I’ve already cried and said, `I don’t want to do this, it’s too much pressure, it’s too much money, it’s too much of my time.’ With just two days off a week, I’m doing wedding stuff every weekend from here on out.”
Which is why wedding expos are big. “You don’t have to go to a million different places,” said the bride. “Because we’re all from Kankakee, that’s way too hard. For me to get all the girls with time off at the same time is way too hard.”
And you can also save yourself some pain. “At my niece’s wedding, she had a DJ, and he was great on paper,” said Jamros, the mother-in-law. “But we got halfway through the wedding and he decided to go in the back room, change into a pair of tights and a big afro wig, and bump-dance with everybody. … Oooooh, my God. We had no idea.
“It’s nice that you can come and talk to them first,” she added. “So you can see if they’ve got integrity and stuff.”
For the next 45 minutes, six gorgeous bride/models, six sun-tanned groom models, some adorable little flower girls and ring bearers, and a silver-haired mother-of-the-bride type sashayed up and down the runway lighted by disco balls to thumping music provided by A Touch of Music, with intermittent breaks to raffle away those diamond earrings (to a 2007 bride), hear “the fabulous singing sensation” Jim Verraros, an “American Idol” finalist, and finally participate in a Chippendales-style hoot-fest, during which the male models devolved into a bit of bump and grind.
“Ladies, aren’t you glad you didn’t bring your grooms?,” said a female emcee, egging them on.
It was true. Most had arrived with entourages of supporting-cast women, including 22-year-old Elizabeth Whooley, of Orland Park (275 guests; Oct. 7), who sampled some cake with her mom and sister as she ticked off the “dones” on her to-do list.
“Well, I have the reception hall, the church and the photographer,” she said. “Oh, and the groom.”
“That’s the important part,” said her sister Rachel, 19, her maid of honor.
Most of the half-dozen grooms who stopped to talk had already married their brides, years ago, but hadn’t had a wedding. Now they had come along to the expo, just being husbandly, and maybe keeping an eye on the costs of the wedding they were now able to afford.
Lavincha Wilbon, 35, from Dalton, was there with his ex-wife, actually, Felicia Gillespie, 35, whom he’d gotten engaged to last June.
“We used to be married, we got divorced, and decided to get back together,” he said. “We were apart for five years, but we have a son together.”
This time around (Aug. 5; 80-100 guests), they had come to the expo because “the prices might be better. We’re comparison shopping,” said the groom.
In the case of one couple in their 20s — who are having a wedding in September but have been married five years (and who asked to remain anonymous because their wedding will be a surprise for family and friends) — the groom had been kidnapped.
Having cake and eating it too
“When we came here he didn’t even know it was a bridal expo. If he knew, he wouldn’t come. I told him we were going to a show, it’s free, and there’s cake and stuff,” said the bride, as her husband came walking up with a slice of cake.
Where had he thought they were going?
“Someplace with free food, but just cakes,” he said, laughing sheepishly. “It’s fine. I don’t mind.”
“We’re looking for everything, and this way he can see how much everything costs,” she said.
“People go into debt!” he said. “I don’t want to do that.”
They both seemed a little freaked out.
“I’m not, but he is,” she said, which seemed true at first — until it was pointed out that she had, after all, kidnapped him.
“Well, he’s very cheap!,” she said. “And he keeps telling me, `We don’t need those, and we don’t need that.’ And I say, `You don’t understand! It’s different when you’re a bride. You don’t want it to be, like, whatever is convenient. You want it to be perfect.'”
Pity the fool who dares to suggest otherwise.
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ernunn@tribune.com
