TVScope: Wedding Rites: In Sickness and in Health, BBC2, Wednesday, May 9th, 11.20pm
'The pursuit of perfection at the expense of reason," was one of the kinder comments made about modern weddings in this entertaining, if cynical, exploration of how and why weddings are on the increase and divorce rates are in decline in Britain. Caroline Quentin narrated and, with other razor-tongued commentators, sought to explode this "puff of romantic euphoria" by attributing the increase to the marketing powers of a £4.5 billion per year wedding industry rather than to any rediscovery of love and romance.
The programme charted the evolution of the British wedding and the overturning of the expectation in the 1960s that weddings as "a tradition of grotesque femininity" were past their sell-by date.
There was a dramatic decline in the 1970s, but then along came a spate of royal weddings, kick-started by that of Charles and Diana, and fairytale, romantic weddings were back in fashion again. However, the royal weddings lost their kudos to the growth of celebrity Hello weddings and the wedding industry's marketing dream was born.
Now only one-third of weddings take place in church and there has been a rapid rise in the wedding super-venue for civil ceremonies where couples can indulge their fantasies, fuelled by their homage to the glitterati, that they too can be a celebrity for a day.
The vacuous Neville and Natasha, an ordinary couple in their 30s, shared their wedding lead-up and their big day with the programme-makers only to be rather cruelly used as an example of the celebrity influence in their no-expense-spared extravaganza.
The commentators despaired at the gullibility of couples like Neville and Natasha who ignore the fact that celebrity weddings are a reflection of how celebrities who "do step aerobics on their own egos" live their lives.
Also, in hindsight, the marriage of Charles and Diana, with its elements of genetic scouting and convenience, was, behind its romantic façade, more a throwback to the darker origins of marriage.
Few couples choose to acknowledge the links between today's wedding rituals and marriage as a financial exchange in which women were bartered and exchanged for cattle.
However, fathers still give their daughters away, and women wearing "a price tag on their finger" voluntarily choose to lose their identity by changing their name.
Despite their decline, a church spokesperson believes that church weddings will not only survive but thrive as the beauty and gravitas which they offer will outlive this current trend in which value is determined by cost.
While this documentary demonstrated that while the rituals we use to do this are constantly evolving and currently going through a "profane rather than profound" phase, the underlying need to do them remains constant.
Review by clinical psychologist Olive Travers