The Plunge Blog

Last Friday, The Plunge took a field trip to the nexus of emasculation: The Great Bridal Expo at the Marriott in New York City. And yes, it's just as hellish as it sounds.

When we arrived, the line was positively new-iPhone-at-the-Apple-store-esque, but instead of getting a cool gadget, your bride gets tempted with $100,000 worth of dresses, picture frames, and floral arrangements. Awesome.

Quick: in this photo, count the number of smiling grooms. In fact, if any reader can produce any photographic evidence of a smiling groom at any Wedding Expo, ever, we will write you a fake-check for $30,000. As an aside, our unmarried member of The Plunge staff found that The Great Bridal Expo, apparently, is not the best place to meet single chicks. Who knew? (Disclaimer: this blog is no more "live" than the expo is "great.")

To save you 3 painful hours, we boiled down the experience into a quickie photo essay.

"Hey man. I can't talk right now. Where am I? At a bar. Yeah, a bar. Swear to God. What? You can hear shrieking women? Yeah, those are...chicks dancing on the bar. This place is blowing up, man. Yeah. Sorry you couldn't make it. Next time."

These two kindly, sweet old men are thumbing through stacks and stacks of wedding porn. Is there any possible context where this is not creepy?

Leave it to Women's Entertainment channel to have a poster with "Big Dreams, Small Budget" printed over a woman's chest. No comment.

The holy grail of gift registries. Every year, 2.1 million of the 2.2 million engaged couples will register for the KitchenAid Stand Mixer. Every year, after the wedding, 3 couples will actually use it.

"That's right, ma'am. Just sign here. Don't listen to what you fiancé says, we assure you, he'll love wearing this. Take it from me, an insider, fluorescent-tangerine-orange is the new black."

Only tangentially related. Okay, only barely related. Unrelated. The wedding-porn's parent industry, Hallmarky-fabricated-emotion, hit a new high (low?) in the Mother's Day section. At Duane Reade, the Mother's Day display had a section for "Romance." Um, guys?

What every newly-engaged guy's living room will look like in 3 months.

It's just now sinking in to this guy that "Hey, honey, just tag along to this quick errand, and you'll get lots of free cake!" was one sorry-ass bait and switch.

The Plunge's editor, Jeff Wilser, with a girl who's not his bride. Note the green beads. They gave those out just to hammer home the notion that this is a bizarre, twisted, inverted chick-version of Mardi Gras.

They also handed out buttons called "VIB." Presumably this stands for "Very Important Bride." Now, not to split hairs, but if the word "important," by definition, connotes a sense of priority, how can every bride at the Expo be a Very Imporant Bride?