OS ANGELESPosted on 03/12/2005 2:53:11 PM PST by NYC GOP Chick
OS ANGELES
FOR her wedding last year before 100 guests at the historic Mission Inn in Riverside, Calif., Neomi Padilla, 32, wore a sexy spaghetti-strap dress from L'ezu Atelier in Newport Beach and four-inch heels.
Then she held on for dear life.
At the altar, she was unable to kneel comfortably. "My husband held me because I thought I'd fall," she said. Making her way down a staircase to the reception things got more precarious. Being seven months pregnant, she couldn't see her feet.
Only a few years ago, women planning simultaneously for a wedding and a due date would beg designers and bridal stores for dresses that would camouflage their growing bellies and - if they told anyone at all - would insist on silence. These days, however, brides are not only not hiding their pregnancies, but they are showing them off, celebrating the upcoming birth in vows and toasts, wearing gowns that flatter their bump, and, in short, refusing to give up any elements of a traditional wedding just because there is a baby visibly on the way.
Some bridal gown manufacturers are rushing out maternity designs and officiants are blessing more and more unborn children.
"It is a growing trend," said the Rev. Christopher Tuttle, a nondenominational minister who presides over the National Association of Wedding Officiants - with about 200 members. "It's all become, 'Hey, look at me. I'm pregnant!' "
The Rev. Scott Carpenter, a Unity pastor who presides over another national group of officiants, the National Association of Wedding Ministers, said that eight years ago he never had a bride openly announce her pregnancy, but now those brides account for about 20 percent of the weddings he performs.
At a time when pregnancies are obsessively chronicled and celebrated in celebrity and fashion magazines, it is perhaps not surprising that they are being showcased even as women walk down the aisle. But there are larger cultural factors at work as well: women are getting married older, and many are living with their husbands-to-be for years before exchanging vows.
"They're older, they're more confident," said Carley Roney, editor in chief of The Knot (www.theknot.com), a Web site devoted to wedding planning information. "Oftentimes couples are paying for the wedding, so they don't worry about what people think."
Mrs. Padilla, who runs a family food business in the Los Angeles area and is now the mother of 8-month-old Sophia, said her attitude was, "Why can't I have it all?' " She said she became pregnant after plans for a big wedding were under way, and she decided to stick to them.
"I'm 32, my husband is 34," she said. "We wanted a family, so we weren't embarrassed."
The timing of baby and wedding is not always coincidental. Even though increasing numbers of heterosexual couples live together without marrying, Americans still lean toward marriage once a baby comes because people think it will provide greater security for the child.
But if pregnancies have often led to marriage, they have not always paved the way for full-blown weddings if the bride was far along.
With today's pregnant brides, Ms. Roney said, "It's the flaunting of it where things are taking a turn. We're talking about seven months pregnant."
Or eight. Laura Taylor, 21, of Terre Haute, Ind., said her only concern about her Feb. 12 wedding was that she was cutting it so close to her March due date that she feared she might have the baby before the husband.
Ms. Taylor, who until recently worked as a cashier in a tanning salon, said she had been engaged for more than three years and, upon learning she was pregnant, debated for a week and a half whether to have a big wedding. She decided on "this huge blowout," including a Baptist church ceremony and a reception for 125 guests.
"I just decided, what the heck," she said. "I do things out of order anyway." "I thought about an ivory dress and my mom was, no, you're getting white. It's 2005."
Those who shared the limelight with their unborn babies on their big day say the pregnancy made an emotional occasion even more intense. Jane E. Smith, 38, a director of training and development with InterContinental Hotels and Resorts in San Francisco, said even her guests cried at her wedding last November outside Palms Springs when the minister mentioned her yet-to-be-born son, Miller Michael (who was born Feb. 12).
"It was so unique and so special," said one teary-eyed guest, Jeff Rogers, 38, an information specialist with Nike in Portland, Ore. "I just sort of went, 'Oh, my gosh, there's so much more going on here than just two people getting married.' "
But being pregnant for your wedding is not necessarily the easiest way to go, what with swollen feet, queasy stomachs and multiple dress fittings. Some brides wear fabulous gowns with white sneakers or slippers because they would be too unsteady on heels. Many avoid evening weddings so they do not tire out.
The brides toast with apple juice and switch or postpone honeymoons because they cannot scuba dive or sit on a beach drinking piña coladas. They also don't want to be too far away from their doctors.
Trying to finding the dress, of course, can be a nightmare.
"The most stressful thing I've ever gone through," Ms. Taylor said.
She first went to the store where she had gotten her prom dresses and, she said: "They told me there was no way they could put me in a dress. I felt they didn't want to help me."
At a second shop, "the dresses looked terrible; they were five sizes bigger than what I wear."
Ms. Taylor said she finally found a satin dress with lace overlay that she loved from TeKay Designs (www.tk-designs.com), an online clothing retailer based in Houston that specializes in maternity wedding dresses in the $150 to $800 range.
The company started out in 1998 selling wedding, bridesmaid and prom dresses, but in recent years maternity wedding gowns have sold so briskly that they have become TeKay Designs' specialty, accounting for 60 percent of all sales, or about 300 dresses a year, said Joseph Okyere, director of operations. He said the demand is largely because of the company's wide maternity bridal selection - more than 100 designs - and its relatively low prices.
"In 2000, we started getting calls from pregnant women saying, 'I saw this dress on your Web site, can you custom make it to fit a pregnant woman?' " he said, adding that now the company has "orders coming from all over the world."
Ronald Rothstein, principal owner of Kleinfeld Bridal, the large bridal salon in Brooklyn that sells up to 8,000 wedding dresses a year in the $2,000 to $4,000 range, estimates that 6 to 7 brides out of every 100 who come to his salon are pregnant and will show when they marry.
"It used to be that the bride would call us in advance and say they wanted to talk to us privately," he said. "Nowadays, the bride comes in and says, 'I'm pregnant. What am I going to look good in?' It's just an extra level of excitement."
While pregnant brides say they have found overwhelming support from bridegrooms, parents, friends, officiants and wedding industry vendors, some said social acceptance is not universal.
Joy Lynn Leech, 31, who was seven months pregnant at her wedding last August, said most people were "extremely supportive" but among her 200 guests she noticed some people conspicuously "quiet about the whole thing."
And when she called her Roman Catholic Church she was told that one priest would not marry her but another "would most likely not have a problem."
Mrs. Leech, a volunteer firefighter who owns a pony ride business in New Jersey, got her church wedding - along with a beaded, double-silk organza gown by Jane Wilson-Marquis, a New York designer; horse-drawn carriages; and a big party at Nanina's in the Park in Belleville, N.J. - but she said she was "slightly disappointed" that the baby was not mentioned in the ceremony. She said she did not push it for fear that the accommodating priest would balk at marrying her altogether "because Catholics are so strict."
Christian conservative groups that promote abstinence before marriage, like the Family Research Council and the Christian Defense Coalition in Washington, said that they found it positive that these pregnant brides were getting married, yet they objected to the message they may be sending.
"On one level it is sending the message that sexual activity before marriage doesn't have the kind of harmful emotional, social and economic consequences that can happen," said the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, a Presbyterian minister who heads the Christian Defense Coalition.
Carmela Pampillonia, a restaurant manager in Staten Island who was five months pregnant at her wedding Feb. 13, found her Catholic parish "very accepting" but waited three months for her priest to submit her request for review by his archdiocese. "I couldn't plan anything until they accepted me," she said.
But for brides like Ms. Pampillonia, however, etiquette was not on top of the priority list. "Marriage is supposed to be a symbol of love and unity, and a child brings you more love and unity," she explained. "I showed that belly off all night long and I felt great."
She's lots of guts!
Only the ones that are unwanted.
This is just total ego mania. It seems more an extortion for presents than a desire for weddings.
She should just get civily married to ensure the child is legit and then either have a VERY fast wedding they can afford or just wait until AFTER the baby is born for the religious ceremony.
I really get the "gimme presents" vibe from this.
GIMME PRESENTS GIMME PRESENTS GIMME PRESENTS!!!!!
Thanks... 10 years so far....
Regocnize what happened was a mistake and correct as best as possible. NOT celebrate the mistake.
The entire subtext of this article is just a grovel for presents.
If she wants to make it right... I'm all the more for it.
If we have a healthy attitude toward sex then we don't blame people when it results in a new life. That's what it's supposed to do.
If we have a healthy attitude toward sex, though, we keep in marriage where God intended it to be.
I agree. But to punish someone for a mistake is counterproductive.
Most weddings seem to be overblown affairs these days, these women are no different than most in that respect.
I don't even think most are big ploys to get presents, really, thousands more is spent on the wedding itself these days than they will get in presents. It's just a fantasy that sucks women in... The desire to have the gorgeous designer princess fantasy they see in wedding magazines. It gives them an excuse to spend six months to a year deciding on flowers and napkins and typefaces and play dressup.
Myself, I was never keen on the Princess Plan. Many friends tried to involve me in theirs and many tried to get me to care about napkins on my own. We did throw a fantastic party, truth be told, but I tried to keep it just that, a party everyone would actually have fun at.
I'm not sure what sort of Catholicism you're representing, but there's no claim or requirement in Church law that I'm aware of that a couple who gets pregnant before the wedding "loses the privilege of receiving the Catholic sacrament of marriage". In fact, that would be silly: equivalent to excommunication.
Many priests won't perform such a wedding until some time after the baby is born, though, because they think marital consent is not very freely given when a pregnancy is involved, thus rendering the marriage's validity suspect. It has nothing to do with anyone's sin, and everything to do with the degree to which people are, or are not, acting freely in that situation.
That's great to hear. Although only God can truly know what is in a person's heart.
Church - on - time ....
Mission Inn? As an almost native-born Riversider, I must commend the Padillas on their excellent choice. Beautiful place, and it was good enough for Dick and Pat Nixon.
That said...four-inch heels? I'm a guy and I'm wincing at that. What was she thinking?
How do they pay for these things is what I can't figure...
We had nothing, and got married in our backyard ( confession- we were playing house). The dress was a prom dress, off the rack. Mr. RB was in a rented tux. Future in-laws made a ham and other food, and my sister did the flowers.
I think the whole thing cost $250.00.
I guess it sufficed as we're still married 25 yrs later.
I wonder sometimes if the trauma of preparing a wedding production is a test by fire for the wedding. The couple gets so lost in planning a party that they forget to plan a life after the party.
Then again, most young ladies are not agreeable to the "elvis chappel"
These days, couples are not moving from their parent's home into marriage or starting out with nothing... These are blushing 35 year old brides who have been on their own and in a career for years... They don't need sheets and towels to set up a home, they have one already....
I think the size of the bill reflects that, as much as anything else, though the wedding planner magazines and television shows have a lot to do with giving people more ideas for how to spend more money than ever would have occurred to them on their own.
Many aren't.... I would have been. :~D
None of this has nothing to do with civil marriage. Anyone who gets a license and finds someone who is authorized by the State to perform marriages can legally be married, and make sure their child is 'legitimate'. Many couples who have gottem themselves in the family way before marriage have done this. If they are Catholic, and they want their marriage blessed and receive the Sacrament, they need to do what all engaged couples have to do to get married in the Church. They have to meet with counselors who will give them guidance on what exactly a Sacramental Marriage is, and the responsibilities entailed in it. Folks don't have the RIGHT to a Sacramental Marriage. It is not an inconsequential thing, and some of the women in this article seem to think. They need to show that they are willing to do what the Church requires of those receiving the Sacrament.
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