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."
It is rather old-fashioned; nowadays the norm becomes getting married after the second child.
My wife and I "played house" for more than a year before we were married (though we were engaged at the time). It gave us a chance to work on and out a lot of things together -- financial thoughts, parenting styles, shopping together, dealing with friends (troublesome and otherwise). I think our marriage has been been smoother and worked better for it.
I like it.
Not being Catholic, I may be wrong about this - but what if the couple was already engaged but moved up the wedding to take care of the surprise? I've had discussions with fellow, um, children who were guests at their parents' weddings and we all agree, we're glad they got married then and didn't wait... every couple I know who started off that way, would never say their marriage is less valid than anyone else's.
My mother always said that first babies come whenever they want, second babies take nine months. But I don't think if I were in that sort of spot, I'd be wearing a dress to show off.... come on, it doesn't take that long to plan a wedding, you can do it before the baby's showing.
You know... it takes two to tango. If people don't want kids maybe listening to the Catholic Church ain't such a good idea and using birth control is.
Throw a big fancy party for your 10th anniversary and let your parents foot the bill if they had planned to do so for your wedding! You could get a gorgeous ivory cocktail length dress, if you didn't want to wear a long white one!
After this amount of time, you've really got something to celebrate!!
We're thinking of throwing a big shindig this fall for our 30th, though we might wait until 2006, when the addition to our house is at least enclosed, and we'd have some room for folks! ;o)
What are you saying? That most men don't know how to use the word "NO"?
LOL!
You summarized things very well. These women are FLAUNTING the fact that they're pregnant and walking down the aisle. They are expecting that all the invitees to their wedding will be accepting of their premarital sex and will be happy to "celebrate" the pregnancy and then the wedding, in that order.
But God calls sex outside of marriage a sin (fornication). I am not perfect either, lest anyone criticize me. But I think these people are just mocking God by going against His rules and then asking for His blessing, knowing full well that He is not pleased.
And why on earth would any woman with any sense to boot want to marry a man like that?
Well gee... what's the alternative? To abort the baby? To raise the kid alone as a woman and the man pay child support?
you got me, I couldn't tell ya why.
Weakness is not a character trait I looked for in a spouse... but hey whatever floats your boat.
Oh, don't trot out this idiotic cr*p.
Do you seriously think there are people who ignore the Church when it says "don't fornicate" but listen intently when it says "don't use birth control"???
I mean, get freaking real here, okay? Something like 90% of married Catholics are contraceptors, if unmarried Catholics wanted to really be faithful to their religion [all together now]
They wouldn't be having sex, would they ?!?!
In case you missed the lecture, contraception sometimes fails. You did know that, right?
Sheesh, sometimes the kookiness level around here just gets amazing.
Baby is born, unto a loving, married mom and dad. All's well. No need for the woman to raise it alone, or worse, abort. Where'd that come from?
Just my humble "o" of course.
I am not married (yet), because I am still one of those few who choose to live up to a higher standard.
Get off it.
I could see the use of birth control failing some but not at the level to which that poster was saying.
I'm not a Catholic so I can't cite stats.
As a woman though I find it absolutely ridiculous that its always my fault sex ends in a pregnancy when I don't use birth control.
And if trapping a man was the ultimate goal, that's absolutely the worst beginning for a family.
Well good for you. I'm glad you have higher standards and want a man that use the word, no.
Interesting story. Don't know if I would had the guts to pose nude eight months pregnant, good for you.
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