Here comes the bride strong and liberated

Feminism is fine and well, says Emily Jenkins, but girls still need weddings I AM getting married soon, and have been hiding my bridal magazines from prying eyes like a stack of porn. I first encountered these magazines 10 years ago at my friend Rachel's house. She got engaged right after college, and I remember feeling shocked and a little embarrassed that she had earmarked certain pages featuring puffy white gowns and romantic floral arrangements. It was like seeing a Penthouse subscription on the coffee table with the owner's favourite spreads dog-eared: an open revelation of intense fantasising.

When I got engaged at 31, I realised I had spent my entire adult life repressing similar reveries. Somehow, despite a hippie childhood, divorced parents, feminist politics and a preference for black, I had developed a wealth of bridal dreams. I had just never acknowledged them before, denying my arousal at the sight of a glittering diamond ring or a bouquet of tightly bound miniature roses. I'm not the kind of woman who gets aroused by that stuff, I told myself. I don't want to be adored for my poignant beauty, to slice a sumptuous cake so tall it can serve hundreds, to make myself dizzy on champagne and tumble into a lush hotel room, drop the crisp white folds of my gown on the floor and then Well, of course I was aroused. I just didn't want to admit it. Bridal fantasies symbolised conventionality, were manufactured by an industry dominated by purveyors of diamonds and #4000 dresses. Later, when there was someone I wanted to marry, I repressed my thoughts for a different reason. In today's society, it's easier to share our anonymous sexual fantasies - involving, say, a team of lacrosse players undressing in a locker room - than fantasies that suggest a future. Purely physical turn-ons, in our liberated yet commitment-phobic world, indicate a person is erotic and open. Bridal dreams are shameful because they're about sex and love together. Fantasising about devotion is tantamount to getting hot over a house in suburbia and 2.4 children - simply not cool.

Even when Daniel and I decided to get married, I thought he'd be turned off by the sentimentality of a conventional wedding. If he knew I had bridal fantasies, he would surely turn tail more quickly than if I confessed to a secret career as a dominatrix. Turns out I was wrong. We are having a wedding. My fiance wants one. And for the first time in my life, I am allowing myself to want one too. Still, I bought the bridal magazines with a measure of shame. I pressed them secretively against my chest when I met a colleague outside the newsagent's. I read them in bed and hid them when Daniel came home.

But as I browsed through the long-forbidden glossies, I began to see that bridal fantasies are not equivalent to a dream of suburban domestic life. These pages barely mentioned the possibility of children, buying houses, apportioning chores. They were focused on the sensual apparatus of a single event: thick paper cards with curly calligraphy, lush dresses, explosions of roses. Their goal was a "zipless f***" of a wedding, in which every moment is smoothly orchestrated for pleasure.

And that's just it. Weddings are erotic pageants. Yes, they're about commitment, a life together, but they're also about dramatising the sexual connection between two people. An erotic encounter expresses love privately, and a wedding uses fabric, flavour and music instead. Weddings also used to be about the end of virginity, the veil and white dress symbolising the last moments of sexual innocence. Cascades of flowers suggested a bride ripe for defloration, a trousseau of fine undergarments accompanied her on her honeymoon and she returned a sexual being. Now that intercourse usually occurs before marriage, weddings celebrate sex that is already happening between two people.

I did eventually show my magazines to my fiance. He chuckled a bit, shared a few wedding fantasies of his own, encouraged me to have whatever turned me on. He looked at photographs of flowers and mountainous cakes; we scouted hotel rooms for atmosphere (though we never found a heart-shaped bed); he presented a ring to me on bended knee. The bridal dreams are out of the closet now.

I believe being a feminist should mean I'm not ashamed of my desires. Coming to terms with tradition, and finding a way to embrace the parts of it that feel good to me, is a step toward self- definition, even if it means doing things that seem rooted in outdated values and conventions. Having a wedding, I'm not only giving myself a chance to make my sensual and sexual fantasies a reality - I'm renegotiating my idea of a liberated woman. And I expect it will feel pretty damn good - out of the bedroom, as well as in.

Emily Jenkins is the author of Tongue First: Adventures In Physical Culture

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