Weddings Rarely Ring Any Bells For Guests

Sound erupts from the pipe organ as the wedding march begins. Perfectly coiffed guests stand, turning toward the bride as she glides down the aisle.

His eyes lock with hers. Visions of a big house, vacations at the beach and children float through her head. He imagines running his fingers through her hair, and the softness of her skin.

Now, all these two wedding guests need is to be introduced. Maybe at the reception. The idea of finding love at a wedding inspired the movie Wedding Crashers, starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. The premise: A pair of committed womanizers sneak into weddings to take advantage of the romance in the air.

The odds of sparking anything beyond an introduction, however, are not in most people's favor. Only 27 percent of East Coast men have met a future date at another's nuptials, according to a survey of 2,774 singles conducted by the dating service It's Just Lunch.

And, as for the few that did find love, it didn't even last as long as the frozen top tier of the wedding cake. Only 3 percent of couples who met at weddings are still together today.

"At weddings, people often converge from all different parts of the country," says Kimberlee Brandt, director of the Albany, N.Y., area branch of It's Just Lunch. "And a lot of times, long-distance relationships don't work." So you're caught in a fantasy situation where people open their hearts and get excited about love, says the Rev. Laurie Sue Brockway, a Queens, N.Y.-based interfaith minister and wedding officiant who also wrote Wedding Goddess: A Divine Guide to Transforming Wedding Stress into Wedding Bliss.

Everyone's dressed in their finery, they're at a big event -- often a feast with flowing wine. Optimism is in full force.

But once you get out in the real world, the idyllic factors of the wedding are gone.

It's networking and numbers, says Brandt, who doesn't rule out the idea of wedding-day romance. Basically, the more people you meet, the more chance you have of meeting that special person.

You can't control chemistry, but you can control conversation, and a wedding is one of those places where everyone shares at least one thing -- they know the bride or groom or are friends with someone who does.

"Compared to being at a bar, you know you have something in common with the person," says Crystal Clancy of Albany. She has friends who met someone at a wedding and dated briefly and says potential couples can start off by reminiscing about what the bride and groom were like before they met one another.

More people Clancy knows, though, are like the 58 percent of wedding attendees who just had a little romantic interlude for the night. According to a survey done by Close-Up toothpaste, 1,276 of 2,200 respondents celebrate a little romance of their own by sharing a kiss with another at a wedding. Either way, remember why you're there in the first place.

"Even though the wedding is a fun occasion . . . the ultimate purpose is to celebrate the love of the bride and groom," says Brockway. "If you can have your own experience of love and romance in the context of that, you'll find you're whole experience is much more sacred."

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