Wedding planning expert Maggie Daniels talks about the pressures of big weddings.
Daniels explains why some couples might like a Wal-Mart wedding.
Liz Donaldson says she and her fiance are a unique pair and that's why a Wal-Mart wedding fits

Celebrity weddings are mainstays of glossy magazines and tabloids.

Whether it's Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, Tony Parker and Eva Longoria or Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, famous couples' weddings capture readers' imaginations and inspire them to make their own nuptials into big events. With the average wedding costing around $28,000, according to several estimates, even nonfamous couples are spending big bucks -- which translates to big business.

So it's not surprising that the world's largest retailer is vying for a bigger chunk of that business with a promotion to draw attention to its flowers, stationery, food trays and other wedding-related merchandise. Wal-Mart chose seven couples to win $5,000 weddings that take place in the retailer's locations around the country on Saturday, a popular day for weddings because of the lucky number associated with the date: 7-7-07.

And though a Wal-Mart is a far cry from the 17th-century chateau where Longoria and Parker are getting married this weekend, the couples in the Wal-Mart contest say they're happy to tie the knot at a big-box retailer.

One couple, Duwayne Surprise and Liz Donaldson, will be married in their hometown of Janesville, Wis., in the retailer's home and garden center. Among their prizes, the couple will wear Wal-Mart rings, the bride will carry Wal-Mart flowers and their 77 guests (who received Wal-Mart invitations) will party under an adjacent tent, eating Wal-Mart shrimp, cheese trays and chicken tenders.

"They're providing us with those things that require a lot of money or a small deposit up front and being in our financial situation, it wouldn't be easy for us to come up with that," said Donaldson, 23.

MARRYING COMMERCIALISM AND ROMANCE

The wedding industry has been fed by media accounts of opulent celebrity weddings and by movie portrayals that show ordinary people having unrealistically lavish weddings, said Maggie Daniels, a wedding planning professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

"People in the general populace say, 'I have to have a ring like that, or I have to have a dress like that,'" Daniels said.

And as bills for weddings have increased, businesses have looked for more ways to cash in.

Vicki Howard, author of "Brides Inc.: American Weddings and the Business of Tradition," says the Wal-Mart contest fits into a decades-long trend of increasingly commercialized weddings.

"I think Wal-Mart is almost the final resting place of that phenomenon," Howard said. "It's gone from being something among elites, to the middle class, to now available at a very low price."

The couples don't seem concerned that they're saying "I do" in a place where people were buying milk, cat litter and paper towels the day before.

"Doesn't matter where you get married," said Surprise, 28. "You're getting married to the person you want to be with."

Contest winner Candace Presley, 25, of Gore, Okla., says winning the contest has removed the stress of wedding planning. She'll marry fiance Matthew Cauthon, 24, at the Wal-Mart Supercenter in nearby Muskogee, Okla.

"They've made it really easy and simple for me," Presley said. "I think it's going to be beautiful."

And getting married at Wal-Mart is certainly unique, Howard says. Donaldson, the Wisconsin Wal-Mart bride, agrees.

"I would rather have somewhere different because that's just me, I'm outgoing, I'm unique, I'm different," Donaldson says. "And I kind of feel that's how we've been. We haven't seemed to be very traditional. It kind of just fits us I guess. It's just spontaneous."

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Caryn Rousseau is an asap reporter based in Chicago.

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