Anatomy of a Celebrity Wedding

April 29, 2007 — -- The hype surrounding modern day celebrity weddings, like last week's Bollywood wedding, is so immense that it leads many people to speculate, "Why?"

Former Miss World, Aishwarya Rai, married Abhishek Bachchan, the son of an Indian cinema legend, in a colorful Bollywood ceremony that drew hundreds of fans on April 20. In recent years, celebrity wedding festivities seem to have drawn more press and larger crowds. A fan outside of the venue where the Bollywood wedding ceremony took place, attempted to commit suicide.

According to Theresa DiMasi, editor in chief of brides.com, people look at celebrities and they want to emulate them.

"Following celebrities is a way of living vicariously through them," DiMasi said. "How they look, how they dress and what they do -- it's the whole red carpet thing."

Among the events that followed the Bollywood wedding was a trip to Tirupati, in southern Andhra Pradesh state where the couple visited the famous Tirumala temple. DiMasi believes fans aren't solely "obsessed" with the celebrity wedding itself. The events that occur afterward heighten their interest.

"The Bollywood wedding took place on a Friday, then on Saturday, the Bidae occurred where the families officially gave away their children," she said. "Then you see trip after trip and party after party; that's what fans love to follow."

Like the Bollywood wedding, when Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise officially tied the knot, the festivities went on for days. Events surrounded a Catholic wedding as well as a Scientology wedding in Italy.

DiMasi believes that it's not just a wedding for these celebrities; it's like their pivotal red carpet moment. Brides need to get the best dress for that one moment. Events like celebrity weddings are "very much entrenched in our society."

In Britain, celebrity wedding hype is associated with the royal family much like in America where Hollywood-types are referred to as America's royalty.

The Bollywood wedding was similar to the Tom-Kat nuptials with a frenzy of fans and media following their every move. In fact, Bachchan's father apologized two days after his son's wedding because of a photographer's claim of suffering minor injuries from a scuffle with a security guard.