August 28, 2005
Times Weddings by the Numbers
Ah, the Weddings/Celebrations in the Times. Some people never look at them and some people turn directly to them come Sunday morning. We at Gothamist mostly glance over them after puking our way through the Sunday Styles (we're a glutton for pain) but that is neither here nor there since starting this week we read the wedding announcements so you don't have to. This week we'll just do a purely numbers recap, but expect more in-depth analysis in the coming weeks.
Number of Announcements: 26
Number of Straight Weddings: 26
Number of Homosexual Weddings: 0
Average Age of Brides: 33.7
Average Age of Bridegrooms: 36.6
Oldest Bride: 62
Oldest Groom: 63
Youngest Bride: 24
Youngest Groom: 26
Number of Native New Yorkers (State & City): 12
Number of non-Native New Yorkers: 40
Number of Weddings Held Instate: 12
Number of Weddings Held Out of State: 14
Wedding/Celebration Photos by the Numbers:
Number of Announcements Without photos: 6
Number of Announcements With Photos: 20
Number of Blonde Brides: 7
Number of Blonde Grooms: 1
Number of Balding Grooms: 2
Number of Grooms in Glasses: 3
Number of Brides in Glasses: 1
So that's this weeks Weddings. Come back next week for more of the same, plus educational breakdowns (we're always surprised by just how much an Ivy education seems to help a person along in getting their announcement listed). In the meantime, is there anything else that you'd like us to keep track of?
Photograph by John Marshall Mantel for the NYTimes.
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The wedding section is without a doubt the lamest part of the times. Its dissapointing that you have decided to cover it for us. How about you start by not covering it at all. Those with an itch for the pathetic cheese can already go to veiled conceit at http://nytimesweddings.blogspot.com/
Perhaps instead you could give us a weekly tally of people killed in places like Darfur and Iraq.
How about stats on the number of interracial marriages? Although tough to determine without pics, I counted 2.
And anon, you're what's known in the online blog world as a "downer". Time to up that Zoloft dosage.
anon,
Sorry to disappoint, I guess we'll see what other peoples reactions are and go from there. Veiled Conceit is doing something a little different then we are, but I see your point. In any event, your idea about an Iraq tally isn't a bad one, though unfortunately a little off topic for a blog focusing on New York City specific news and events. In the meantime you can find the US casualty numbers here and Iraq casualty numbers here.
As a silly aside, I've noticed that in the online version of the paper sometimes they cut one of the couple's faces out of the photo on the main page. And they almost ALWAYS cut out the groom's face. But today, I see for the first time that they cut out the bride's face on the 4th announcement down. Now this is news, people!
This is great! How about reporting greatest age difference between spouses?
I guess this would be hard to verify... but I've always wondered about the announcements that DIDN'T make it into the Times.
Thanks for providing such a valuable service! Presuming that I can take the suspense and wait 'til monday morning, this saves me approximately 4.5 minutes on Sunday afternoon, which I can now allocate towards actually reading the editorials in the City section, instead of just skimming the headlines.
Providing stats re: age differences, racial and ethnic demographics, and perhaps a quick tidbit highlighting other exciting things like the missing bride would truly complete the experience.
instead of providing interesting statistics on the state of marriage laced with social commentary, i think you should catalogue the sick, dying, and demented of this world -- perhaps a list of all the possible illnesses and their current sufferers, laced with a world-wide comprehensive cataglogue of death.
I love Veiled Conceit, but dude up and moved to Chicago and hardly ever posts anymore. So sad, because there were a string of weddings this winter/spring that were comedy classics.
I love/hate the weddings. It's elitist and pretentious, etc. and I know if I were to get married I wouldn't be "good enough" to get in and that disappoints me. Nothing worse than being rejected by something you want to reject first. Gr.
for statistics, there's also always the really funny three part series gawker did a while back with krucoff on all this.
I'm with everyone who asked Gothamist to include racial and ethnic stats. It always seems like it's done for novelty's sake when they throw in a "different" type of wedding.
What I'd love kept track of are the professions of the nupialists, but even more important, what their mommies and daddies do. So often I'm reading about a worthy-but-kinda-dull couple, wondering why they're there, and then discovering that the bride's pa is a senior VP at a drug company or an investment bank or something.
And colleges, too. How many Harvardians, and how many when to wacky, exotic places like Bennington.
I always like to see who is the more "dominant" in the photo, i.e. are they side-by-side both facing front, or is one turned slightly away or standing further back from the camera. Is one hogging the center of the shot with the other off to the side? Which has his/her arm around the other?
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