Their time and their story: Inscribing belonging through life narratives and role expectations in wedding videography

Despite some contentions and ambivalences, the Western wedding retains a vaulted place in cultural imaginaries. However, little scholarship exists on wedding videography, despite holding rich insights regarding memorialization of belonging. Accordingly, this content analysis of 132 videos explores their utterances, signifying artefacts, and ritual displays. Focusing on life narratives and role designations, we explore their discursive valorizing function. Wedding videos present rare occasions where actors explicitly inscribe requisite emotions, intimacies, values, and aspirations. Typically, however, these films reinforce ‘traditional’, heteronormative stances. Moreover, by skirting reflexive capacities through emotive and seductive repertoires, they may present problematic forms of belonging, given what is conspicuously excluded.