Twice As Nice

By Walter Kirn; Wendy Cole

Thanks to her in-laws' meticulous planning, Kristy Anderberg's first wedding was the stuff of memories. Painful memories. She was 19. It was 1974. Her bridal shower, held at a Ramada Inn in Marshall, Minn., featured a synchronized swim team towing an inflatable plastic pool overflowing with gifts. "It was so embarrassing," says Anderberg, who remembers sitting mortified in a lawn chair as the garish flotilla paddled toward her. Worse still, Anderberg's mother-in-law insisted on dressing the groomsmen in light blue tuxes (they matched her other son's eyes) for the ceremony. "She was worried because he didn't have a girlfriend," Anderberg says, "and she wanted him to snag a wife." Afterward, it was off to the races--the dog races, that is, in Deadwood, S.D., where the couple spent a honeymoon at the suggestion of Anderberg's helpful in-laws, who knew of a free cabin in the area.

For reasons that seem obvious in hindsight, the marriage didn't last. When it came time for Anderberg to remarry, the then 44-year-old graphic designer and resident of Irvine, Calif., nixed the aquatics and greyhounds and vowed to do things her way. In a tribute to her fiance Ed's Scottish heritage, she sent out invitations decorated with the family tartan, which also graced the wine bottles and chocolate bars offered at the reception. A swing band played, and there were bagpipes too. The bride wore an ivory dress, the groom a kilt, and Anderberg's 18-year-old daughter was the maid of honor. And despite a $7,000 tab, which took a deep bite out of the couple's savings, Anderberg was thrilled with the results. The second time was the charm.

She hopes. And she's not alone. Every week, some 46,000 American couples take a shot at wedded bliss, and almost half the time either the bride or groom has been previously married. This time things will be different, they believe, and the depth of their faith has spawned a boom in what wedding planners call "encore marriages." Like "pre-owned cars" and "fixer-upper houses," it's an optimistic euphemism that's best not examined too closely--and who wants to?

Certainly not Beth Reed Ramirez, the publisher of Bride Again. The quarterly magazine, started just over a year ago, serves more than half a million readers whose median age is 39 and whose special problems (where to seat the kids, whether to invite the exes, whether to dye the original dress brown) are largely ignored by traditional publications devoted to starry-eyed, first-time brides. "People say it's exactly what they were looking for," says Ramirez, a former marketing specialist who got the idea for Bride Again while preparing for her second wedding.

Luckily for the magazine's advertisers, veterans of divorce have grown less shy about beginning their second chapters in style. "Until recently," Ramirez notes, "many people felt embarrassed coming from a failed marriage. But now they're celebrating big time at the next wedding. They're spending more money and going more elegant and upscale." It's no wonder. Encore couples have established careers instead of student loans. Some have tasted French brie, not just the ersatz product from Wisconsin. According to industry estimates (and, yes, alas, matrimony is an industry), the average second wedding costs $12,000, which is about the same as most first weddings. What's more, the average encore honeymooner spends almost twice as much as the dog track-bound first timer.

Consider the quasi-royal encore wedding of Anne Andrews, 45, and John Carleton Thornton III, 50, both of whom were married once before. Held last month at the home of California state senator Joe Dunn, a family friend, the $30,000 affair was a step up from Andrews' first wedding, which cost a fourth as much. This time, a separate coordinator was hired just to handle the children at the ceremony, who were ferried about in an antique Rolls-Royce complete with uniformed footmen. The rehearsal dinner, a picnic at a lake, included a trout-fishing derby. "All I did then," remembers Andrews of her earlier, more modest trip down the aisle, "was show up with the dress and the groom. My mother did everything."

One reason so many encore brides and grooms don't take orders from their parents and in-laws is that they've become parents themselves. Their nuptials don't merely unite two souls but three or four or more. And that's a challenge. A solution is the "family medallion," a piece of jewelry devised 12 years ago by Roger Coleman, a chaplain in Kansas City, Mo. The medallions, which cost up to $125, have three interlocking circles meant to symbolize the new family's love. They're often presented along with the wedding bands as part of the formal ceremony.

"The medallions are one small way of reinforcing families and making children feel included," says Coleman. Last year, when the trinkets were made available over the Internet, sales shot up 25% and now exceed $500,000 annually. Whether they're any more effective, long term, than any other sort of wedding jewelry remains to be seen, but children seem to like them. Some couples who have used the medallions at their betrothals report that their kids don't want to take them off.

Remarriage, which Samuel Johnson famously called "the triumph of hope over experience," is also a much more relaxed affair. "Nobody's freaking out over shades of pink," says Chicago wedding consultant Elaine Teter. "The wedding day is not necessarily the most important day of their lives," she adds. "After all, they've already been through it, and look what happened."