The new face of the Australian wedding owes more to Hollywood, MTV videos and gossip magazines than true love and eternal vows. By Kate Browne

She wakes in a four-poster bed and breakfasts on a light meal prepared by her dietician. When she is finished, she steps into a bath strewn with rose petals. Afterwards, she makes her way into the dressing room, where her hairdresser and make-up artists are waiting to work their magic. Made up and hair done, she steps into a couture dress and designer shoes. The dress has been made to perfectly fit her body, which has been exercised and dieted into shape with the help of a personal trainer. As she leaves the house, there are cameras snapping her every move and a film crew two steps behind. She could be an actor off to the Oscars, or a model followed by paparazzi. In fact, she is an average Australian woman on her wedding day.

"No matter what you say, every girl - whether she is a tomboy or not - wants to be the centre of attention on her wedding. It's your one day to shine," says Lisa Reynolds, editor and producer of i-do.com.au, Australia's largest bridal website.

"And these days, brides want to be glamorous. They don't want to be a princess, they want to be a celebrity" - pampered, photographed, videoed and the focus of it all.

Recent trends point to a style of wedding that is a lot less Cinderella and a lot more Jennifer Aniston. The wedding is back in vogue, and this time the emphasis is on a day where every bride can live like a celebrity. Some in the bridal industry point to a resurgence of family values post September 11, 2001, others say it is simply a fashion trend, but either way things are booming.

Wedding websites have popped up on the net like mushrooms and have more than 40,000 visitors each month. Bridal magazines the size of telephone books sit in newsagencies, keeping company with gossip mags filled with the sumptuous weddings of such celebrities as Victoria Beckham, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Julia Roberts.

But in the rush for glamour there's an ugly sticking point: the reality of statistics. For a start, fewer of us are getting married. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that there were 10,300 fewer weddings in 2001 than in 2000. Only during World War II did Australia register such a sharp drop in marriages. And we aren't so good at actually staying married. ABS numbers show that of those couples who divorced in 2001, a third separated within five years. If current rates persist, 29 per cent of men and 23 per cent women will never marry, and 32 per cent of both will get divorced. On average, most couples will separate after 8.3 years of marriage. In spite of this, the average cost of a wedding has hit an all-time high of between $22,000 and $28,000.

So those who are still saying "I do" are doing it in lavish style. Glenn Findlay, managing director of the Australian Bridal Service, who operates and owns the country's largest bridal exhibition, says business and demand for bridal services has been higher than ever this year. "We have had a bit of a downturn for a while in the last year, but during February we had the biggest attendance of brides we have seen in 12 years," she says.

And for many couples, there is more emphasis on the party and less on the till death us do part. Findlay says elaborate weddings followed by short-lived marriages, like that of singer Jennifer Lopez, have had an impact. "We see celebrities in magazines every day and, perhaps unconsciously, we try to model ourselves on them. So if Jennifer Lopez is getting married, we know she is going to have the best dress, the most amazing reception ... and we aspire to that. Celebrity weddings are so appealing because they represent the epitome, even if these marriages don't tend to last that long."

I-do.com.au's Lisa Reynolds agrees. "The wedding of Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt is always referenced by brides, and John Kennedy jnr and Carolyn Bessette is the other. Both those weddings were not about tizz; they were very stylish and sophisticated. As brides, they were glamorous but accessible," she says.

Within days of actor Charlie Sheen marrying former Bond girl Denise Richards, bridal websites in the US were offering a replica of Richards's Christian Dior gown. One site held competitions to win a replica of Liza Minnelli's wedding cake and a recreation of the fireworks enjoyed by Brad and Jen. Melbourne couturier Luci DiBella says even her older clients are influenced by well-known brides. "The person who really set the look that we do was Carolyn Bessette Kennedy. And when the model Eva Herzigova wore an absolutely superb dress [in 1996], a lot of my clients liked that look and wanted it."

The Australian Bridal Service expo, held twice a year in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, is the ultimate bridal experience. In Melbourne it's held in the Royal Exhibition Building, while the Sydney expo had to move from the Sydney Town Hall to Fox Studios because of increased demand for space. The expos are a dream factory of all things nuptial: from jewellery, dresses, cars, honeymoon destinations, personal trainers, florists, cakes and venues to doves, specially written love songs and your own wedding website.

The brides are easy to spot. Apart from the tell-tale sparkle on the left hand, most are stressed and, more often than not, whippet-thin from pre-wedding diets. There are not many laughs, and the talk at most stalls almost immediately turns to dollars. It seems no coincidence that the expo's principal sponsor is the Commonwealth Bank, whose slogan for the show is "Helping you afford your dreams".

The stalls drawing the biggest crowds are those of the photographers and the "videographers". This is where the vital transformation from girl next door to glamourpuss occurs on the big day so interest is high. The video guys play film of couples whizzing around in speedboats, James Bond style. The photographers have huge albums groaning with arty shots of couples walking through city landscapes, kissing in parks and romping on beaches. "Photos are one of the most important elements of your wedding," says Reynolds. "But there is a move for wedding photos to be a lot less formal and posed; it's more of a magazine look. It's a case of not being a formal bride for the day, but being a model for the day."

Megan West, a former wedding planner, recalls the pressure of her own wedding photo shoot. After enduring shots of her getting ready and at the ceremony, she was taken away for two hours to a location shoot. "When I look back, they are nice photos - but they're not a real reflection of what happened or how I felt," she says. "They don't give me a true picture of how my wedding went on the day."

West thinks that although wedding photos have a more natural look, they are less real than the formal shots at the ceremony. "Yes they can be more real looking, but I've seen location shots of couples on the beach. Why would you be on a beach on your wedding day? Even I had to traipse through vineyards with mud squishing through my toes, looking wistful!" she laughs.

Now working as a drama teacher, West compares the ritual of the modern wedding to a theatre production. "It's a three-act play with a stage manager and costumes, and the bridal party are the actors. Act One is the getting-ready, dressing-up phase, Act Two is the ceremony and usually the shortest bit, and then Act Three is the reception. For most couples, the whole day is a performance."

The Melbourne bayside suburb of Williamstown is a popular spot for newlywed photo sessions. On Sunday afternoon, a wedding party emerge from their Rolls-Royce with a video crew in tow. After filming the bride and groom kissing and walking along the pier, the video guy clips his camera on his shoulder. He takes the bride's hands and spins her around, yelling, "Look like you're in love with me!" He then takes the groom's hands. He starts twirling him around, saying, "Pretend I'm your wife!" as the groom does his best to look enraptured with the cameraman while his bride looks on from the side. Later, the shots will be spliced to look like the couple are twirling around, deliriously in love.

Back at the bridal expo, performance is the name of the game as the day climaxes with a huge bridal fashion parade. In the front row, a group of young girls sit, identical in hipster jeans, tiny handbags and long hair. The bride-to-be sits in the middle of the group flicking her bleached-blonde hair back. Every few seconds, she lifts her left hand to reveal an enormous rock that glistens under the spotlights.

She moves her hand to catch the light, hypnotised by the effect. The girls look unimpressed by many of the dresses, but get excited by one so big that it envelopes the size 8 model inside it. The dress is strapless, hooped like Scarlett O'Hara's and topped with a tiara. They elbow each other, whispering, "That's nice". One girl starts to get teary at the sight and gropes for a tissue.

Luci DiBella says there are two very distinct types of bride: "The younger bride is likely to be more mainstream - very elaborate - and they will follow celebrities and fashion whether it suits them or not. The older market, from 28 up, is more likely to be driven by designers like Valentino and Armani."

DiBella says that younger brides often lose all perspective in the quest for perfection. "When I worked in the mainstream,

I remember one girl was only about 18 years old and her total focus was on the dress, the flowers and the bridesmaids. It seemed like there was nothing beyond that."

Karen Morris, of counselling and mediation service Interrelate, offers a simple explanation for the emphasis on the wedding day. "We have very few rituals in Australia; we have weddings and funerals and [fewer] christenings. For some it can be a case of 'This is my only excuse for a big ritual and I really want to make it the best'. People have an image in their head of what they want and totally lose their budget and perspective along the way."

Interrelate runs relationship education for couples about to marry, and covers everything from compatibility to ground rules for marriage. Even so, Morris says a lot of couples focus only on their wedding, not the lifetime union. "I'm always amazed when I have couples that baulk at the $130 we charge for an education session when that money wouldn't even cover the cost of the name tags at their wedding," she says. "They get so stressed. They generally stress over the small stuff and lose sight of what's important."

Couples have also changed the focus on where the money is being spent, says Glenn Findlay. "A lot of our brides have been working for 10 years and are sophisticated. They want to look sexy and glamorous. With wedding videos, they have gone from capturing the actual day to a full Spielberg production with special effects.

"A lot of girls say, 'If I'm going to pay you to do my wedding video, I want it to look like a film clip and I want to look like Jennifer Lopez.'"

Tony Separovic of Dalma Films specialises in wedding videos that "look like a film clip". Heavily edited and set to music, they have blown the perception of the amateur wobbly wedding video by making it as professional as a movie, says Separovic. "We are discreet and use a lot of candid shots; we use filters and polish it up. Often when clients see it, they don't think that it's them in the clip - often they will say, 'Wow, that's actually me!'" Separovic says it takes at least five hours to get the footage needed to make a 20-minute clip.

Although capturing the day is important, some couples can go too far. There are the horror stories, from the bride who demanded her bridesmaids lose 5kg to look better in the photos to the over-zealous videographer who dictates the order of the reception to get the right shots. "Some people just put far too much focus into capturing the day rather than enjoying it," says Megan West.

Among the excess, there are still alternatives for couples wanting to tie the knot. To avoid the pressure of performing at a wedding, Jennifer O'Callaghan and her partner, David, chose to elope to Hong Kong last year. The ceremony was witnessed by two strangers and captured by a handful of snapshots. "I really think that marriage is just about the two people involved," she says.

"Everything else is extraneous. All the fuss, expense and ordeal of a big wedding is just a distraction to what it's all about. It was definitely more intense, romantic and scary because it was just the two of us, no distractions of guests, receptions, worry about who's sitting where. It forces you to take what you are doing seriously."

But maybe that's just too much commonsense for the 21st-century bride and groom. One friend recalls her recent experience as a bridesmaid: "We spent four hours after the ceremony traipsing around the Sydney Opera House to the beach, being filmed doing everything you could imagine. I couldn't tell by this stage if we were making a feature film or having a wedding.

"The last straw was when we ended up in the gardens. It was raining, my dress had ripped and the video guy was demanding that [the bridesmaids] skip around a tree. By the time we got to the reception I was totally exhausted. The filming had taken all day but that was exactly what the bride wanted. She said she wanted her wedding to look like a movie."

Top five celebrity weddings

Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt

Carolyn Bessette and John Kennedy jnr

Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas

Madonna and Guy Ritchie

Victoria "Posh Spice" Adams and David Beckham