The topic of weddings, and the culture of romance, luxury and "magical transformation" that is associated with it, is an important aspect of both Finnish and American cultures, yet it has not been studied much. Especially solid academic research is lacking.

Considering that weddings are often thought of as "women's business", this is hardly surprising: other "female" aspects of life, such as birth, are ignored in academic writing to a surprising degree. It was precisely this that was both my inspiration for writing the paper, and the thing that made it very difficult because of the limited quantity of references. I am not suggesting that my paper is a piece of the aforementioned "solid academic research", but for once, I was able to contribute to something that had not been studied to death yet.

Because I am a sociology minor, resorting to just listing the differences between the cultural traits of the two countries was sometimes very frustrating (i.e. "In Finland people often eat a lot of fish at weddings, while in the U.S. they eat more meat!"), when it would have been more interesting to find out why and to what extent. Of course, this was not possible in the context of this paper, and such questions may be impossible to answer in any case. Therefore, somewhat unfortunately, a lot of the comparison in the paper was just that; comparison of the status quo without deep analysis of the underlying reasons.

Other possible American research topics:

• The Sears catalogue as an institution of American life: what connotations does it carry? Who shops at Sears or from the Sears catalogue?
  • While I was lurking around the wedding-themed internet message boards, I noticed a few American women play down their engagement rings that had been purchased at Sears, even if the rings were just as good quality and just as expensive as ones bought at a jeweller's store. The same phenomenon can be seen in relation to Wal-Mart, although this is perhaps more understandable as the Wal-Mart image is one of slightly lower class. During the time I spent in Canada, I found this attitude towards Sears interesting, as I found their stock to be perfectly good quality and comparable to any other vendor.

• The importance of dress in American celebrations and family events: to what extent does it define the participants and their roles?
  • This was again partly inspired by some message board comments. One American bride was worried about her little sister not being able to purchase the required bridesmaid's gown, and therefore the bride would have to tell her sister she would not be able to be a part of the wedding. None of the other users expressed opinions in the contrary. To a Finn, this sounds strange. It seemed not to be unusual for the bridal couple (usually the bride) to also pick out the outfits of the mothers of the bride and the groom. In a sense, people seemed to be color-coded accessories at the event. To what extent does this apply to other similar celebrations and events (such as graduations, funerals, etc.)?

Possible Finnish research topics:

• In line with the Sears topic above: compared to many other nations, Finns do a lot of mail-order shopping. Why is this?
  • Even in the densely populated southern parts of the country, with numerous shops and services, Finnish post offices are jam-packed with incoming parcels from mail-order companies such as Anttila, Ellos and H&M. I once won-dered why mail-order shopping had not taken off in Australia, where distances are long. An Australian friend commented that it was important to be able to touch the product before one buys it. Why does this not seem to be as important to Finns? It would also be interesting to compare this to the Sears example above, which is a quite different way of catalogue shopping.

• The Finnish rippikoulu system.
  • In the questionnaire results, many Finnish couples underlined their lack of re-ligious faith. Yet the large majority of the age group of 15-year-old Finns partake in a rippikoulu and rippileiri ("confirmation school" and "confirmation camp") every year. What is the relation of this to the actual level of Christian faith in Finland? Also the phenomenon of "Prometheus camps", i.e. the non-religious equivalent to the confirmation camps.

Things that I would have done differently:

• From the perspective of the questionnaire, I would have added more specific and explicit questions (such as the gender of the respondent; which sets of parents contributed to the costs; religious or civil ceremony), as returning to ask more questions from the respondents was obviously impossible. Most of these answers were readable "between the lines", but for an academic paper this is not the preferred method.

• I would have included a section on huomenlahja ("the morning present" given to the bride by the groom the day following the wedding), which has a long history in the Finnish culture as a means of securing the woman's livelihood in the case of her husband's death. In connection to this, I may have explored the theme of dowry and arranged marriages further, although this may have been more to do with the Finnish culture than the American one.