High WASP Weddings, Oriental Trading Company

My daughter may actually kill me if I keep putting up her daydreamed wedding. Even though I try to be so accomodating in my imaginary weddings, in reality I am still taking copyright of her future, a cardinal parental sin. No matter how good I am in my imagination, it's the reality that matters. Too bad for poets, right? But I love weddings, and I plan to continue to examine them. However, in order to prolong my life, we will consider them under the aegis of the "Deconstructing the High WASP" course syllabus.

Today we will consider the question of the Oriental Trading Company. One might assume that High WASPs hate the Oriental Trading Company. That we despise all things that can be acquired by the dozen. In fact, we do not. Please review the images below. Please think, hmm, which items would High WASPs want at their weddings or their imaginary daughters' weddings? From which items might they recoil in horror?

Source

Would the flutes, the most almost-tasteful items be chosen? No. Unfortunately, no. None of the items in the bottom row would make it. The card box is out because a) High WASPs don't give cards with money in them as presents b) the only abstract heart logo we endorse is Elsa Peretti's. The Love aisle runner is out, because decor is too sacred to mess around with and any emotion is too serious to walk on. The personalized flutes are out because SOMEONE MIGHT THINK WE MEANT IT! This is the worst outcome, to have someone think we thought these were OK when they are not. You see, we could maybe two Reidel flutes, or Kosta Boda. Even Waterford is a little too too unless your grandmother owned them first. We could really only use flutes at all if someone had given us a set of 12, or else the hotel handed them to us via someone dressed in a black jacket.

But you absolutely might find any of the objects in the top row at a High WASP wedding. "They are not very tasteful!", you might exclaim with an indrawn breath. No. They are kitsch. There is a fine but perilous line between tacky+cheesy, and kitsch. Kitsch is OK. Kitsch is on purpose. Kitsch is not you-tried-to-have-good-taste-but-failed. Kitschy things are what they are. A camera decorated with wedding roses? A light up colored alcohol drink fountain? A set of bride and groom bubble blowers? These things are what they are. They are not trying to be anything else. This above all the High WASP cherishes. Perhaps because we have decent hearts and shun artifice. Perhaps because we want each item to stay in its category and not try to pass itself off as high class, a status reserved for the few. Even I don't know which is the right answer and it's possible both are true. Possible, and terribly confusing when you are growing up.