Weddings are one of the few rites de passage that are widely known in different cultures. Weddings are as diverse as each cultural context, they adapt to them, and transform over the course of time. The focus of the international conference “Promising Images of Love” is on the ways in which weddings mediate values that are often highly normative. Norms in this context are understood as guidelines to act by, which express specific values and justify normative acts. Values and norms in wedding practices are numerous, complex und interlinked on several levels notably social, political, cultural, historical, religious, and economic.

The conference scrutinizes how wedding practices enclose and reshape different norms and values as well as stereotypes with the intent to highlight the performativity of their mediatisation. Mediatisation in the current approach is understood as the interaction between culture (including religion) and the media in a broad sense that comprises all kinds of artefacts of material and visual culture such as images, films, fashion, and architecture. Mediatisation describes the interaction of these two areas and how they adapt to and transform one other.

The following questions are central to the conference’s focus:  Which norms and values form the basis of historical and contemporary wedding practices and representations? How is gender constructed in wedding practices? Which social, political, cultural, religious, and economic norms and values are expressed in these representations and practices? How do they change adapt and transform over time? In what sense is the rite de passage a defining element of a wedding? How do wedding specialists and political-economic factors influence the performative dimensions of the rite de passage? What does the future of weddings look like?