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"Gossip Girl" satirizes the overblown wedding Web site.

Published May 12, 2008 6:45PM (EDT)

The fantastically reprobate teen drama "Gossip Girl" has not been lacking for praise of late. Nevertheless, after seeing this Web site for Lily and Bart's upcoming nuptials (via Gawker), I must join the pile-on. "Gossip Girl" has found the perfect way to satirize one of the more repugnant cultural trends of the Tnternet era: the overblown wedding Web site.

Perhaps some of you are lucky enough to be unfamiliar with this phenomenon. I happen to be at the age where each season brings with it a flurry of invites. Remove unnecessary piece of tissue paper. Glance past fancy fake calligraphy, and there it is -- a URL at the bottom of the eggshell-colored square. That's when the ickiness begins. Sure, there are practical and appropriate links, like the RSVP and the gift registries. But then there are the other site links. There is probably one titled "Our Story," in which the bride and groom offer cloying accounts of their first meeting and courtship, and there is the always embarrassing "Proposal" section. (Proposals are like dreams: only interesting for the participant.)

While the "Gossip Girl" site is a mere marketing tool, set up to promote next Monday's season finale, it's also a great sendup of this obnoxious trend. Any diligent "G.G." watcher (like yours truly) knows that Lily and Bart's relationship is essentially a farce. The opening page of the site reads, "We share this site with you because Bart and I recognize how rare our love is and we want all of you to be a part of it." Only Lily still loves Rufus, the ex-rocker Williamsburg hipster dad, and the wedding is obviously going to be a shit storm of epically trashy proportions. This lends a wicked air of irony to the wedding countdown clock at the top of the site, enumerating the days, hours, and minutes "until the big day," which at the time of this writing is seven days, seven hours and one minute away.

I, for one, appreciate the parody of nauseating online exhibitionism. Just because the Internet allows you to overshare about your wedding doesn't mean you should.


By Charly Wilder

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