Making Marriage Visible: Wedding Anniversaries as the Public Component of Private Relationships.

Wedding anniversaries serve as one occasion on which marriages are made visible. This paper provides an overview of the major types of wedding anniversaries, analyzing one case study in detail. Four topics are examined: the major components of the event, the stories told about the couple, the role of audience laughter, and the socialization of a granddaughter. What holds these separate topics together is the continuing social constructionist thread: all reveal the ways people make a relationship visible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]