Thanks to the wonders of facebook I have been able to connect with friends I haven't talked to in years. It is strange to catch up on the parts of their lives that you missed. As I facebook stalk these folks I will occasionally uncover wedding photos. What really puzzles me is the change that a wedding will make on a woman. If you take the case of a woman who is normally considered attractive, in a wedding dress she becomes hot. If you take an average looking woman and put her in a wedding dress she also looks hot. Is there a constant level of hottness that all brides get?

When asked a panel of hottness experts, mainly those people showing as online in Messenger during lunch, a variety of responses came in. One young buck told me he believes the hottness factor increases roughly 3 points on the Bo Derek scale with the application of a wedding dress. He thinks it is the attention to detail and possibly the team of women prepping her for success. Another guy couldn't figure out the question and in the end believes the ring has more to do with it than the dress. Most of the panel fundamental disagreed with this idea since most guys aren't looking at a woman's wedding finger. Ever. (Case in Point: I didn't know what finger it was on until I got married myself. Some girls tried to convince me to not buy drinks for women with wedding rings, but I could never figure out if it was my right or their right. Although I now realize that would explain why I didn't date any college graduates for a while, at least those wearing class rings.) The leading expert, as determined by hair length, told me that he believes there is a constant level of increase, but this increase is then multiplied by the sluttiness factor. Out of the five or so interviewed, only one believes that a wedding dress doesn't do much but highlight the bride's sisters and her bridesmaids.

In order to further research this topic I googled "Ugly Brides", and since most of the links were blocked by the proxy I wasn't able to do more. Thankfully my employer believes that http://tackyweddings.com/ is a good use of my time. My research here finds tons of good information about what not to do, but in the pics all of the women are more than likely more attractive than they were without the dress. Other interesting information was found as well. (Did you know there is an entire wedding industry around camoflage wedding outfits?) I tried to find pictures of women not in a wedding dress so I could compare but googling "woman not in wedding dress" didn't work out well either.

With my lunchtime drawing to a close all of this brings one question to mind, if women look better in wedding dresses why don't they wear them all the time? Maybe Ms. Havisham wasn't crazy after all.

special thanks to tackweddings.com for the pics.