That's why, when the 33-year-old unmarried cosmetics saleswoman discovered she was pregnant last November, she panicked. She had known her boyfriend only a few months and recently moved from Boston to the Denver area to live with him. He immediately asked her to marry him.
She figured they'd better elope. After all, it wouldn't be long before she would start to show. Still, a part of her heart broke to give up her girlhood dream of a lavish ceremony and a really great dress.
But, in the end, she didn't. On April 21, with a very pregnant belly swathed in many yards of satin and jeweled lace, Onnis married Bearz Garcia, 34, in Colorado, complete with three bridesmaids, a catered dinner and a guest list of 140. Her baby is due July 10.
Brides have been getting married pregnant for as long as there have been fathers toting shotguns, and due dates always can be fudged. What has changed are attitudes about the acceptability of mixing up the whole love, marriage, baby carriage order of things. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, in 2004, roughly 1.
5 million babies, about 36 percent of all births, were born to unmarried women. Those numbers signal a jump-start to the single-motherhood trend that had leveled off during the mid- to late 1990s. The previous high was in 1994, when the Census Bureau reported about 30 percent of babies were born to unmarried mothers and about one in four women were pregnant when they got married.
"The world has changed. Pregnancy is something that no longer needs to be hidden," says Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution, who studies children and families. She adds she's just glad couples like Onnis and Garcia still think marriage and children go together no matter the order.
And when culture shifts, can retail be far behind? Mall maternity stores are now featuring their own line of bridal gowns. So are several Internet sites catering exclusively to the pregnant bride.
Jessica Iverson of Santa Barbara, Calif., founded Maternity Bride in 2004 after she was unable to find a decent wedding gown to cover her growing belly. She and her boyfriend first thought they would wait to marry until after the baby was born, but around her sixth month of pregnancy, traditional urges kicked in.
"I went to a bridal salon, but they didn't treat me that well," she remembers, "I gave up and went online and spent several days trying to find something. It was pretty upsetting." She ended up spending $250 for a dress five sizes too big, then paying another $300 for alterations.
After the wedding and the birth of her daughter, she decided there was an untapped market. Today her maternity wedding gowns are in a handful of bridal salons in this country and in England. The bulk of her sales, however, come from online sales.
Some speculate celebrity couples have a hand in boosting this trend. Think Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes who married seven months after the birth of their daughter, or couples like Keri Russell and Shane Deary or Matt Damon and Luciana Barroso who married after announcing a baby was on the way. "I think what celebrities do impacts our society tremendously," says Rebecca Matthias, president and creative director of Mothers Work, the maternity retail giant.
Until very recently when a celebrity became pregnant she would usually go into seclusion. Today she flaunts it. This spring Mothers Work's stores, including Mimi Maternity, Pea in the Pod and Motherhood Maternity, have introduced a line of wedding gowns.
While the stores always have carried a dress that could be used in a wedding, the idea of designating a bridal line is new, says Matthias. Onnis admits she did worry a little about what others would think, especially their families. Hers is a traditional Italian family; his are Jehovah's Witnesses.
While initially disappointed, both sides of the family did come around and grew excited by both the prospect of a wedding and a soon-to-follow grandchild. "She told me I deserved this recognition," Onnis said, "And you know what? She's right.
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