I compared the wedding announcements from the South Bend Tribune and Chicago Tribune, and it seemed to me that there was a significant difference in both the style of the announcements and the background of the people whose marriage was being reported. In some ways, the announcements in the Chicago Tribune seemed to aim at publicizing family and educational accomplishments as much as marriages.

Looking at the recent wedding announcements from the South Bend Tribune, the information provided is generally much less detailed than the write-ups in the Chicago Tribune, and often the South Bend Tribune provides just the most basic personal information on the bride and groom and location of the ceremony. The South Bend Tribune may provide the hometown, occupation, and former school(s) of the bride and groom, but often only the names of the bride and groom will be mentioned in a 2-3 sentence description of the marriage. The occupations and educational degrees that were mentioned by the South Bend Tribune were all respectable and impressive, but probably don’t have the same “social polish” or appeal as many listed in the Chicago Tribune.

The marriages announced in the Chicago Tribune almost always featured one or both of the bride and groom having received a postgraduate degree of some kind. Many of the universities attended are recognizable as prestigious institutions, such as Virginia, Georgetown, Notre Dame, and Northwestern. A large proportion of the recent marriages I read about featured at least one medical doctor, and there was also mention of individuals practicing business and law. One announcement even provided a description of the groom’s family members that were former distinguished officials or businessmen in Chicago. The marriage announcements in the Chicago Tribune definitely seemed to aim at unions between upper class families with backgrounds of public influence or reputable education.

Marriage announcements likely do not speak directly to the readership demographic of a particular newspaper, but they do seem to suggest that particularly “high-profile” marriages aim to announce their unions in chief papers in big cities like the Chicago Tribune. I would speculate that both the South Bend Tribune and Chicago Tribune have audiences from across the class spectrum, but the larger papers appear to contain spaces that are reserved for upper classes.