Secret Celebrity Weddings: “Juicy Scandal Without Any Actual Sordidness”

The wholesome fun! Over at New York magazine, where the Fug Girls recently “lamented the dearth of celebrity drama” — they are now singing the praises of sly Hollywood nuptials: “Secret weddings officially are the new DUIs: Suddenly, everyone in Hollywood seems to be getting one.” Even Claire Danes! She knows what cooks!

You have to admit — and I won’t let Letterman go and ruin this for me — it is nice to have a little watercooler gossip that doesn’t include “sex scandals … crashing cars into innocent curbs …” or ”tragic celebutantes forced to cut out their hair extensions whilst in the slammer.” Young women just get it the worst — the media waits for them to trip up and smiles on their tragedy. For now, there’s actually a little positive, fun-for-all, juicy-yet-quaint energy spinning around the celebri-sphere:

For people like us who subsist on Hollywood dirt, a subversive union feeds the beast: There’s something inherently, deliciously soapy in a furtive rendezvous at the chapel — a wanton impulsiveness that can make even the most boring celebrity seem fascinating. Admit it, nothing about Fringe’s Anna Torv leaped out at you until it was revealed that she quietly got hitched to her co-star Mark Valley after a whirlwind romance that no one even knew was happening. We can’t name a single song of Christina Milian’s, but we’re itching for details of her recent Las Vegas elopement with the Dream. And Emmy Rossum just seemed like a run-of-the-mill goody two-shoes with enviably porcelain skin; finding out she’s had a secret spouse this whole time adds a layer of campy rebelliousness to her doll-like veneer. The fact that we only learned about it because he’s filed for divorce, though tragic for the institution of marriage and whatnot, only fuels this — not only did she hide a husband from us, but she went through an entire tabloid news cycle’s worth of internal drama without her mascara ever looking out of place. Lindsay Lohan can’t even do that on your average Tuesday. Maybe Rossum can act.

This year, I’ve had a little fun daydreaming about the covert weddings of Maggie Gyllenhaal & Peter Sarsgaard, Zooey Deschanel & Ben Gibbard, Jason Schwartzman & … oh, who am I kidding? I have no idea what her name is. The news fills empty moments in conversation, and occasionally crushes a friend with a serious Hollywood inafatuation. (Oh, who am I kidding? I was slightly devastated by the loss of Sarsgaard and Schwartzman. That’s fine, Cupid, just save me Patrick Fugit.)

There’s the harmless hypothesizing that comes along with clandestine exchanging-of-rings, filling non-profound times of thought — the wait for the bus, the shower. Like: Isn’t it weird that former lovers Deschanel and Schwartzman got married to other people at practically the same time? And aren’t Schwartzman and Danes and her husband, Hugh Dancy, like, buddies? Ooh, is there an element of competition?

Then, of course, you move on to the next thing. And maybe, like me, you ultimately wash over the competition theory because secret weddings just kind of make you think there’s still romance left in the world. Sure, there are other reasons to keep things on the hush-hush: You want privacy, and you certainly don’t want the media jumping to the conclusion that you’re pregnant …

But I guess I’m like the “most people” the Fug Girls describe: “Most people will assume that without an attendant PR firestorm, you secret-married your spouse for, gasp, love.”

Nevertheless, even if you don’t make a hullabaloo, news of the happy day does get out somehow:

That’s actually the Catch-22 of the secret celebrity wedding: It works best when the secret is tastefully leaked. In order to reap the benefits of being a private person, you have to tell everyone how private you are — after all, what’s the point of beating the tabloids if you can’t then flaunt your stealthily obtained marriage license in their faces? And of course, you understand this means that the earnest and often genuinely romantic motivation behind this new trend will inevitably be bastardized by press hogs craving the attention they’ll get by bragging about how they escaped attention (we know, our brains just collapsed on themselves, too). Still, we’ll enjoy it while we can, if only because for one brief, shining moment, it’s just nice to believe there is some unscripted romance in Hollywood that doesn’t involve Bret Michaels and his Rock of Love bus. Although God knows we have room in our hearts for that, too.

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