When discussing the Spider-Marriage, people on one side say"it was sudden, rushed" and editorially mandated, while defenders cite the build-up, and foreshadowing, and the bunch of moments in the second series that moved things that way (which
Christopher Priest himself admitted in the 2018 Podcast Interview with Gvozden and Ginocchio where he noted the romantic tension in Spider-Man Vs. Wolverine #1, quite against his intentions, ended up providing the buildup and lead to the marriage, which he compares to Ororo and T'Challa's wedding which he opposed...though I wish someone interviewed Priest about the fact that he was the one who wrote their honeymoon issue). Both arguments are strong and valid. My opinion is that I know that many people think that a superhero wedding should be this grand affair, with long engagements, and buildups and so on, but that applies to conventional superheroes like Mr. Fantastic or Superman. I think fans at the time (this was after all quite a popular issue) appreciated Marvel going, "if we are going to do it, do it quick" rather than string people along indefinitely. Peter and MJ married in 1987 (cf, Tom King's Batman-Catwoman "wedding").
Now the big question about the wedding to me,
is whether it is in keeping with the norms of Spider-Man's publication history and practices?
1) Let's take the Peter and Gwen Stacy romance. As Gerry Conway and other early readers noted. Lee-Ditko set up Mary Jane as the main love interest from Issue #25 (her first pre-appearance, and first issue on which Ditko had complete plotting credit) to Issue #38 (her second pre-appearance, Ditko's last issue and indeed she appears in Ditko's penultimate pages of Spider-Man which he knew he was quitting for good). At this time Gwen was "Liz Allan but in college". Then Lee-Romita take over, and suddenly Gwen becomes the romance which many readers saw as confusing, and underwent a number of bizarre personality shifts. Mark Ginocchio pointed out:
Jeph Loeb's Spider-Man Blue incidentally actually does fill in the blanks between occasional interaction to going steady. The point being that an editorial mandated romance against the pre-established logic is inherently a part of Spider-Man. As is the idea of allowing later stories to fill and contextualize the blanks left out. In comparison with the wedding, you had Peter and MJ already cemented as a major love story, and in a series of issues by multiple writers of a team at odds with each other in both the main series and the second series, you had them grow closer together romantically. Then after the wedding you have Parallel Lives which filled-in-the-blanks. Unlike the time Stan Lee wrote the Peter-Gwen romance, you had the cultural context where Mary Jane was already widely read and established in the newspaper strip (which owing to its continuity-laxity and wide reprinting around the world, often made the strip the most accessible bit of Spider-Man and entry-point for readers until the Sam Raimi movie). You had those Hostess Ads which established Peter and MJ as
the couple. You also had Peter and MJ alongside Clark and Lois in Conway's
Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man a milestone that canonized Peter and his supporting cast, alongside Superman's. For long term readers as opposed to newcomers starting out, Peter and MJ were the great romance. The only girl so popular that no matter how many times she was written out, she always came back, each time a more complex and charismatic character than before.
2) Peter and MJ had their first relationship as a couple in the Conway Era, which really began in #142 and continued until their breakup in #192, which is 50 issues but this time you had second series (Spectacular Spider-Man) where writers often showed a more human MJ than Wein and Wolfman intended. You also MJ's appearances with Peter in a number of other Marvel titles such as Marvel Team-Up, and even some early issues of Ms. Marvel. So the actual content of Peter and MJ in this relationship is much bigger than ASM. Now this period ended when Wolfman mandated a break-up between Peter and MJ. His solution was have Peter propose to MJ have her reject it which would make readers dislike Mary Jane and so on. Except in context the proposal is sudden and no woman in MJ's place would have done differently. Peter's aunt gets sick, she makes gestures towards Peter wanting to settle down, and our boy then puts a ring in a cracker box and so on in #182. Some ten issues later Wolfman breaks them up but this time he gives Mary Jane a sympathetic motivation, introducing the idea that her parents were divorced and the example of Ned and Betty's rocky marriage. So you have an editorially mandated break-up out of cheap and sudden plot that comes a little out of nowhere, but which is papered over by a smooth addition and character tidbit that makes it fitting for Peter and MJ. I mean yeah, nobody would say Peter and MJ were ready for marriage then.
The norms of Spider-Man have always been sudden status-quo shifts and then putting in character stuff and other details to round it up. In that light,
the Wedding is absolutely legitimate and part of Spider-Man's history, in the nature of norms. Ought it to have been executed better, sure but that applies to the Peter-Gwen romance, and it applies to the first Peter-MJ breakup. More importantly,
the norms maintain one element in common: realism. Not necessarily realism of character and psychology, but realism in action and detail. Is it realistic for Peter and Gwen to fall in love at that point, absolutely. Was it realistic and believable that Peter would propose to MJ and she reject him, yes. Was it realistic for Peter to propose to MJ again, wanting to rush forth right where he left off at the end of his first relationship and pick up from there after their very intense friendship, yes. The fact that it happened almost exactly 100 issues after their break-up (#192-#292) does add a sense of direction and cohesion to it. Furthermore
while the idea for the marriage was put forth by Jim Shooter, it was supported by Jim Salicrup, then Spider-Man editor. He said that the marriage would have been built up better had he and Shooter communicated and co-ordinated with Shooter telling him months before and him assuming that the wedding would be a fair bit away. So even
the rushed nature of the wedding is more due to workplace errors than anything. Despite the external context and factors, it could still have been made better and that was because of weak communication rather than intent.
Having said that, if I am saying sudden editorial shifts have been the name of the game...that means I should be on board with OMD too. I will say that OMD wasn't sudden. It was set-up and planned in advance, and executed competently as all the best heists are. However the question is again norms...the sudden editorial interference and rush jobs at least maintained realism and continuity. Which is to say that there are almost never long gaps between stories. Everything builds on before. And Spider-Man's strong serialized nature often means you could continuously follow Spider-Man, on a sliding time scale, from the age of 15 to around his mid-20s. BND breaks apart from this norm for the fact that, as Dan Slott admitted, it opens with a huge gap in the time. This is a total drift away from the norms of Spider-Man. Then there's the issue of Mephisto and the demon. To which I am going to quote no less an authority than Steve Ditko who had this to say about the creation of the Green Goblin and changing him from Stan's supernatural demon to a scientific one:
Fundamentally, the Wedding is directly continuous to the character in Amazing Fantasy #15...the Post-OMD era has no such claim owing to its foundation and choice of story.
One final thing, if Joe Quesada hates the wedding so much, why does he swipe from it? Why does he take one panel from the Wedding where Flash and Harry drink and toast to Peter's nuptials, and then invert it maliciously, using the same panel and composition for the final of OMD which toasts the single life:
Swipe 1.jpg
Swipe 2.jpg