The folks at Rap Genius have come up with an awesome way to explore The New York Times' Vows section.
They just launched Wedding Crunchers, which lets users measure the frequency of specific phrases in the newspaper's wedding announcements since 1981.
Rap Genius puts the site's mission perfectly: "What do the world's most self-important people think is important?"
The searchable database includes 60,000 wedding announcements, and the site has already created some neat charts showing wedding trends over time. We've included some of them here, with permission from Wedding Crunchers, and will keep adding as we explore this awesome new database.
This graph shows how frequently the numbers "25" and "35" have shown up in wedding announcements over time. The Times' Vows column underlies the trend that people are getting married later in life.
References to New England boarding schools have become less frequent over time, signaling an increase in diversity -- or at least a decrease in WASP-iness.
How the banks have fared over time. Merrill Lynch had a rough go after the financial crisis.
