Is a wedding every woman's dream? No, it's not, but in most patriarchies it looks like a necessity because so much has been set up against the freedom - even the barest of bare respect - of women. Without freedom a woman can't make her way in a patriarchy, and without respect she may even hinder herself in gaining SELF-RESPECT. Tough rules need tough girls not to be totally unacceptable. From a time period that OPENLY operated with double-standards, one standard for him and one standard for her. For him to take advantage of a girl (of the "lower classes"?) and still get a bride of a "good family" for more than fun, she would have to accept this system of lies and social limits, depicting herself as "good", and the cum sock-girl of a "lower class" as "not good" girl. Maybe she never even questioned such a system because she had gained the status of "good"/"respectable" which to her was the guarantee of love
Having guarded her virginity for ages - actually, her entire life - she kept her market value and thus might marry into an even higher status: She went from a "Miss" to a Mrs.
As it is this system would never have had any success had it not been for the initial downplay of anything not supporting it, especially women's self-respect as human beings and not solely as "one of the female sex who may advance to the status of a Mrs". Being a woman she has been taught that she NEEDS a strong man to sort of giving her the "good enough-stamp" to become anything but a specimen of the "inferior sex".
However, times have been changing, and women have not kept subdued which is the crucial part of the system: Without that it doesn't work, and women have proved - over and over again, and not least to themselves - that they are and want more than something like that. They know that they are not the weak vessels who need male protection at all times, even though men have proved that they are not what they have been set up to be ....