[This post was intended as a response to a thread that has vanished - it is way off topic as a reply to your post, but at least it is in the same chapter and about marriage. FWIW, I think Bride people were the guests at the wedding breakfast- although I can't even guess whom.]

I think Jane Austen knew her readers would have prejudices about Emma before they got so far as discovering she was "Handsome, clever, and rich"(1). Emma is only one in a long line of titular heroines of Romance, and the readers of Clarissa, Pamela, Cecilia, Camilla, Evelina, Amelia, Celestina, Belinda, Leonora, Elfrieda, and the Modern Griselda would be expecting certain things of Emma.
For the first half-page, these expectations seem to be answered, although there is something suspiciously satirical in the laundry-list dispatch of her excellencies, and she has been allowed at least three years more tranquility than most heroines, and there is none of the usual praise for her integrity, industry and accomplishments, and worse, a full paragraph devoted on her two acknowledged flaws ("having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself"(1)).
Still, her virtues are the ones that make her an eligible bride, her flaws are nothing a modern Petruccio can't tame, and she is on the brink of 21, the age of independence, deliciously like Sappho's apple, just out of reach and ripe for plucking.

But then there is her unaccountable attitude to marriage. For what does she exist, if not to be married? A romantic heroine should be filled with selfless joy after her friend's wedding. Her tender, grateful reflections should be followed by dreams of the day her prince will come, or (if that is too forward ) at least a sense of anticipation as to the expansion of her social circle this wedding must result in. We are told she had a cheerful disposition, so why has she nothing better to do than "only to sit and think of what she had lost.?
The schooled reader, seeking the conventions of romance, can see the situation is reclaimable: the too-indulgent governess has succeeded in making a good match for herself, and might yet promote an ambitious match with a wealthy scoundrel, like Miss Margaland in Camilla. The father is just about ready to toddle off the perch to leave her properly orphaned, her fortune dependent on his will and its contestability. The sister in worldly London could prove as self-centered and silly as Clarissa's Arabella. Mr Knightley might be a cold, rational Mr Monckton, condemning our heroine in the eyes of the worthy Mr Elton, or colluding with him in a forced marriage for her estate. Above all, we can be sure no author of Romance would have the temerity to keep her heroine safe and prosperous for three whole volumes.