This is the very thing I was talking about. Have I not ever heard about it? And around 20 years ago? (doesn’t seem that long ago and may have been longer than that) I went to a LOT of weddings.
As for the point 3. I think even in this more casual time people know if they get a formal wedding invitation in the mail they have to dress well… in formal attire. If you aren’t sure a “formal attire” or “evening dress” should really suffice. I’m not saying people can’t request, even demand, a dress code, but really do they want their friends there or not? I think if you invite people to a party and proceed to tell them how to dress, what color their hair should be, whether I need to attend alone, etc. is a bit presumptuous. No, I probably won’t go, but I still think people with those expectations are indeed TA.
Yeah, my younger son had a “destination” wedding. We Couldn’t go. We don’t have the money for that and he knew it. I guess I shouldn’t feel too bad they aren’t married anymore less than 6 years later.
There were absolutely bridezillas forty years ago - they weren’t called that, but they existed. Dress codes - 40 years ago the bridesmaids matched. The maid/matron of honor may have had a different style or slightly different color. I actually see less matchy-matchy now than then - I’ve been to a few weddings recently where the bride decided on color and length and each bridesmaid chose their own navy blue floor length dress. Guests were expected to dress with a certain level of formality depending on the wedding - maybe suits and dresses , maybe Hawaiian shirts and sundresses , but there weren’t dress codes like all guests are to wear a particular color or every one should dress like it’s the Roaring Twenties. And “No Ring, no Bring” or a variation has been around forever. - people who don’t have enough room to invite all the family and friends they would like are not generally going to give someone a plus-one to invite someone who is a stranger to the bride and groom. I might want to invite my cousins and I’ll invite their spouses or SOS even if I barely know them or don’t like them. But I’m not giving my single cousins a plus-one to bring someone who is not significant to them , like a co-worker they never even socialized with before.
I assumed this whole time that the dress code they were talking about was for the guests. The people actually involved the wedding may not only have dress codes, but have specific outfits they are supposed to wear.
I can’t see that as any different than people having costumes in a play.
We had casual Fridays, but you could donate to charity and get a few more casual days as well. During COVID we relaxed the dress code allowing employees to dress for their day, which means every day is casual Friday now. I make it my mission to purchase the ugliest button down shirts to wear on the days I have to go into the office.
I do think that today’s bridezillas beat all. And whoever said ‘Instagram’ above hit the nail on the head. These ladies are so obsessed with how the photos will look they completely forget every rule of etiquette. They confuse hosting a party with producing a commercial.
That sounds about right to me if this stuff is really happening. My photographer sucked and because of reasons beyond my control so did the officiant.* But the pics. didn’t suck because the guests didn’t “match” but because the photographer was an idiot.
*Both photog and minister were last min. replacements. So much for planning eh?
I’m sure people like that exist. I’ve been a wedding photographer since 2004. I’ve shot maybe 400-500 weddings. In my experience, it is very rare to get a bride like that. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever worked for a single bridezilla (to my definition, at least) in any of those weddings. The stories, while real I’m sure, are overblown. Or maybe only chill people hire me (which may be true.) ETA: Thinking about it slightly more, there were 3 or maybe 4 brides that I would consider “difficult” in that time. So like 1%.
That is true in my experience as well. I never experienced any drama at all the weddings we played. Drunk people, rowdy kids, boring dollar dances (are those still a thing?), but never screaming, fighting or someone being kicked out. Just people having fun and doing all the traditional schtick.
Oh, it’s been about a decade since I’ve seen dollar dances, but I’d bet they do still exist. They tend to happen in more first-generation ethnic types of weddings around here. So you’ll see them with the Greeks, the Poles, the Serbs, that sort of thing. Other traditions that have become rare to at least the people that hire me are bouquet tosses (these days, I maybe see them at 10% of the weddings, though, honestly, it’s been since probably around 2018 when I’ve seen one) and garter tosses (that’s a fucking weird tradition to me, and, thankfully, I rarely see that anymore. Maybe a quarter of the times I see a bouquet toss.)
I don’t know much about Reddit, but I frequent travel forums where there can be a high proportion of women who are clearly of an age to be mothers of brides (or opinionated about them), and therefore fret about all sorts of details of weddings.
Those who do, occasionally refer to “the X” as though there is some immutable law of etiquette that says you must have X. For example, “the rehearsal dinner” (say what?) - and on one occasion “the cake smash” (as though smearing wedding cake over the bride’s face was A Thing rather than grounds for instant divorce).
Some things may be passing crazes (is dancing down the aisle still A Thing?), but the whole idea of a “wedding industry” seems to have formalised all sorts of extras, though whether that’s cause or consequence of the “must look good on social media” impulse, I don’t know.
Compare and contrast (as they say) the various daft/outlandish production numbers some people make of marriage proposals.
Yeah, I have to admit this is a critical point I neglected to consider.
Humans are like particles; they change when observed.
This too.
Fifty years ago if you threw a wedding or a funeral, your guests would show up in suits without being asked to because that’s just what they assumed they should arrive in. You wore a suit because… of course you did. It was not necessary to ask guests to wear a suit, because they were going to wear suits. People’s manner of dress was different then. (Fifty years before, you would wear a suit to go to the store.)
We now live in an era of essentially disposable clothes; people have a completely different attitude to how they dress now.
What I was trying to say is that 40 years ago only the bridal party had a very specific dress code - and the bridal party dress code seems to have loosened up since then. While simultaneously some people impose much more specific dress codes on the guests than were common in the past.
I don’t know if the rehearsal dinner is standard everywhere - but it is here. Mostly because you can’t ask people to show up on a weeknight a few days before the wedding for the rehearsal at a time that may prevent them from having dinner between work and the rehearsal and then not feed them. But it’s usually not a big thing - the bridal party and possibly the parents of the bride and groom. Usually not even sibling of the B&G unless they are in the bridal party.
A buddy of mine does white dove releases. When he first started his business he did weddings, parties, and funerals. He absolutely hated doing weddings. Maybe bridezillas are more likely to want dove releases?
He quickly stopped doing weddings. He and his employees do 1-3 funerals a day. He loves dealing with the bereaved.
Oh I love aita wedding drama. Mothers-in-law who wear bridal gowns, brothers proposing to their girlfriends, grooms banging the bride’s sister in the bathroom. I don’t know what percent of them are real, but I love them and I believe enough of enough of them, having seen icky behavior at my own wedding and others’. Nothing to do an r/relationships post or r/justnomil but enough to roll eyes at with other attendees.
My other favorite genres of guilty pleasure posts include: terrible real estate pictures, horrible boss stories, weird in-law stories, monster step-parents. It satisfies my desire for drama while satisfying my desire to not having it in my life
I’m embarrassed how well I relate to this post. I had to stop reading Slate advice columns because my thirst for other people’s drama had reached a fever pitch. I don’t know what that is about, but I know I’m not alone.
I’d just like to clarify that i was comparing today’s bridezillas to the bridezillas of the past. I said nothing at all about the vast majority of brides who are perfectly normal humans. If you read that differently, go look in the mirror.
