Well, that part does seem a bit unusual. I would expect more casual or older weddings to lack attendants, but if they are young and have the resources and desire to get all of the other details right, it does seem odd they would choose not to have attendants.
In general, I agree with WhyNot – the marriage is for the couple, but the wedding itself is, to a great extent, for friends and family. Not having attendants in a way seems like the antithesis to that sentiment. I’m curious if you know these people personally, Cunctator, and whether you think this choice somehow reflects on their personalities.
I didn’t have anybody walk down other than my siblings, and my parents walked with me. I’m not a fan of giant flocks of bridesmaids, and with my circle of friends, there was no way I could choose only, say, two without insulting the rest. This is fairly common in my circles, and people with many siblings may even skip having their siblings walk down.
Several have explained how they don’t agree, myself included. Unless you are proposing that you should have all your friends and family as attendants, then having attendants just means putting some of your friends and family higher than others. I don’t see how failing to do this is the antithesis of your wedding being for friends and family.
I agree with Princhester - we aren’t talking about a wedding with NO ONE PRESENT. We’re talking about no bridesmaids and groomsmen. If you’re still getting married in front of other people, you’re still sharing it with the community. What am I missing here?
My guess, were I to attend such a wedding would be along the lines of what Ludy explained. If you have a large family, or group of friends and feel like anyone who wasn’t included as an attendant would feel slighted it would just be easier to have no attendants.
I know that in a lot of cases, picking out attendants is sort of a political nightmare. In my case it was easy enough - I have two sisters and one best friend. Viola! Three attendants. I did this math and turned to my husband and said “you should pick three attendants so we match!”. He has one brother, one best friend and a male cousin he’s considerably closer to than the rest of them (because that cousin was local and the others were all out-of-state). Viola! Three attendants! Win!
On the other hand, my eldest sister’s wedding was a nightmare. She had a fairly sizeable circle of friends (8 or 9 if I remember correctly) who all wanted to be bridesmaids. She also has two sisters. 10 or 11 bridesmaids is ridiculous. However, she didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings by picking Jane and not Jill, for example. She ultimately worked it all out, but for a while there, she seriously contemplated doing without attendants altogether just to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings and avoid having a ridiculously large bridal party at the same time.
Plus you can get blended family headaches when choosing attendants, also. To use my own sister as an example again, she’s technically a half-sister (we share our father) - and her mother about hit the roof when she wanted me to be a bridesmaid. Because I’m the oldest child of The Devil.*
Then there’s the whole deal where it’s kind of odd to have an uneven number of attendants - like the groom has a best man and one groomsman and the bride has a maid of honor and 6 other bridesmaids. You don’t want the bridal party all unbalanced, which can be sort of complicated to manage too. You get weird situations where one of the groomsmen meets the groom for the first time at the rehearsal dinner (true story - my brother was a groomsman at my second sister’s wedding and met the groom the night before the ceremony at the rehearsal - my sister and her fiance lived in Ohio and my brother was at school in Alaska, my brother in law didn’t have any close male relatives and only had three really close friends but my sister had four attendants - hence my brother-as-an-attendant).
My best guess is that while it’s not really common to have attendant-free weddings (at least not for first weddings and weddings where the couple is under 35 or so), it probably happens a fair bit just because it’s easier than dealing with the logistics. If the wedding party for my wedding hadn’t been childishly easy to organize, I might have skipped having attendants too.
*My sister’s mother’s pet name for my mother. Why no, she isn’t over the divorce yet, why do you ask? And it’s only been 30-odd years, too.
