bridezillas, burnout, and the wedding industrial complex

say yes to the stress

Firs Zhuravlev - Before the Wedding [1874]

Hey bestie!

We are talking about bridezillas, the drama, the tea, and the reality of the use of “bridezilla” as a term and why it is applied liberally to a lot of women who aren't even acting like a true “bridezilla.”

This will be a defense of the bridezilla and why she is misunderstood and why we all need to be bridezillas—not just when wedding planning, not only as a bride—we really need to get used to voicing our concerns, our needs, our wants, our desires so that the one time that we do it, people won't be shocked. People will be used to you setting your standards and your boundaries and following through with it.

And I really think the ownership of the right to desire and want is the cornerstone of our cultural obsession with bridezillas and women's fear of being called a bridezilla. We as a society are still uncomfortable with a woman who desires and wants.

And obviously, no nuance nellie, there are brides who exhibit true bridezilla behavior to the point of crossing other people's boundaries, but my hot take is that we all have gotten a little too comfortable calling women who express their desires and boundaries, their needs, their standards bridezillas. It has become a way to police women's behavior all while telling them that their wedding is the most important day of their life.

Society tells women that their wedding is the most important day of their lives, and when women care about it a little too much because they're being told that it is the most important day of their life, they get stressed out. It's the first time that they're allowed to express their wants, their desires, their needs, and people all of a sudden think that she's asking for too much when in reality this ownership of desire should have been her default setting since forever. But this is the first time that she gets to experience that.

So yeah, we have a lot to cover so let’s get into it.

the bridezilla

She’s emotional. She’s controlling. She wants things a certain way. She cries when the wrong flowers show up, snaps at her bridesmaids for running late, and insists the napkins be ivory—not cream. She’s the dreaded “bridezilla.”

The term itself is a portmanteau of “bride” and “Godzilla”—a monster bride, out of control, stomping over everyone else’s comfort in the pursuit of her "perfect" day.

And for some backstory, Godzilla adapted from the 1954 Japanese film Gojira, was a metaphor for the consequences of human hubris specifically, the consequences of atomic testing. He’s never the villain in a vacuum… and I want us to keep this metaphor in mind.

The term bride zilla is shorthand for a woman who is labeled as too demanding, too obsessive, too emotional, too much. And yet, what is she really doing?

Planning an event that costs tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, involves coordinating multiple vendors and family members, requires emotional caretaking of everyone around her, and is supposed to represent the most beautiful day of her life, or rather, the most important day of her life.

Or so she's told.

And like I said, we're going to get into the problematic notion that a wedding is the most important day of a woman's life because it's really not. And hot take: it is actually statistically the most important day of a man's life, not a woman's life because marriage confers so many financial and social and physical health benefits to men and the same cannot be said for women at the same level.

Married men literally make more money. They are happier. They live longer and healthier lives compared to their non married counterparts. And the same cannot be said for women. So my hot take is that if anyone should be obsessing over a wedding, it should be the man, not the woman. And the fact that majority of wedding planning and wedding judgment and wedding finances falls on the woman, it's very, very interesting.

Now back to the topic: why does our culture villainize women for asserting control or having high standards, especially in moments when the stakes emotional, financial and social are so high?

To create an event attended by 50 to 100 plus people, it requires a level of detail oriented-ness, but women cannot at any point cannot be obsessive. She needs to be emotionally invested but not dramatic. Be organized but don't be controlling.

It's giving that monologue in Barbie: We're supposed to be xyz things but not too much and not too little—and only in the ways that other people find acceptable.

And as many of the other terms used to shame and control women, terms like gold digger, cat lady, bridezilla as a derogatory term serves the same function. It shames women for stepping into power, even temporarily. It mocks emotional expression. It disciplines women who dare to state their standards and, most insidiously, it penalizes women from voicing their needs and their wants.

So my hot take is that the real issue here isn't the bridezilla or the women who are called bridezilla—it's the culture that tells women that their wedding is the most important day of their life, piling all this pressure on women and then getting Pikachu surprised that women get stressed out while wedding planning.

And are there brides who are an absolute nightmare to deal with? Absolutely. But the truth is bridezilla as a term has been misused to police women from getting what they want. Point blank period.

And as per usual, whenever there is one archetype of woman, we have to pit her against the opposite archetype of that woman. And that archetype is the chill bride.

the chill bride

The chill bride is the cool girl of brides. We all know her: she's the one who lets her bridesmaids wear whatever they want. She doesn't mind if the flowers are late or the colors are a little off or a lot off. And she laughs off major mishaps. She's not stressed. She's laid back, she's low maintenance. She's effortless, she's cool.

now she is sweet and all. But if you dig a little deeper, you're going to find out that the Chill bride is just the wedding world's version of the cool girl.

If you've never heard of the term “cool girl” before, the cool girl is a trope made infamous by Gone Girls’ Amy Dunne. The cool girl eats burgers, watches sports, never complains, and definitely doesn't get upset when things go wrong. She's designed to be liked more than she is allowed to be real. She's rewarded with praise, admiration, and social approval because in a world where women are told to dream big about their wedding day, they're simultaneously shamed for caring too much and wanting things done a certain way.

I remember this one Tiktok video that says “if you’re planning a wedding right now, this is your sign to be a bridezilla” and that’s because bridezillas plan the best weddings…

Don't worry about being a bridezilla. Bridezillas make the best weddings. There are very few times in your life when you're given a pass to act this way, so use it. Everything will work out in the end. Everyone will forgive you and if they don't, screw it because you had the wedding you wanted.

by @tiktoks_older_brother

I also saw this one Tiktok video about how brides who plan their own weddings are their own creative director. It is a real job. It is labor and it is important. So to expect women to be chill while performing legitimate labor—labor that when outsourced cost thousands or tens of thousands or sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars, it’s not surprising how women can get so invested in the process. How can you not care about something that costs you so much time, effort, and resources?

So being aware of that fact and just knowing that bridezilla has become a term used to silence women and keep women in line and be expected to do all this unpaid labor while keeping a smile on her face, and not daring to ever look ungrateful, it all reeks of the misogyny that women still face today.

my wedding industry lore

Once upon a time I worked as a wedding photography assistant so I have some industry experience and a lot of the wedding vendors, even online in the comments that I've seen while researching for today's class, the wedding vendors agree that it is very rare to actually come across a true bridezilla. Actually, they prefer the brides who know what they want, who voice what they want.

And even in the middle of a job—getting your hair done, your makeup done—if it's not up to your standards or they're not doing what you want, say it right then and there so that they can correct it because the outcome is the most important part. If you are going to stay quiet and say “I love my hair,” “I love my makeup” when you really don't, you're not going to give them good reviews and you're not going to give them repeat business. And that’s why it is very important for wedding vendors to leave a good, lasting impression on you so that you will leave them good reviews and send people their way. So when you lie to yourself and to your vendors that you like something when you don’t, you're just cheating yourself out of the best experience.

If you are still worried about coming off as a bride, the reality is true bridezillas are rare, and most of the time, it’s the guests that are the problem. They’re the guest-zillas.

And one of the few instances that would make a bride a bridezilla is if you expect or pressure wedding vendors to lower their prices, or if you insult the value of their work and that's why you want to pay them less. That's honestly one of the few times that a bride would ever be a bridezilla is the lack of respect for the craft and the labor of the wedding vendors. So if you don't want to be a bridezilla, just don't do that.

I also feel like if you have this fear of becoming a bridezilla, you're probably not going to be a bridezilla. It's kind of like parents who buy parenting books—they’re so anxious about being good parents when it's the fact that they are buying parenting books that is a marker that they are probably going to be good parents.

protect your peace

This whole bridezilla phenomenon also reminds me of the scene from sex and the city when Charlotte was wedding dress shopping with Anthony. If you don't know who Charlotte is, she's the more soft spoken out of the four. She's the most traditional, the most demure and mindful out of all of them. Out of all of them, I would say Charlotte is the most concerned with how she's perceived, and she doesn't want to come off as mean to people.

Anyway, she's at this wedding dress shop and she's the type of person to say “I love it” when she really doesn't so having Anthony there as the pushy mother that Charlotte needed, he was the one who drove the show and advocated for Charlotte. And at the end of it, Charlotte gets to pick the dress that she really wanted because she had someone there to voice her concerns for her.

This is very interesting to me because one thing I've noticed in the women who are still living a life according to their standards but people still have a positive perception of them is that they have people around them draw their boundaries for them so the anger of the people who are drawn boundaries with is directed towards that person and not the main woman who those boundaries and standards are for. In this scenario, Charlotte still got what she wanted in the end because she had Anthony there drawing the standards and boundaries for her.

And we see this in the wedding industry as well. You can have your day-of-coordinator, you can hire security, you can hire a wedding planner. These are the people who will tell your guests, your friends and family who like to push boundaries, that that's not going to happen. And so the anger of those people are directed towards the paid professionals who are drawing these boundaries for the bride. So if you already know as a bride that you're going to have all these problems with your friends and family members because they have never met a boundary in their life, it might help to hire these people around you to do all that heavy lifting so you can protect your energy and don't have that transference of anger from other people.

the wedding planning test

It is so interesting that a lot of the traditional wedding planning is up to the bride and her friends and her family…

I don't want to minimize the desire of some of the girlies who have dreamed of their wedding since they were little, and I love that they get to plan the wedding of their dreams. It is perhaps one of the biggest creative direction projects they will ever take on in their life, and I love it for them. But if you're feeling overwhelmed and under-appreciated and overworked and everyone isn't on board with your plans, it's totally okay to take a step back and reframe your priorities.

And the reality that the burden of wedding planning is not all yours to bear. If you cannot trust your future husband to coordinate a party to celebrate your union, why are you marrying him in the first place if you can't even trust him with a party. How are you going to trust him with all of these other aspects of married life?

“the most important day of you life”

And also let's get into the problematic notion that a woman's wedding is the most important day of her life…

I do think that one of the reasons why a lot of women experience stress and meltdowns when wedding planning is because this is one of the first times in their life that they are allowed to center themselves and express their desires and needs… but not too much.

So while this notion that a woman's wedding is the most important day of her life is problematic, I could see the upsides to it.

Stay with me.

I don't think it's 100% a bad notion. I would say it's like 80 to 90% a bad notion because a wedding being the most important day of a woman's life, it gives her a taste of how worthy she is of being celebrated and being the center of attention and adoration. For a lot of women, their wedding is the first time that they get to experience this. And sometimes, it is the first and only time that they get to experience this.

I am so blessed to have a family who made me feel like I am worthy of being celebrated, of being the center of attention and adoration so this notion that there's this one day in my whole entire life where I will be the center of attention and adoration and worthy of being celebrated, and that will be the first and only time I would ever feel that, that notion that it's the most important day in my life, it doesn't track because shouldn't I feel like that all day, every day?

And don’t get me wrong—a wedding is very precious and very special.

But when you live like you are worthy of being celebrated, you are worthy of being the center of attention and adoration every single day of your life and others around you make you feel like that, a wedding doesn't have that much pressure anymore. It's still important. It still is worthy of investment of your time, effort and resources but now there’s less pressure for it to be perfect.

Long story short: the notion that a woman’s wedding is the most important day of her life is 90% problematic but 10% eye-opening for women who have never felt worthy of being celebrated.

And to further bust the myth that a woman's wedding is the most important day of her life. Let's get into the statistics of how a wedding is actually the most important day in a man's life more than it is for a woman's life.

“the most important day of a man’s life”

Married men earn significantly more than their never married counterparts across all age groups, and when it comes to health, there's also a ton of benefits for married men.

—Aimee Picchi. “Married men earn far more than any other American group.” CBS. 2018.

According to Harvard Health Publishing, married men are more likely to live longer, have fewer strokes and heart attacks, be less depressed, and survive a major operation more often than single men. And the explanations offered for these observations include that married men often benefit from increased social support, healthier routines, and partner-initiated medical care. They're more likely to be reminded to go to the doctor, eat better, drink less, and avoid risky behavior.

And also, how many women tell their husbands to stop participating in extreme sports like driving motorcycles or rock climbing or cave diving? How many women have saved their husbands’ lives by doing that?

There's also the social signaling aspect of it all. Marriage is often perceived by employers and institutions as a marker of stability and responsibility, which can subtly influence hiring and promotion. And this phenomenon is also called the fatherhood benefit while mothers experience the opposite, which is called the motherhood penalty.

That is all good and well for married men. But what about married women?

Married women are more likely to take career breaks or reduce work hours for caregiving, and that leads them to having lower lifetime earnings. And obviously, the sweeping solution isn't to force women to stay at work or pressure them to stay at work, all while taking on the majority of childcare and housework, which is what a lot of women are going through right now. That's not a solution.

The solution is to make financial outcomes equitable for women while they choose the childcare setup that works for them as a couple, as a family. And what do I mean by that? Their male partner should be creating equitable solutions to this financial wealth gap. And we've already talked about if you are a married woman, especially if you are a stay at home wife, as a mother, your husband should be putting money into a spousal IRA so that you still have your own retirement because there is a financial wealth gap.

But not to be a Debbie Downer…

Marriage has benefits to women—high-quality marriages, that is.

While high-quality marriages can offer emotional support and mental health benefits to women, low quality or unequal marriages can be harmful to physical and mental health.

Long story short, in general, for the regular degular married couple, marriage confers more benefits on men than it does to women, and for that reason, I would say a wedding is the most important day for a man's life more than it is for a woman's life.

And unfortunately, unless you have an equitable relationship and financial literacy and independence, getting married as a woman is statistically a terrible idea.

Now let's talk about capitalism, perfection, and the pressure to perform.

capitalism, perfection, and the pressure to perform

If you've ever planned a wedding or have been involved in a wedding at some capacity, you've probably asked yourself why are weddings so expensive?

Apparently, the contemporary American format of weddings with a big guest list, a poofy white dress, a catered reception, and this lavish party is part of the top down trickle down mechanism of fashion and culture. Historically, these grand theatrical weddings were only accessible to the wealthy, the aristocrats, the industrial heiresses, and socialites. The modern middle class wedding as we know it today is largely an aspirational imitation of elite traditions. And now that everyone's doing it, it's no longer aspirational and is actually quite commonplace.

And this all started with Queen Victoria. Her wedding to Prince Albert in 1840 popularized the white wedding dress, and it kicked off this global trend among upper class women. Now, white symbolize purity and wealth not because it was innocent, but because it was impractical. Wearing white meant you didn't need to do manual labor, and you can afford an outfit that you'd never wear again. And the same still rings true for today. Wedding dresses can cost into the thousands and up to the tens of thousands of dollars for a dress that you're only going to wear once. And after World War II, the rise of mass consumerism, department stores, and the booming postwar economy helped democratize wedding rituals.

According to scholar Vicki Howard in her book Brides, Inc. American Weddings and the Business of Tradition, the commercial wedding industry grew rapidly in the mid 1900s, with bridal magazines and wedding fairs pushing the idea that a big, beautiful wedding was a necessary rite of passage, and it was no longer just for the elite but now for the every woman.

And so the lavish wedding has become a performative marker of the middle class and middle class success, and it is fueled by Hollywood depictions, bridal magazines, bridal culture, bridal TikTok, and the marketing of weddings as the happiest day of your life or the most important day of your life.

So we have this culture that glamorizes weddings and tells us subtly or in our face that this is what your wedding is supposed to look like and if it doesn't look like this, it's not a good wedding. A lot of brides have this perception that they have to live up to a certain standard. It’s a lot of pressure when social media communicates other people's weddings to you and knowing that your wedding will be perceived by others.

In essence, we have this wedding culture that tells us what is and isn't good enough.

Although, there has been a rise in nontraditional union celebrations like eloping or courthouse weddings or mini monies, and I feel like that is a rejection of this wedding culture that we are all part of, but the notion that all of these options are the alternative still points to how we still have this contemporary notion of big poofy weddings.

It's this pressure that also adds on to women's stress when it comes to wedding planning, and that's so sad. Instead of focusing on how you can create a party that would be enjoyed by your guests, by your closest friends and family, instead of having that be the focus, you're now focused on tiny little things because you are so scared of being perceived the wrong way. You're so scared that you're not going to live up to the standard, all while being scared of being perceived as a bridezilla. Like can we not?

So the main point I want to make today is that “bridezilla” as a term has been so overused. We pressure women telling them that this is the best day of their life, the most important day of their life, and then get surprised that women are stressed and they don't perform well under pressure.

And women being “bridezillas” is a symptom of a culture that tells women that they're not allowed to express their desires, they're not allowed to express their needs, their wants, their boundaries, their standards. And I'm tired of it, honestly.

Women shouldn’t be scared of coming off as a bridezilla when all they’re doing is respectfully telling people that they prefer x instead of y. On a day they’re spending so much time, effort and resources, they should be getting what they want.

And I hope that if you have never felt like you were worthy of listening to your worthy of being celebrated, you're worthy of being paid attention to. If planning your wedding is the first time that you're experiencing that, I hope that this causes you to change things in your life, because you're not supposed to feel all of those good feelings for the first time as an adult planning your wedding. No, you should feel that every single day of your life.

And if you're not even planning a wedding right now, make yourself feel that you are worthy of being celebrated, being the center of attention and adoration. And that starts with treating yourself like you're worthy of all those things, and also curating the people around you to reflect that reality that you are worthy of being celebrated. You are worthy of being the center of attention and adoration that you are worthy of being listened to.

Your wedding and wedding planning should not be the first time that you are feeling all of those things. You should feel that every single day of your life.

All of this to say: the term bridezilla has been used as a term to police women from expressing their desires, their needs, their standards, their boundaries, and we're over it.

That's all I have for you today. I just want to let you know that you have so much inherent worth and value in a world that is hellbent on devaluing you.

Now get that bag bestie.

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