In marriage, there is a contradiction between what society values (love, commitment) and what it diminishes (weddings). While vowing to spend your life with someone is considered serious enough to involve the state, the wedding where it happens can seem frivolous and impractical.
Maybe this is why many reserve a special kind of contempt for brides (and it is always the bride) who have a good idea about the kind of wedding they would like to have. She even has a nickname: the bridezilla.
When it comes to organising a wedding, the bridezilla is irrationally demanding. She is obnoxious, materialistic, self-absorbed. I know, because I’m well-versed in the genre of romantic comedies about her. So I was surprised when the label was thrown my way.
Not long after the glow of our engagement faded, the sneering began. “Are you a bridezilla?” a friend joked. I didn’t know how to respond. How could he so casually link me to this caricature, when all that had changed was that I (and my partner!) now had a wedding to plan? If I could become one, was no woman safe?
The word nagged at me as we navigated the stress of planning our wedding day – the most meaningful party either of us had ever thrown.
Luckily, we were good at compromising. Having grown up in a large family, I always thought I’d have a big wedding. He, on the other hand, wanted to elope. We landed on 50 guests. I reassured myself that this level of rational thinking took me out of the territory of bridezillas and kept me safely in the company of women who could be taken seriously, women who didn’t care “too much”.
But despite the efforts we both made, the word followed me around when our wedding plans came up in conversation. Was the bar for bridezilla status so low that it included all brides who cared about how their wedding would go? That’s when I realised it was a trap.
Beyond the social pressures of getting married, women also have to deal with the Wedding Industrial Complex. Brides are served thousands of advertisements a day as they scroll through photos of their friends and viral dog videos. Did you know that “wedding influencer” is a real job title? Neither did I till I got engaged and went online!
Then there’s the pressure to look like a bride. Weddings expose our deepest insecurities; areas where we feel we fall short of society’s expectations. But too often our attempts to meet these expectations can be confused with wanting “too much”. Kris Jenner works hard, but the patriarchy works even harder.
I was moved by an episode of Say Yes to the Dress, in which 41-year-old Sherry looked for a wedding gown to hide the parts of her body she didn’t like. A magazine would call them her “problem areas”. But when she saw herself in a gown that did just that, she began to cry.
If even this dress, which hid her whole body, still made her hate the way she looked on her wedding day, it seemed nothing would make her like it. When Sherry eventually said yes to a dress that flattered her body, she said “It … made me want to swish it around like I did when I was a little girl” (a girl whose self-confidence had not yet been shredded by the unrelenting beauty standards we so willingly place on grown women).
I’m not arguing that no bride should ever be considered unreasonable in her pursuit of her dream wedding. But it seems hypocritical to disproportionately pressure women to marry and to look their most beautiful when they do, only to judge them when they try to do both.
The bridezilla trope also diminishes men because it conjures the equally offensive stereotype of the eye-rolling groom, helpless in the face of his partner’s antics and too useless to share in the workload that contributes to her stress.
Even if I could accept that brides care “too much” about themselves (even the most selfish bride has to negotiate the needs of her guests and her partner), the same criticism is usually not levelled at men (betrothed or otherwise) who care too much about their financial or professional goals. In fact, being willing to be an asshole to those around you is often seen as necessary for men to succeed. (If you don’t believe me, just watch The Last Dance.)
There is no financial gain in throwing a wedding – only loss. It’s about creating memories with friends and family. A day of romance. It says something that these goals are deemed less valuable than others, and that a woman who pursues them is often compared to a rampaging sea monster. If she was a man she’d be called a GOAT. Eulogised for her ambition and rewarded with not one, but six rings.
Jane Lee is a reporter and host of Guardian Australia’s Full Story podcast
