Wedding Industrial Complex
Weddings are all about love and romance, right? It’s a celebration of starting your life as a couple. It’s also the perfect way to celebrate making a lifelong commitment to each other. Or at least, it used to be! In my opinion, somewhere along the way BIG weddings lost their true meaning and became all about the money. Welcome to the world known as the Wedding Industrial Complex!
What is the Wedding Industrial Complex?
First, let’s start by explaining what the wedding industrial complex actually is. The Wedding Industry is full of vendors who focus on one thing and one thing only — making money. These are the hotels, venues, the dressmakers, the florists, the wedding planners and the bakers who will upsell their hearts out making couples believe they need increasingly lavish elements if they have any hope of having a beautiful wedding. It’s not that I am against vendors making money, they are businesses after all! However, with the Wedding Industrial Complex, it goes above that and becomes incredibly manipulative. If a vendor is going out of their way to make a couple feel like their wedding is somehow less if they haven’t got $30,000 to spend then, in my opinion, that becomes a problem! It’s one of the key reasons why I believe that BIG Weddings SUCK! But more about that later…
Societal Expectations and Weddings
It isn’t just Vendors who are part of The Wedding Industrial Complex. Meg Keene over at A Practical Wedding highlights another important point – societal expectations. She draws attention to the judgement brides often face from family and friends when trying to do something a little bit non-traditional with their wedding! One example she uses is how people act shocked if a bride allows her bridesmaids to choose their own dresses so they are comfortable instead of dictating what they will wear!
Author Laura Wilcox has a few anecdotes of her own about the Wedding Industrial Complex in her recent article for Refinery 29. One story that really struck me was the way a wedding coordinator at a potential reception venue actually rolled her eyes when Laura didn’t have her ‘wedding colors’ picked out already. When did it become okay to treat people this way, especially a paying customer? It wasn’t even an isolated incident. A florist also refused to even discuss working with Laura because they have a minimum budget requirement of $15,000 – just for the flowers!
Is The Wedding Industrial Complex Taking the Love Out of Weddings?
I’ve touched on how the Wedding Industrial Complex is making weddings more about money than love in the introduction. This is something that Sian Ferguson at Everyday Feminism also explores. She makes a very good point that the Wedding Industrial Complex may be shaping the way we view relationships. There is definitely an expectation on couples who have been together for a while to get married. In addition, it is still seen as the ultimate achievement in life for women to get married. The Wedding Industrial Complex feeds that expectation! One of the problems Sian highlights from a feminist point of view is how traditional weddings can perpetuate sexist traditions. For example, the father giving away his daughter as though she is his property. Many modern brides are rejecting such traditions and opting for smaller and non-traditional wedding celebrations instead.
How Did We Get Here?
How did we fall into the Wedding Industrial Complex trap? Barbara Risman wrote an interesting article for the Huffington Post in which she suggests that women are primed to want a dream wedding from an early age! She suggests that from the moment a little girl watches her first Disney Princess movie, she is being manipulated into wanting the fairy tale wedding. This continues into adulthood thanks to bridal magazines and a steady stream of wedding reality shows! The one thing that really stood out in Barbara’s article was her suggestion that brides and grooms need to start disappointing the wedding industry and doing weddings their own way. I couldn’t agree more!
These are just some of the great articles I have read recently about the Wedding Industrial Complex. They really highlight how much pressure and manipulation there can be when planning a big wedding. It makes me so proud to work with engaged couples who are looking for smaller, independent venues and officiants. We work with vendors who have a passion for creating unique, small romantic weddings rather than overselling unnecessary trappings you may not even remember! Plus, as explained in a recent blog, the more you spend on your wedding the higher your risk of divorce.
As I read through each of the articles I’ve referenced in this blog, my excitement grows. My book, BIG Weddings SUCK! is in its final layout and will be printed next month. Will the big Wedding Industrial Complex be unhappy with it? Oh yes! Get ready to join the revolution and order you copy today. Order Now…