One of my biggest fears during wedding planning is becoming the dreaded Bridezilla. A Bridezilla is so eloquently defined by the Urban Dictionary as, “one ridiculous spoiled bitch, that thinks she is the center of the universe because ‘her show’ a.k.a her wedding, is 18 months from now.” It is not just an American TV series; Bridezilla behavior is a real life phenomenon that ends engagements, friendships, and divides families. We all have heard the horror stories: “Bride smashes grooms phone because it rings during rehearsal ceremony; “bride asks for MOH to handed her grapes so, she won’t mess up her makeup” and my personal favorite; “bride demands bridesmaids contribute towards her $10,500 wedding gown, after she maxes out her budget on Egyptian cotton linens.” Yikes.
So, this made me question, what is it about wedding planning that turns even the mildest mannered ladies into egocentric, obsessive, attention-starved monsters?
To answer that question, I needed to travel back years, even decades. I needed to go back to when girls are innocent, impressionable and perhaps awkward, early adolescence. You see, the seed is planted during this stage of life. There is no specific occurrence that that starts the germination process; it could be as a flower girl in an aunt’s wedding or when she first witnesses a woman dressed as a beautiful bride on TV. However, the underlying message that triggers the process is always the same and it goes something like this; someday you will grow up and be a princess for a day. It will be on a warm, sunny day. Everyone you love will be there and they will all be fixated on you. And when the day ends, you will ride off into the sunset with a hansom man – your prince. Basically, the day will be like a perfect dream. At first, girls don’t realize this message had an impact. We continue through adolescence, the teenage years and college. Maybe we even date a few guys and have a high-school sweetheart. Maybe we right their first name with his last name in our spiral notebooks. But what we don’t realize is that message, the seed that was planted so long ago, was silently being fertilized during this whole process and grew into several sprouts.
How do I know this? I know because, over half of women will have a wedding planning Pinterest board, well before they are ever engaged. I know because, some single women shop for an engagement rings. And I know because, there are the late night talks with girlfriends about what the dream wedding dress will look like.
Now you may be saying to yourself, just because I have a pre-marital Pinterest board, doesn’t mean I will become a bridezilla…and that is probably true. But, the fact cannot be ruled out, women are set up from girlhood to believe their wedding day should not only be special, but perfect. The concept of a perfect wedding day is embedded in our culture, taught to us unwittingly by some of our parents, and enforced by a billion dollar wedding industry that wants you to believe your day can and should be perfect. And that is a lot of pressure. Especially since, most things in life – like the weather, others behavior, financial burdens, are out of everyone’s control.
So, when the moment finally happens and the love your life asks for your hand in marriage, everything that you have thought about for decades floods in your mind faster than a tidal wave on the banks of the North Shore, flooding every crevice and synapse in your brain; all because the possibility of the “dream” just got real. Only now you start to realize that prefect may not exist. There are financial restrictions, time restrictions, and hell, even legal restrictions that will prevent you from having the magical day you believe your fairy tale wedding is made of.
In conclusion, blaming a bride for being an unreasonable abhorrent bitch is easy. Questioning how she got there, not so much. Is there a bride gene that lingers under the surface when we are born jut waiting to be activated? I have no idea, but I highly doubt it. What is more likely, is there is a cultural seed that is planted early on in life and fed a steady diet of fertilizer, until it finally sprouts unexpectedly when we start wedding planning. As for me, I am going to do my best to keep my head on straight, for the next 375 days of planning. And I am really going to try and enjoy the process. I might have my moments, but I hope I remember what is most important – the life I am about to create, with the love of my life.
Getting Hitched 