Still Fighting "Bridezilla" (even in the New York Times)

I found myself nodding in sympathetic agreement as I read Catherine Rampell's essay ("Disrupting the Ceremony" in this week's Magazine)…at least until I got to the end. Her closing line strikes me as so déclassé as to assume either (a) she didn't know how to finish the piece or (b) she was hoping for a reaction. I'm offended by the author's conclusion that brides willing to pay more for "strong and specific preferences" are "Bridezillas."  

A version of this article appears in print on December 8, 2013 in the 
Sunday Magazine with the headline: Disrupting the Ceremony.

Given that the average wedding runs upward of $25,000, as the author notes, I can't imagine finding similar fault in choosing leather seats for a new car or hardwood floors for a home renovation project, preferences for which you certainly pay more. A wedding may only be one "special day" but money is money and most people feel the same way about spending it.

Having recently planned my own wedding (I wasn't the "dream board" type, either), I completely agree with Rampell's assessment of the both the inflated costs and difficulty in finding and comparing prices. Even though we did our own invitations, favors, flowers and decorations, I still pale to think of how much it all cost.  

Beyond the budget, a low-key outdoor wedding like ours still took 11 months of planning, hundreds of hours of research and seemingly endless decision-making, not to mention balancing our own desires with family expectations and cultural messages that brides somehow be smiling, graceful and unruffled throughout the process (while also working a full-time job and continuing to live a normal life).    

I was fighting the term "Bridezilla" earlier this year as a soon-to-be bride.

​Yes, some brides may be spoiled and egocentric - the "bridezilla" stereotype. But where's the male, stereotyped version of this egocentricity? Oh right…running corporations and countries. I'm surprised and saddened that someone who has walked a mile in a bride's uncomfortable and too expensive shoes would hold them accountable for the inflation of the $50 billion wedding industry.
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