Competitive Bride: How Social Media is turning Weddings into an Extreme Sport

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Are you feeling the pressure to impress, to have an Instagram-worthy, mine is way better than yours, Social Media driven wedding?

Apologies for stepping outside my normal inclusive focus, but this phenomenon is very much skewed towards burdening the bride.

To be fair, it isn't new. I once had a bride, not so many years ago, who told me that she had taken all her bridal magazines to work and shredded them because she was feeling overwhelmed and pressured by their contents. That whole "it's the bride's day" trope has a subtext "and it's her fault if it isn't the best wedding ever" has been around since bridal magazines and newspaper reports were the only media influencers out there!

So let's deep dive into what's really going on, and how social media is turning weddings into an extreme, and costly, sport.

You're female

Sounds pretty damn sexist. But here's the thing - and this is backed up by so much research. People feel much more comfortable with judging women to a much harsher standard than they'd apply to men, and with telling you to your face how they perceive you are not up to their standard.

TIP: When they do, calmly and quietlyresponding "I'm surprised you felt the need to say that out loud" , tells them they've overstepped the mark without giving them anywhere to go.

In wedding land, aided and abetted by social media, everything is curated for perfection (except for the odd funny video where perfectly dressed bridal parties end up in the water because something collapses). And, in the push to achieve that perfection, brides are bombarded with messages about their bodies, their teeth, and their need for a spray tan, their need for boot camp to train for your wedding. And not just direct salesy messages, either, all, of course aimed to make you feel so bad about yourself that you'll spend silly money to "fix" it.  The multiplicity of perfectly curated social media posts about other people's weddings, reinforce, reinforce, and reinforce the need to spend up big. Extreme sports are not a budget option.

You're seen as the primary planner

Not so long ago, your mother was both hostess and wedding planner. You, as the bride, had some input but zero responsibility!

I'm not suggesting that we should go back to that. All weddings were governed by strict etiquette and therefore followed a pretty standard template, while you were free to spend time with your fiancé, deepening your bond.

Current "wisdom" is that a bride needs 40 hours a week for a year or more to plan a wedding, and train for it! Add that to a full time job (or full-time parenting) and there isn't much time to spend on your relationship.

Social media has a lot to answer for

Social media has transformed weddings from intimate, personal celebrations where there was little pressure to outdo the weddings of friends and family members, into elaborate, picture-perfect events, akin to an extreme sport. The drive to create a visually stunning, shareable wedding experience has led to the escalation of costs and stress levels, making what should be a joyous occasion a formidable challenge.

Worse, what pretty well nobody is admitting out loud is that while the drive towards perfection on social media has an immense effect on brides, and by extension, their partners and wedding parties, it also heavily influences wedding vendors. Never forget that.

Perfection Paralysis

On social media, the success of your wedding is measured by the number of likes and shares each post receive. Why is this? Social media is a  virtual stage, so of course you feel that you must put on a performance that will captivate your audience (most of whom you don't know and never will!). The pressure to impress with every detail—from the engagement photoshoot to the honeymoon—keeps growing. It's no longer about the joy of the day. At least not in social media land.

To compound the issue, it is not just about your likes and shares. One of the reasons that messages about planning your wedding will normalise that the process will be

• complex
• time-consuming
• focussed on the photographable components

is that the visual perfection of your wedding can be used for marketing the service provided to you by the various vendors who make up your wedding team and who you pay to provide a service to you for your wedding. They need you to be as close as possible on the day to their "ideal couple", the demographic they are marketing to. You are not their entire focus.

Being faced by perceived visual perfection from all quarters makes it harder and harder to develop your own vision of what would be authentically you, as a couple, and easier to not even ask about, let alone question, whether their values and yours align.

Emotional and Relationship Toll

Relentless pursuing a social media-worthy wedding can take an emotional toll on you. It will also affect your partner, regardless of how involved they are in the process. Even if they leave it all to you, or rather especially if they leave all the planning and decision-making to you,  the stress of orchestrating a flawless event can compromises what the day could and should be about: celebrating love and commitment.

There is also a dark side. If your focus is on the wedding, and you are spending little time with your partner, you are not only missing out on what should be one of the more carefree and loved-up period of your relationship, you may well miss red flags, if those exist. Red flags that might have made you rethink the relationship. A great wedding followed by a quick divorce is also a growing trend.

What to do

You can't easily shred Social Media. But you can question it, and you can keep a focus on the feels. Ask yourself what would remain of your wedding if every single picture, every single social media post, were to disappear? What would you remember?

Would it be feeling stressed on the day as you worry about how you look, whether your wedding is perfect enough, and you rush about trying to get as many images as possible of everything looking perfect, including you. Or will it be memories of happiness, of interacting authentically with guests who are clearly happy for you, of sharing intimate moments with your partner with the love welling up into both of your eyes?

The answer: work to achieve a work/life balance between creating a special event and maintaining your financial and emotional well-being.

The bonus. The feels are free! Embrace authenticity. Whereas visual perfection (aka social media cred) costs money, time, and self-esteem to create, the emotional content of your wedding just takes some thought.

Related Information

• Consent, Celebrants, and the 'Real Estate Factor'

Thanks for reading!