To think that Millennials / Gen Z have sucked the joy out of weddings?

[EveryFlavourJellyBeans]

Sort of inspired by a few threads I've seen on here and on Reddit. I'm a geriatric millennial and went to quite a few weddings in my childhood and 20s and I read some of the stories on here with a mixture of horror and fascination.

Elaborate hen / stag dos abroad costing guests thousands and if you can't afford to go then you don't make the wedding guest list.

Unreasonable demands for parents with babies in arms, along the lines of not even wanting the baby in the venue looked after by another so that Mum can nip out and BF etc or being offended when parents turn down invites to multi day events miles away from where they live.

Elaborate colour schemes with dress codes for guests, unflattering dresses for bridesmaids etc. Demands that bridesmaids pay for dresses they will never wear again.

Some of the nicest weddings I've been to are low key shindigs in village halls, where everyone was relaxed and happy instead of being uncomfortable, posing for endless photos for the Instagram shots.

Is it social media driven? Does everyone only care about how the wedding looks and not if guests are having a good time?

I don’t need evidence. What on earth are you talking about? Evidence? What are you the CPS?

Well why are you connecting such unpleasant behaviour to other posters then?

Because they’re being unpleasant about other people’s weddings

I think hating weddings is my favourite Mumsnet cliché. Someone claiming to have got married on a compost heap wearing a 50p dress from oxfam, and held the reception in their garden shed where they served spam sandwiches. The guests wore rags and everyone said it’s the best wedding they’ve ever been to. And anything more than that is purely just for show and sure to end in divorce.

Not half as unpleasant as you imply and not half as unpleasant as your ageist posts.

Oh well. We’ll agree to disagree then

I’m a millennial and most weddings I’ve been too are fun! But I have noticed more of a trend recently for people choosing abroad destinations and also a lot more child free weddings. Which is perfectly fine of course it is their choice but has meant us turning down some invites. We also got an invite recently which also included a colour palette and we got told we have to wear something from that palette, this was all guests not just the wedding party!

Yabu.

It comes down to the couples and the family dynamics.

I know plenty of millennials who had simple weddings, plenty who had elaborate ones, and plenty who had destination ones. Some had children, some didn’t.

Not everything is down to generations. 🙄

Its not everywhere

My friends did not do this. We all knew that a "destination wedding" simply passes the cost to your friends by making them fly to a cheaper location not to managing demanding that you commit to "celebrating" with them for several days

I didn't care what anyone wore as long as it was neat/respectful of it being a celebratory occasion.

My hen do was a meal & night out and i made sure the few people who did travel to my city for it could stay with friends and family and not have to pay hotels.

My wedding had 3 babies, 2 toddlers, a couple of kids. The only rules were to ask that people whisk out a baby if it was crying mid vows (we had a side room with sofas and teas/coffees/biscuits).

I completely agree. I'm a millennial and can't believe what I'm being asked to do for a wedding this year. The issue is its one of my best friends so I dont feel i can back out. I've spent 1.5k to go abroad for the wedding and pay for hen do. My wedding was in a pub, easy for everyone to get home. No overnight costs. People assume everyone will love to do this exciting stuff when most really don't but do it out of love. I've noticed the more you do the more they want too

I’m mid-40s and never heard of anyone having a wedding in a village hall (admittedly I live in a city, but lived in a town when younger). Is that a thing?! Who provides the food?! Where’s the bar?! No thanks. Went to my first wedding in several years last year for my younger cousin. It was no different from weddings in the 90s, 00s and 10s. In a normal venue local to them, not contrived, not social media obsessed. also have various younger colleagues that have married over the years and this seems still to very much be the norm.

I have been to many weddings, including big 3 day shindigs on the East Asian side of my family, cost me a fortune to fly overseas and then 3 outfits. Dual language ceremonies that take ages, then Tea ceremonies in addition. Brides changing dress a few times. They are quite spectacular especially if the family are rich like when my half brothers Daughters have got married.

We had a simple village hall wedding but lots of food from great caterers and a free bar all day and night. Then DH has a big Norwegian element in his family so a few weddings have had some guests in traditional dress and those massive fabulous big whirly Norwegian cakes decorated with flags.

I am delighted to have been a guest at 37 weddings of every kind from tiny and off to the pub up to the big 3 day affairs and everything in between. Being a witness off the street is on my bucket list. I just hope people don’t feel compelled and get in to debt to get married. Regardless if fancy or not it’s the marriage that important and not the wedding.

Honestly you hit the nail on the head

Last wedding we went to was all done for instagram pictures. We were told what to do and how to react for the photo op. Even down to how to throw the rose petals. Then to top it all of the bride and groom emerged dancing with champagne bottles that they sprayed us all with a then poured into a tower of glasses. We went home early

I’m a millennial and I absolutely love weddings, including big fancy weddings abroad - I just make a holiday of it! But then I love any excuse to travel, to dress up, to drink champagne, to celebrate etc.

Ironically if I ever got married I would have a very low key wedding, as I wouldn’t want all the attention. There would be dressing up and lots of champagne though.

My parents married in the 1960s. It was a fairly posh do at a smart local hotel. The whole event was paid for by my mother’s parents and the guest list was overwhelmingly family plus parents’ friends. No children were invited but that was less of an issue as the reception consisted of afternoon tea, speeches, toasts, and cake before my parents left on honeymoon. They hadn’t lived together before the wedding or (as I learned from my mother in a cringe makingly tmi moment) had sex, so for them the wedding really was about the beginning of their lives together.
Stag and hen do was a few drinks the night before.
By contrast, a couple of years ago I attended a family destination wedding that had been preceded by two hen nights, an actual legal wedding, and various pre-wedding dinners and was followed by a pool party and a beach party. All with the bride in a different wedding-themed outfit. They came back early from honeymoon and split up a year later.

The weddings I've been to have been around the Gen X/ Millenial cusp in the 2000s-early 2010s and I haven't been to a full-scale wedding in about 10 years. Social media wasn't so instant then which could be a factor.
They've all been in normal range of venues and expectations. Hen/ stag weekends were all relatively sensible, UK based.

DB is firmly gen X and has done much more travelling for stags, but he was in much more of a party social group with bigger budgets thrown around anyway.

You only hear the bridezillas and unreasonable demands on MN, but they do seem to be more common.
Maybe child-free weddings are more awkward as the order of children/ marriages is more mixed than it once was, plus more frequent complications of blended families.

When we planned our wedding in the late 2000s, I read magazines, but I wanted it to be a comfortable, managable day for guests. It was pre-instagram and fb groups.

The youngest Gen Zs are 13...I don't think that's old to get married.

That's all very well if you are fortunate enough to have someone you could leave them with! We didn't.

Depends on the people - maybe there’s more pressure on people nowadays to have a picture perfect wedding as their wedding photos are seen by more people (who has ever looked at someone’s old school printed album). I’ve been to plenty of millennial weddings, all were great fun, all the hen do’s were in UK city easy to access for all the widespread friends. They’ve all been good from the standard hotel weddings to the marquees in the countryside or the village hall & ceilidh. Group of friends and family gather together to watch an emotional ceremony, chat, drink and dance. I’m a mum and I’m happy to have someone babysit my toddler so I can go to a friends wedding, it’s much more enjoyable to have a nice time with my husband and friends than corralling a small person around all day and trying to find somewhere for him to nap. It’s fairly standard at weddings I’ve been to that the immediate families kids attend as most of their potential babysitters are there, friends arrange sitters. However I’ve never had a couple admit to being annoyed if someone declines the invite due to childcare, it’s a perfectly valid reason not to go.

Honestly there was more drama at the weddings I attended in the late 90’s / early 00’s - my memories are of meringue dresses, tantruming flower girls, cousins getting pissed up & extended families rowing - thankfully nowadays there’s less pressure to invite your mums cousin you haven’t seen since you were 9 or your granny’s sister that she doesn’t even like.

I’m a mellenial and have been to about 30 weddings over the last 10 years. I’ve enjoyed every single one of them. They’ve been lots of fun and I’ve been delighted to celebrate those who included me in their day.

YABU. Millennials didn't invent baby free weddings or overseas hen parties. I'm Gen X, I had a child free wedding and attended overseas hen do's in the 90s.

The bride and groom get to plan what they want. At your baby's christening, naming ceremony or other celebration of your child, you get to decide. The wedding is not about you and it just not that deep that they do not want your baby or children there.

Almost every wedding I have attended where there are babes in arms has been disrupted by said baby. Parents always say 'we will do x and baby will sleep through' or 'if baby makes a noise we will take baby out or into another room' to avoid disruptions'. Baby never gets the memo but instead babbles nosily or cries throughout the service or speeches whilst parents effectively shush or rock them. Those that are being looking after in the hotel room end up at reception because the main part of the wedding has finished so they didn't think anyone would mind. Cue disruption. Nothing wrong with babies making noise, its just not appropriate at a wedding where they are not invited.

People need to focus on being empowered not entitled.

YANBU about the obsession with content for social media or other unreasonable wedding demands like very expensive hen dos/ outfits.

I think it depends on your crowd, too! I think this sounds INCREDIBLY fun and would've loved to attend a wedding like yours! On the flip side, I know many of my husband's and my friends and family would be uncomfortable with camping on site.

Our wedding falls under the big & fancy category, but we were mindful of guest experience - good food and lots of it (passed apps and multiple stations at cocktail hour - the mashed potato bar was the biggest hit), hearty meal choices for dinner, and lots of desserts. We also told the wedding planner that we wanted to be out of the dining room within 70 minutes - keep serving during speeches, and the speeches were under 3 min. Had a live band and opened the dance floor as soon as dinner ended. You get the idea, just made sure that no one was hungry, there was always a lot of food & drink available, lots of places to sit, a fun dance floor, and we didn't trap people at their table all night. Regardless of the formality of the wedding, my least favorite ones are the weddings that spend hours on all pomp and circumstance. It's impossible to please everyone, though!!

I got married in 2021 and it was nothing like this. In fact the only bridezilla was my ex best friend who was demoted from MOH to bridesmaid but that’s another story. We had registry office and social club for reception, street food, family decorated, no colour code etc. No seating arrangement and no top table. No elborate hen or stag, I paid for bridesmaid dresses and hair and make up. MIL did the flowers from her allotment

"Firstly the oldest Gen Z is 28 and that’s far below the average age for getting married so few weddings will be gen z bride and grooms."

I didn't really believe this so went and checked it. I was wrong, 28 is indeed far below the current median age for first marriage.

It was the median age for Gen X people, like myself, back in the 1990s (although, plenty of my friends did get married in their very early 20s).

I honestly didn't realise how much the age of first marriage had increased over the years.
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"...I can’t say there’s anything about a cheaper wedding that makes it inherently better."

I don't think it's so much about a "cheaper" or more "expensive" wedding that makes it better or worse. I think it's more about what sort of environment that your guests feel more relaxed in.

Many years ago, (late 1980s/early 1990s, when I was in my 20s and everyone else was getting married) I went to very many, very different, weddings.

Some were literally straight out of "Four Weddings and a Funeral"; others were very different. I remember more than one time when the venue was the Fielding & Platt Sports and Social Club bar (Fielding & Platt were an engineering firm in Gloucester that closed in 2003).

Some of the friends I met at university came from a distinctly upper middle class background (many had gone to public school) and a "Four Weddings" type of wedding was what they wanted and what the majority of their closest friends expected as well.

In contrast, many of my friends from school had very different expectations. A service at the local church and then down to the local Sports & Social Club (or, occasionally, the rugby club) for a disco.

That doesn't make either of them "right" or "better" than the other. I think that is just shows that you have to match the event and the venue to who your guests are most likely to be.

Just talking about this has made me consider just how different times were back then. I got my first part time job at the age of 13 there replacing pins that had been knocked down (this was 9 pin bowling rather than 10 pin bowling).

It was also one of the very few places that I've ever seen elvers for sale. Back then, at the right time of the year, you could get elvers (they were served fried in butter)

My uncle used to go out at night to catch elvers (baby eels), they used to be a bit of local delicacy but then they were mostly bought by the Japanese who paid a lot more than the locals. He would only let us have a few as he sold most of what he caught

Here is a video of Gordon Ramsey out catching some elvers and then cooking them (a whole lot more fancy than the way that locals cook them)