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?

exactly! I've been to a few child-free weddings. Either people have come and made arrangements (I had one friend whose dad stayed with baby in a nearby hotel and bought him to car park to be breastfed!), or just politely refused, and neither guests nor bride/groom were offended or upset either way.

Same with hen parties. It blows my mind when I read on here about people being personally affronted that they are expected to leave their child at home because otherwise they are being excluded and unfairly penalised for being a mother!

Not. Everyone. Can. Go. To. Everything. People need to just accept that and not make it personal (on both sides - as in guests should accept they can't make this one event if they don't have/want to use childcare, and organisers should gracefully understand why people might decline).

I’ve never heard of anyone taking offence that someone can’t attend due to childcare issues except for on Mumsnet.

Just to counter the arguments that always pop up on here that if you have an expensive or large wedding you’re not interested in the marriage/only care about the photos/are basically in an inferior relationship compared to those who got married on a compost heap wearing a t-shirt they fished out of lost property (and it only cost £2.50 to feed 60 guests and they still all say it was the best wedding they’ve ever been to) - I’m in my early 30s. I’ve been (or been invited to) nearly 20 weddings. The only couples who have split up so far are the religious couple who didn’t live together before marriage and had the reception in a room above an pub and the fish and chips in the village hall couple. The ones who according to mumsnet wisdom are the ones who had the acceptable weddings.

The bride and groom who had the flashy wedding in Italy? Still going strong. The bride and groom who were married in a cathedral followed by a luxury hotel reception? Still going strong. The bride and groom who had a bird of prey fly the rings down the aisle? Still going strong. The influencer couple? Still going strong.

Can we please stop with this tired argument? The best weddings are the ones where thought has been put into what the couple like and what will create a nice experience for the guests. I’ve been to brilliant weddings that cost a fortune and that were on a budget. Ditto I’ve been to crap weddings done on the cheap and at the more expensive end.

I did see a stat once that did inversely link the price of the wedding to the length of the marriage. Not sure on the methodology or reliability. Anecdotally, I've known a few couples who were all about the wedding and seemingly forgot about the marriage bit, and none of them lasted long.

Totally agree OP - accepting the fact that I am a grumpy old Gen Xer I just cringe at some of the weddings I’ve been to recently.

THREE dresses, 10 bridesmaids, start time of 12 noon and finish at midnight- WTF I’ve got to be there for 12 freaking hours?!? Went to a second marriage of 2 friends in their 60s and they had a John Lewis wedding list!! Other times asked to give cash towards a honeymoon that never happened so £100 in a card with no idea what it got spent on. Young couples going into debt to spend £30k on one day when they could put down a house deposit.

Endless photos and posting on social media. Those colour firework things that go off on the first kiss. Urgh.

Oh and evening receptions with no food and cash bar?! Those are my favourite, especially when you turn up and everyone’s already leathered.

gosh I am grumpy!!

I got married at a registry office wearing a black dress and purple hat. Then back to MIL's for a finger buffet in her front room. My DH's best friend paid for a hire car to take us to the registry office. It wasn't a limo, just a regular car but smarter than any of us owned. That was his (very wecome) wedding gift to us. I'd given birth to our son only 3 weeks earlier so I was pretty knackered by the end of it. The whole lot probably cost around £25 but it was 1977!

If I was a young bride now I’d have a very small church service and lunch in a private room at a nice restaurant for fewer than 30 people.

Millenial here. I remember these things happening in my 20s and 30s - I think it was our generation that started spending riculous amounts of money and escalating demands around weddings.

I remember family weddings in the 90s that were very much centred around getting married to be married, rather than the wedding itself. Venues were typically a church or registry office (no stately homes or castles) and the receptions were often at someone's home, in a hired hall or a pub function room.

I had a ££££ wedding.
Thousands on a venue, thousands on a dress, thousands on flowers, thousands on food and drink etc, bridesmaids, no kids, everything mumsnet hates and I had the time of my life!
No regrets, it was a cracking party and I look back fondly 10 years later. 😂

A 25 yo relative got married last year. The wedding was in a stunning venue, 6 bridesmaids and all dresses, hair, make up paid for by the bride and groom. Her dress was expensive, she adored it. The food, drinks, entertainment were all designed to make sure the guests had a great time. It wasn’t village hall cheap, but it was fun and relaxed. There is a middle ground

Garden - fair enough. Plenty of normal wedding reception venues have nice grounds which provide an attractive backdrop to the event. I find the idea of going off to look around a zoo or do a maze during a wedding a bit strange though. I'm in my 50s and have been to plenty of weddings, including some fairly lavish ones. I've never been to one where there was an kind of activity or stuff to do or explore. Just food, drink, company and music and dancing. Actually I did go to one that had an activity room for the little children.

There's nothing actively wrong with putting other stuff on, but I think your original post made it sound as though weddings were too boring if they didn't have something to do or explore.

I think social media has a lot to answer for. Now everything has to be picture perfect so that their social media posts are envied. When I got married in the 90's we had none of the formality, and instead had lots of family inclusion and fun, it was all a celebration. They weren't so expensive either, now you need a mortgage. Indian weddings in particular have become so showy and you could easily spend a £100k on one. Back when I got married, children were included as it was a family affair. Now they are kept away as they are seen as noisy and messy.
I'm glad both my dc want low key weddings with only close family and friends attending and none of the formality.

I think that’s maybe something you wanted to read rather than something that was actually there. Obviously if someone has a wedding at a zoo, or aquarium, or a castle, the idea is that guests look around the experience.

do I find that more enjoyable / a better experience than dancing for 5 hours in a plastic marquee in on a village green? Yeah, to be honest I do.

Sorry lovey, I do do celebrations, just not performances often designed to weedle money out of people.

🙄

The irony of
The people who suck the joy out of weddings are the judgmental old bags who moan about "back in my day"

when starting a post saying

God I hate these generational threads, all old people making massive generalisations and tut-tutting about young people.

Sounds like your daughter's wedding was fab Mrs P - My invitation must have got lost in the post LOL!

I'm on my third (and last!) marriage.

First wedding was a traditional 'white' wedding in local church. DH went out for a few dinks with his mates the weekend before. I did nothing - hen do's weren't a 'thing' in 1988 😉 We had the reception at a local hotel & a Ceilidh band playing in the evening (I come from an Irish family) which was brilliant as everyone was able to join in the dancing & the music - including children. Unfortunately my first DH died.

My second marriage was a very quiet registry office 'do' with just our closest friends & family members, followed by a lunch again at a local hotel.

Finally I married my lovely DH in a registry office with only his daughter & a close friend without any announcements or fuss.

I don't think the size of the wedding is indicative of the long term sucess of the marriage in itself, but the RL Bridezilla weddings that I've known of didn't last more than a few years before divorce.

From what I've known of the couples, the wedding wasn't the cause, it was a symptom/ manifestation of imbalanced, controlling relationships. Possibly the focus of a couple of years of wedding planning (and sometimes following into planning a family) helped the relationship last as long as it did. Without those "goals" there just wasn't enough substance to the relationship (one did have debts in the equation too). One of the brides had deeply ingrained mental health difficulties including conditions like OCD. It wasn't the wedding itself that was the issue, although her decisions and moods during planning did permanently damage friendships which is unfortunate.

That's different to secure couples having the budget and circumstances to host larger celebrations because they want to celebrate with people they love and because they can.

A good wedding is planned around what is reasonably practical for the couple and guests.

I think the issue is people lose their heads over the event and then cause dress and anxiety for themselves and their guests ! I guess that’s why people on the whole prefer simple kind of events not to say it’s exciting to get wowed by a posh one !!

Unfair to select one example of upscaling events to a ridiculous level. See also 'milestone' birthdays as another example of ridiculous expense. Proms with expensive clothing at aged 16 another one.

I doubt any analysis has been done, though it would be no surprise if those with simpler weddings have a lower divorce rate.

Wholeheartedly agree. I hate them now. Last one we went to the bride (my good friends wife) acted like a bridezilla all day. Really spoilt and rude. Going to one later in the year where the stag do was gonna cost my partner 2k to go on. I said absolutely not, we can have a full family holiday for that. This groom (his brother) has barely bothered with us for years and has met our children a handful of times in 3 years. I was TOLD not asked that my children were having a part in the wedding otherwise they couldn’t come. I’ve only ever been to 2 down to earth, fun weddings. But each to their own I suppose.

I LOVE a wedding, we've been to some very swanky ones and some much simpler, more relaxed ones and really enjoyed the vast majority of them. BUT the last wedding we went to was like nothing I've ever experienced before, and not in a good way! After we RSVP'd we were sent very detailed rules and instructions. Our outfits had to adhere to a particular "colour scheme" (note, this is for guests, not the wedding party!) and there was a list of things we were not to wear (such as short dresses, hats, florals or "any busy prints") as they would spoil the "aesthetic". On the day itself, in addition to the photographer there was a "content creator" whose job was literally to produce stuff for the couple to post on socials. For us guests, this meant having a phone on a stick shoved in our faces and being told to "react to" things at frequent intervals throughout the day. When the evening guests arrived I spotted someone I hadn't seen for years so I hurried over excitedly to greet them, and the "content creator" popped up out of nowhere whilst we were mid-hug saying "sorry, could you just do that again?" They were literally feeding the smallest bridemaid (who was about 3) lines to say that I assume were meant to be cute or funny. Every moment between the Bride and Groom seemed stilted and overly rehearsed. It sucked any joy or spontaneity out of the day. I felt like a prop in some weird performance piece, not a guest. I wonder whether the OP has experienced similar and this sort of thing is becoming more 'normal'. I really hope not.

If I got an invitation with the word ‘aesthetic’ in it I think I’d be declining as they cannot be my kind of people!

divorce rates have actually reduced (significantly and near consistently, although there has since been a slight increase since the low in 2018) over the last twenty years, despite becoming more socially acceptable, which tends to disprove that...

Divorces in England and Wales - Office for National Statistics