The Bridezilla Trope: Why Brides Get Labeled “Difficult”

WATCH MORE - Weddings can go wrong in a lot of ways, especially if the "Other Woman" gets involved. Here's our TAKE on the villainous trope: https://youtu.be/_jksMLrDMCU

People make it their life’s mission to underline the fact that wedding is a bride thing but never learn that it can be a collective effort where the couple depend on each other for the big day.

The label used to mean something. Today, it’s a weaponized phrase. Now, whenever a bride doesn’t let everyone walk all over them, they’re deemed a bridezilla.

My girlfriend said "I'm not shelling out or going into debt for a wedding, I'd rather save all that money for the honeymoon." I agree with that entirely. Unless you have lots of disposable income, please don't put yourself in debt for one party. There's so many other more meaningful things you can do with it. And the family that pressures you into doing a wedding need to pony up some cash if they want it to be "perfect" by their standards.🤑

There are women who are raging narcissists and just want a big party where they are the centre of attention, there are also women who get labeled a "bridezilla" simply because they don't let people walk all over them. There is so much pressure to have the perfect wedding and all of this falls on the bride, the groom is expected to just show up. I understand why a lot go insane from the stress.

We need to stop thinking of marriage as an end goal. Marriage isn't "Game Over." Marriage is "Player Two Has Entered."

Speaking as someone who used to work in the wedding industry, and who has worked at literally thousands of weddings: stress can make people break. But that's not what a Bridezilla is. We've gone from a society where a wedding was organized by a family, to a society where a wedding is organized by one person. And most brides have never organized a large event before, so they are learning as they go. Industry professionals understand this, and we do what we can to relieve that stress on the bride. We know that an event is a collective effort by a large team of people. But all our effort doesn't aways work to calm an anxious bride, and especially for brides who feel like they're going to be judged by their friends and family. Bridezillas aren't simply stressed brides though - they're entitled brides. They're people who expect the impossible, who throw a tantrum when they're not the center of attention, and who treat their vendors like everyone is trying to rip them off. You get customers like this in every industry - it's just that in the wedding industry you might have to work with this person for months while you try to keep them happy. They're awful to work for, and they make everything harder, and usually you end up having to chase them for payment. Sometimes things end up in court. Friends and family may apply the Bridezilla label to any bride who's stressed, but anyone who's worked in the industry knows the difference.

"My Big Fat Greek Wedding" depicted Toula as just going along with her family's crazy plans, and staying down to earth regarding most of the procedure, when she just wants to be with Ian.

I refused to put the stress of planning a wedding on my and/or my groom's shoulders. Hence we had a small, destination wedding where they took care of everything and we just had to show up. Almost 14 years later we don't regret that decision at all.

The Bride may be put under pressure from demanding family members, who insist that the day has to go smoothly. Basically, the bride is a mere stage manager of her own production, where she's surrounded by audience members who demand that her show reach THEIR insanely high standards.

I really liked the way satc handled this when Charlotte’s second wedding had a lot of issues and Carrie told her that maybe the worse the wedding the better the marriage :)

When Phoebe screams at Monica at her wedding, I always thought she was so justified. Scream louder Pheebs!

I honestly think we need to encourage more men to be involved with their own weddings. It's his big day too if he's taking this seriously and it's weird to think society has decided he should have no obligation to have a say in the venue, or how things look, the food, the music, outfits, etc., or at least the elements he might have an interest and opinions on. It feels weird and kind of patronizing that, in wedding planning, it's kind of flipped that for once the mans job is to just show up, stand there, look pretty, and not make a scene.

Man, there's a whole industry that makes this one event extremely expensive.

The problem is that.... weddings aren't ceremonies. Theyre competitions. Who can have the best weddings? Who looks the best? Etc. Another show that heightened the bridezilla trope is FOUR WEDDINGS where in order to get your dream honeymoon. You had to compete against 3 other women to see whose wedding was the best. It's an expectation vs reality scenario the bride put herself in 9/10 times because of what she saw. My mom told me weddings expose EVERYONE. Half of the time the ones that had the biggest "perfect" wedding, their MARRIAGE takes a nosedive.

My husband and I got married after 3 weeks of being engaged, and had 12 people at out wedding, all our immediate family. The food was made by us all, our dj was my laptop, our flowers we got at a grocery store. All in, we paid about $3000 for our wedding (dress, venue, food, etc.). It was really fun, and all of us were the photographers. Its almost 9 years later, and we're still happily married, and still have our 'wedding selfie' proudly on our mantle. It wasnt perfect for some, but it was perfect for me and my husband. Its not about the party, its about WHY the party is happening in the first place 👍🏼

When I got married I didn't have the time or energy for all the management that the wedding required, so I hired a wedding planner. I told him the things that my fiance and I didn't like, a few we do love and our budget, I told him "make it awesome" and that was it, we had a bi-weekly call or meeting to check... it was in fact beautiful and amazing, we really enjoyed it, stress-free.

We had our wedding in my father-in laws backyard and then did a BBQ there for reception. All the food came from Costco and my dress cost $100. Best choice we ever made!

My daughter is getting married in 2 weeks. She's pretty chill, but she broke down last week. I'm sending this to her right now. The entire wedding industry is an insane rip-off.

I feel like grooms should be involved in everything but the dress when it comes to weddings. If they arent putting in the work at the beginning of your marriage, are they worth marrying?