Why Women Can't Shut Up About Their Weddings

It's me. I'm women.

I got married in November of 2022 and it was a perfect day.

For the entire year leading up to this day, I was talking about weddings on TikTok. This happened sort of by accident, and it was great. I gained followers and friends, and Sophia Bush thrifted vases for my centerpieces.

Weddings can feel like Christmas on steroids. The build up is intense; you think and you plan and you painstakingly obsess over every tiny detail for the whole thing to be over in what feels like a blink. Back in the day, when my sister and I sat on the floor of the living room in a sea of crumpled wrapping paper, my dad would theatrically say with a sigh, “Only 364 days ‘til next Christmas…”. We would groan.

When our wedding was over? It was just over. The countdown until the next one didn’t start. There wasn’t going to be another one.

There’s an alchemy that happens at every party, every event. The guests, the weather, the vibes, the music. No two parties can ever be the same, even if you try.

This is where the magic of a wedding lies. It’s not in the florals or the name cards, it’s in the inherent ephemeral nature of it all.

The concept is easy enough to grasp in theory, but once you feel it happening to you, it’s a unique sort of hell. Here you are, with the love of your life, and you both look perfect- perhaps the best you’ll ever look. People from all walks of your combined lives have come together to celebrate your new chapter. You glance at your childhood neighbor- gabbing over passed apps with your spouse’s kooky aunt. There is no other conceivable reason these two people would ever be in the same room with one another except for you having fallen in love with some guy you met in college. Every person’s presence is felt, every absence is felt even more. All of it swirls together and creates this, quite frankly bizarre, feeling. You become nostalgic for something that is folding out in front of you. Then you get cake.

A honeymoon can extend the bliss, and for me there was even a sense of relief.

When I was handed that first margarita and was able to truly lay down by the pool and let go of all the checklists, last minute to-dos, payment schedules- it was a huge, necessary exhale. I had been holding so many things in my brain, so much of me was wrapped up in The Wedding, and now I could start to enjoy and absorb the memory of it.

As I returned to normal life, a sort of melancholy took hold. I recounted the wedding to co-workers, friends, and family that couldn’t attend. The holidays rolled around and we reminisced as a family about how flawlessly everything went and laughed about little details as we remembered them.

But I couldn’t help the nagging feeling in me that everything was sort of downhill from here.

At the ripe old age of 29, had I really peaked? The Wedding and all its many facets started to feel like the last time I would ever truly be celebrated. Birthdays in your 30s? Who really cares. Baby shower? Your child’s first birthday? Sure there were more fabulous parties ahead, but none so specifically for and about me. If that thought made me a monster I didn’t care.

So often, women specifically are asked to be shapeshifters in life. When a woman gets engaged, she is expected to become a fiancé, a party planner extraordinaire, and a guest of honor very quickly in rapid succession. She suddenly has to have opinions on tablecloths and napkins and tea lights. She has to find the perfect dress and style it expertly.

And then she has to let it go. A role she took on for likely a year or more has to be dropped in a flash.

She will transition into being a wife, a newlywed- then maybe a mother, a grandmother. These, however, are more long term roles. You do not stop becoming a wife when you become a mother. Once you are someone’s mom, it remains that way for the rest of your days.

To be a bride is brief.

We don’t tell mothers who proudly share their children with us to “move on” or that they’re “obsessed with being a mom”, so why do we express that sentiment to women who are proud of how their wedding went? They should be proud! They likely worked incredibly hard as project manager of a large scale event for months of their life. But that part, the work of being a bride, rarely gets celebrated. Because the best of brides make it look effortless.

(At the risk of sounding like this…) Spend countless days and nights obsessively planning what you’ve been told since birth will be the “best day of your life”, look beautiful and well rested on the day, look sexy but not too sexy, smile for the camera, share enough on social media so we can all quietly judge you, but just a few, then shut up. Maybe one or two on your anniversary. Anything else makes you seem full of yourself.

I was in a unique position after I got married where, via my friends on the internet, I had a captive audience who wanted to hear about my big day in excruciating detail. It’s vulnerable to share your wedding with the world. And for each kind and supportive comment I received on my wedding recap, I wondered how many awful ones went unsaid. But regardless, I got to extend my title as “bride” for juuust a little bit longer. And it felt wonderful. Since I had built a wedding-centric audience, I felt justified in my actions.

I think you can and should view your wedding as an accomplishment.

We have to stop labeling parties of any kind as frivolous. In fact, I believe it’s one of the greatest gifts we can give others. At the end of my life, when it all goes flashing before me, I personally won’t be seeing the deck I made for work in the highlight reel. But I do hope to see that neighbor laughing with my husband’s aunt. The way the afternoon light poured in through the stained glass windows of the church. The look on Michael’s face when I got to the end of the aisle. The saxophonist adding flair to Taylor Swift’s “Lover” for our last dance.

I have, and always will, celebrate and dissect a great party. I will take the time to honor the work behind it and recognize the unique grief that comes when the bar does last call. Sometimes it feels like a radical act of feminism to care this deeply.

I won’t shut up about my wedding or yours, and that is how we keep the party going forever.