Why Gen Zs Getting Married Want Nothing to Do With Boring Millennial Wedding Traditions
And why brides are the ones who will benefit the most
If there is one word to sum up how I feel about Gen Zs, it’s admiration.
Granted, when we talk about generational differences we have to generalise, there is no way around that. But I love that Gen Z has a reputation for doing things differently.
It turns out, that includes how they approach getting married.
According to a recent Vogue article, the Gen Z wedding trend du jour is to adhere to no trends. No Pinterest-inspired decor. No pressure to host a wedding that plunges the couple into debt for 10 years.
Instead, 20-something couples are opting for smaller, less-orchestrated days which truly reflect them.
I hope I speak for many of us when I say — thank the wedding Gods for that.
My 15-year wedding anniversary is next week. As I reflect on it, I wonder, how much of my 2009 Millennial-tinged wedding was about me and my husband and how much of it was dictated to us by the convention that said weddings should be big and perfectly executed.
How would I have approached it as a Gen Z?
The change in weddings is particularly important for women because, in hetero-normative weddings, the planning still falls on the woman.
If Gen Zs want to stick two fingers up to what convention (and a huge for-profit wedding industry) says you “have” to do in order to have a great day, I’m all for it.
Especially if it benefits the brides.
Why are we wedded to traditions that aren’t even traditions?
Hands up who has a family member who would clutch their pearls at the thought of a tradition-less wedding?
I certainly have a few.
It’s funny because many wedding traditions don’t go back that far. Many of them — including the white wedding dress and cutting the cake — originated in the last 150 years or so.
And those ridiculously expensive bachelorette parties? They only became popular in the 80s.
Gen Zs are having none of it.
They’re going smaller. They’re opting for chilled-out everything, from hair to the day itself.
And they’re making fun of how Millennials approached their weddings. Cringe Millennial Wedding has over 175 million posts on TikTok.
Whilst I wish Gen Zs would be a little kinder to Millennials and not mock the weddings that came before them, I fully support their decision to go smaller, quieter, and more personalised.
Because what came before them needed to change.
Gen Z is right — many Millennial weddings WERE cringe
Honestly, it makes me sad to think about what happened with many Millennial weddings.
We all thought we were doing things differently. We had hog roasts and ice cream vans. We went boho-chic. We got married in the woods.
Yes, our weddings were different from the previous generation’s church-and-buffet affairs. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t similar to each other.
I blame Pinterest. It had a stranglehold on wedding decor, which had the unsettling effect of making every wedding look the same.
Then there was the influence of a fast-growing wedding industry. I read enough of those awful bridal magazines to convince myself my wedding had to be big.
Which meant I had over 120 guests — still 29 people under the average 2009 wedding — most of which were my extended family I didn’t even know (the average wedding size has since decreased).
It wasn’t just the big, perfect wedding, it was also the big, perfect barchelorette party. What used to be a few women getting together for an evening has for many turned into elaborate, expensive, multi-day events.
This is what we did. As that aforementioned Vogue article says:
The archetypal millennial bride feels pressure to execute a Fortune 500-level marketing campaign, complete with couples’ hashtags, branded bathing suits for extravagant bachelorettes, and painfully long bridal party photo sessions.
My wedding was indeed cringe. Most weddings I went to during the 2000s and 2010s were too. They were cookie-cutter. I knew almost to the minute what was going to happen throughout every wedding I attended.
This wasn’t Millennials’ fault, this was just the world we lived in. It was a world that prioritised status and perfection over personalisation and fun.
Which is why I am delighted to see a change in Gen Zs — especially for Gen Z women.
Because when it comes to weddings, it’s the brides-to-be who suffer the worst.
Bridezillas are so 2010
When someone says Bridezilla, I think of a woman struggling under the weight of societal expectations for weddings.
This was a word I casually threw about during my wedding planning era. I was happy to call myself one.
But this is how it was. I was a woman. The wedding was, society told me, my responsibility and mine alone.
And I listened. I went on a horrible wedding diet and fitness regime because I was told that being skinny was everything.
I watched shows like the UK’s Don’t Tell The Bride and Bridezillas which depicted engaged women as tunnel-vision crazies. These shows were appalling but I didn’t know better so I lapped them up.
I had (and still have) a very egalitarian relationship, but when it came to our wedding, we fell back on gender norms and I took the lead in almost everything.
And yes, I had a small meltdown on the day because of it. I’m not proud of that. But I was an impressionable 24 year old struggling under the pressure that had piled on top of me.
There is already so much pressure on women. We have to have great careers or be the perfect partner, mother, daughter. And we have to look great doing it.
Weddings are just another facet of that. And it’s a big one.
This is why it’s so important that Gen Zs are ripping up the wedding rule book. It starts with gender-neutral bridal parties and, as Vogue calls it, an “I don’t care that much” vibe, it ends with less pressure on the couple.
Especially the woman.
Anything that helps women be less perfect and just be them can never be considered a bad thing.
This is about a generation who want to do things their way
That’s not always easy for us older generations to understand. I’ve certainly considered Gen Zs as enigmas. They don’t drink! They’ve got their own language I don’t understand! They part their hair in the middle!
But many of them also behave in ways we could all take a lead from.
Despite the rise of social media, Gen Z tends to be more private online. Fewer pictures of their kids’ bodies with the caption Does anyone know what this rash is, and yes, fewer wedding photo dumps.
They don’t take shit from their employers, which has typically been spun by the corporate world as laziness (don’t worry Gen Z, we Millennials were accused of the same).
And yes, their weddings are less dictated by wedding industry conventions and more dictated by their own preferences.
Or as the excellent Substacker Ochuko Akpovbovbo says:
Every single Gen Z wedding I’ve been to has been drastically different from the last and an actual representation of the couple getting married.
Honestly, I’m a little envious. I’m jealous of their I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude, whether that be applied to weddings, careers or anything else.
We could all take a leaf out of the Gen Z wedding album and listen less to what other people say we should do and get on with doing what we actually want.
If I was going to get married again, I would do it incredibly differently.
Many of the Millennial-heavy elements would go like the big dress, the church and the pressure to invite extended family who barely even knew what I looked like.
I certainly wouldn’t pose like this:
I wouldn’t take all the planning responsibility. I’d want to give less of a shit.
In my opinion, Gen Zs have got it right. Go smaller. Go personalised. Keep it more private. Give less of a hoot about looking perfect and just look like you.
Weddings are intensely personal days which specifically exist to celebrate two individuals. So it’s ironic that — in the past at least — so many of them look and play out the same way.
If we are on the tail end of that, I can’t be upset.
Especially if that takes the pressure off brides. Because — if you will permit some advice from an old married woman — if at the end of the day, you’ve gotten married and had a good time doing it, you can count the day a success.
No ice cream van required.
Charlie Brown is a British wine pro and niche-avoidant writer living in Portugal. She writes about everything from food and wine to feminism to cultural commentary. More here.
As someone whose parents refused to pick up the $16k tab (yet paid for my brother’s wedding!), I am 100% in agreement that the expensive wedding needed to die. The old expectation that the father of the bride will pay falls apart when the bride has a bad relationship with her parents, or when her father doesn’t have a lot in savings—to say nothing of same-sex weddings!
Why burden yourself with massive debt when you’re just starting your life together?
I mean, throwing a big party is expensive and stressful if you care about your guests having a good time and getting fed. And smaller weddings mean weaker ties - no one ever forgets that they weren’t invited to someone’s wedding. We’re already so sad about not enough community, cutting off extended family from the wedding likely means weaker and weaker relationships and when your kids wish they could visit their cousins in another City it makes it harder.
I’m not arguing big is always better - it isn’t. But I also feel like plenty of millennials were going for fun and personalized and that community and family building is actually maybe more important. And well, nothing wrong about having feelings about what’s probably the fanciest dress of your life.
All the best to gen Z and I’m always hopeful about progress.