Creating A Wedding Party: The False Luxury of Many Friends

At a wedding, not only do you celebrate the love you have for someone else, you also ask friends to celebrate this love with you! In today’s wedding culture, there’s this unspoken pressure to make a wedding and a wedding party a big family and friends affair. The size of a wedding party mythically indicates how rich in relationships a couple is; sort of like the more friends you have, the more popular you seem; and the grander the processional, the more seemingly expensive the wedding. Since society values relationships above all else, the number of bridesmaids and grooms is considered a sign of a person’s or couple’s emotional and relational success. However, what if quantity does not always imply quality?

Conversely, few bridesmaids and groomsmen or none at all is sometimes unfairly seen as a deficit. Not including siblings is seemingly a faux pas too. If family doesn’t come first on your wedding day, people assume there’s bad blood or at least there will be now. There’s so much pressure to seem rich in people worthy of being on our speed-dial that often times brides and grooms tack on extras just to fill in perceived gaps or to create symmetry between the bridesmaid and groomsmen sides. When we do this, we can’t expect our wedding party to be as kamikaze-involved as a best friend might be. This social hierarchy and focus on quantity over quality sets up unachievable expectations of a wedding party and unfairly creates a stigma for the brides and grooms who prefer to forego an entourage. The only required best friend you need is the one who meets you at the altar, add from there if you want, but not because of an unspoken pressure to do so.

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