Mocked by society. Demonized by reality television. Sued by our wedding planners as though we were Naomi Campbell. We bridezillas have had it rough, and it’s time set the record straight by pointing our perfectly manicured fingers at the real villains, the people who drove us to our dreaded fate: the guestzillas.
While brides are constantly harangued in the media for bad behavior, literally no attention is given to the unsightly conduct of wedding guests who drive brides over the bridezilla brink. And when dark documentary-cum-wedding guest exposes such as “Wedding Crashers” come out, idiot audiences actually mistake them for a light summer comedies. Well no longer! Bad guests are going to get their due. Here are a just a few crowning atrocities that can earn you the guestzilla reputation.
Invite-indifference. Guests today have no concept of the “honor” of an invitation, reviewing our elegant calligraphy-and-ribbon invites with the indifferent resignation one affords a business memo or bank statement. “Another thing to be dealt with,” they think, wearily marking their calendar. As though they were doing us a favor by showing up and being dazzled by a glamorous jazz band, winsome Bottecelli ice sculptures, and charming fondue-for-two wedding favors. The nerve!
The coup de gras of this invite-indifference is the lack of RSVPs. Do they think we enjoyed coordinating a team of attendants to take shifts attaching all those adorable little heart stamps with a teeny squeegie? Noooo. And yet, after we have all but licked the envelope for them, these oblivious guestzillas toss your precious RSVP’s out with the recycling, assuming you “obviously know they are coming.” Hellooo, if you are too flaky to send back a freaking RSVP, how do we know you are not too flaky to show up on the big day? And if you think we are shelling out for one additional hazelnut salmon dinner without written proof that a big fat wedding gift will be coming our way in return, well you have another think coming! It’s a wedding, guestzillas, not a soup kitchen.
Disrespectful dress. Now, we brides go through a lot of trouble to stencil in those tiny words that whisper of elegant frocks and dashing dinner coats: “formal” “semi-formal” and “demi-formal.” But do we have to endure the agonizing sight of our semi-formal weddings full of guests in demi-formal attire? Yes! And then we get the bridezilla label. Well let us put this in perspective: some churches won’t even let you in the door if you aren’t properly dressed, and all we did was ask your boyfriend to stash the tacky fedora where no wedding photographer will ever catch sight of it. And for this, we are cast as villians? Even worse are those sneaky girl guests who have always been jealous of you, trying to sidestep the age-old no-white rule in “cream” and “ivory” gowns. Look you couture clones, we know exactly who you are and exactly what you are up to. When it comes to guest dress codes, there’s no room for gray, eggshell, or ecru areas. We Bridezillas know our crayola colors, so don’t mess with us.
Groupie Guests. Um, did it ever occur to our so-called friends that we might have left their free-loading spouses and deviant shrieking demon-kids off the guest list FOR A REASON?! If we are bridezillas, then we obviously devoted freakish and finite attention to exactly who made the guest cut, so if we wanted your minions there, we would certainly have included their names. But time and time again, guests offer sheepish smiles as they hustle in their wanton wedding crashers, foolishly assuming we didn’t hire a bouncer for this exact reason. What they don’t GET is that unwanted guests are a huge liability. No matter how many colored lights you’ve festooned throughout the foyer, no matter how many graceful Spanish swans waddle in your reception fountain, once Drunkie gets in a fight with the security guard or your three-year-old emits a blood-curdling cuss word during my vows, it’s over. No one will talk about or remember one other tiny detail of my perfectly planned wedding, except how your plus ones made a mockery of my otherwise sacred affair. Please do not think that you can control or cajole them into behaving, or that we will forgive you eventually. If we thought any of these things remotely possible, believe us, we would have included them on the guest list in the first place. So next time someone doesn’t include your significant others on the invite, take it as what it is: a hint!
Gifts we didn’t Register For. We get it, you’re creative, you’re a bohemian, you “know us so well.” Obviously you don’t, or you wouldn’t be suffering from the Oprah gift-giving complex, showering us with your “favorite things.” We don’t want your ill-taste alpaca towels or matching ant farms. In fact, we registered specifically in order to avoid gifts like that. Rather, it is our feeling that if our Wedding Decorator’s Second Assistant spent hours scouring Barney’s, Bloomie’s and Bed, Bath, and Beyond, registering us for that elite and worthy assortment of linens and ladles that exactly reflects our personal taste and style, the least you could do is respect our wishes. But time and time again, some self-important guest who is too “free-spirited” to be restricted to something as mundane as a registry splashes out on some completely inappropriate gift that just marks another errand on my already infinite post-wedding errand list. Don’t be another item on my “Things to Return Instantly.” Don’t be creative. Don’t be cute. Just get us the only appropriate gift for any occasion: what we asked for.
Follow these rules and maybe, just maybe, we’ll invite you to our second and third weddings.
Sincerely,
Bridezilla
It’s tacky to not include a guests spouse or partner. Bad etiquette on the part of the bride. Similarly I still regard wedding registers as very tacky. Something the mercantile classes indulge in. Good breeding means you don’t expect gifts, nor do you dictate what gifts you should get.