One bride wants to be the “most beautiful bride ever.” Another furiously calls off her $80,000 wedding (she later changes her mind). A third banishes her maid of honor from the wedding party — and calls off their friendship.
These mental meltdowns are par for the course on “Bridezillas,” a Women’s Entertainment TV program that showcases brides in the time leading up to their nuptials. The show’s third season began June 11.
“Bridezilla,” an uncomfortable marriage of the words “bride” and “Godzilla,” describes a woman who cracks under the stress of wedding planning and the weight of high expectations.
“Those are the moments that a lot of us, as guests, … would never see,” says Roseanne Lopopolo, the show’s executive producer. “The fun of the show is that we let you see it.”
But why do we want to?
Reality TV is often about the enjoyment of witnessing public humiliation, says Deborah Nelson, associate professor of English and director of the Center for Gender Studies at the University of Chicago. But “Bridezillas,” which she has heard of but never seen, might strike a nerve because it represents a backlash against romance and courtship programs such as “The Bachelor,” she says.
“The idea that this is the most significant day of your life and that the memory will take you through to your dying day is such an impossible expectation, so I think [the show] is a reaction against that expectation,” Nelson says.
Shows such as “Bridezillas” are partly about the gross exaggeration of gender roles too, Nelson says. “But men don’t watch these shows. It’s why women delight in their own mockery that’s interesting. The cat fights. … It’s akin to [World Wrestling Entertainment] for women.”
One thing is certain: Even if the public delights in brides’ bad behavior, the vendors who must deal with brides aren’t impressed.
Desiree Moore Dent, president of Calumet City-based Dejanae Events, has been planning weddings for nearly six years. She has worked with a few bridezillas — enough to know she doesn’t love them.
Last-minute vows
One of Dent’s brides forced wedding guests to wait an agonizing 90 minutes while she wrote her vows at the last minute. The scheduling problems snowballed from there: By 9 p.m. at the reception, the photographer was still taking photos while the bride screamed at the DJ to stop the music. And to top her own antics, the bride blamed Dent for not having written the vows for her — never mind that she never asked Dent to do such a thing in the first place.
“I can do a lot of things, but I can’t write loving words to a man who’s not my husband,” Dent says, laughing. The bride called to apologize the next day.
Lyle Wilson, owner of A Work of Art Florist in Chicago, has his own way of dealing with unreasonable brides.
“I don’t,” Wilson says. “You know when they start talking what you have to deal with. If I think they’re too crazy, I let them go. [I] look at the calendar and say, `My calendar is full.'”
The pursuit of perfect may be at the root of the problem, as Cele Otnes, professor of marketing at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, discovered while researching the book she co-wrote, “Cinderella Dreams: The Allure of the Lavish Wedding” (2003).
`Perfect’ a scary word
“It was frightening to us, when we were looking at brides’ magazines, how many times they used the word `perfect,'” Otnes says. Our culture teaches that perfection is attainable, and when it isn’t, we get frustrated, she says.
Kristin Kinser, a 27-year-old administrative assistant from Lake in the Hills, says realistic expectations set her apart from the women she has seen on “Bridezillas.” She realizes things may go wrong — no day is ever perfect — and that’s just fine with her.
The show “makes me feel better knowing that I have a better grip on life and I don’t get so worked up over such mundane things,” Kinser says. “I think a lot of people forget, when they’re planning the wedding, that they’re planning a day when they should be planning a life.”
When reality falls short of perfection in sight of TV cameras, people can’t look away, Otnes says.
“It’s like a train wreck. It’s cultural rubbernecking,” she says. “I’ve never watched an episode because I find it too depressing … to think about meltdowns and semi self-destruction on the happiest day of your life.”
But Susan Jablonski, a wedding stylist and owner of The Left Bank boutique in Lincoln Park, has a hunch that the worst in bride behavior — and perhaps the most outrageous in TV programming — may be yet to come.
“I think there’s a whole new generation that we’re going to hit on, that young, fabulous and broke generation,” Jablonski says. “They’ve been given everything, … and they’re really into luxury items and buying things they can’t afford. It should be interesting.”
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You may be a bridezilla if …
– You forbid the ladies in your wedding party from getting pregnant prior to the nuptials because they should know the focus is on you and only you.
– You harass your wedding planner and other vendors, sometimes twice a day, to check up on them and ensure they’re doing their job.
– You constantly talk to and e-mail friends and family about one thing: your wedding.
– Your fiance has little say in planning the wedding.
– You want every aspect of your wedding to be customized or have intricate detailing.
– You’ve called off the wedding at least once.
– You demand that your bridesmaids purchase expensive dresses in outlandish colors or styles that don’t flatter everyone and will never be worn again.
– You plan your wedding with the theme of “I will outdo everyone else.”
– You throw a tantrum when things don’t go your way.
– You give your wedding party a curfew the night before the ceremony.
Source: Women’s Entertainment
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How not to be a bridezilla
– “If I seem to be the slightest bit stressed out, my fiance runs me a bath and puts me in it with candles [nearby] and a glass of wine.”
–Kolleen Kearney, 30, Tucson, Ariz.
– “We didn’t search and search for our vendors, just found what we liked and went with it. No second guessing, nothing like that.”
–Dara Drezner, 27, Chicago
– “Not that I don’t like all the little details, but who cares if the blue dresses match the blue centerpieces or the blue on the invites or place cards? All I want is to marry the man I love, and I’d do it in a pig’s pen if I had to.”
–Kristin Kinser, 27, Lake in the Hills
– “When something goes wrong, like the dress shop forgetting to tell me that they don’t have measurements for one of my girls yet, I just smile, nod, and go get the measurements. If you don’t laugh at this stuff, you’ll cry or be a bride who’s far too nervous and wrapped up in the details to even enjoy her wedding day.”
–Karen Roggenbeck, 27, Grand Blanc, Mich.
Interviews conducted by e-mail.
–T.S.
