The 5 wedding trends Charlotte couples need to abandon
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I cringe every time I think about how many weddings I’ve got coming up.
It’s not that I don’t like weddings. I actually kind of enjoy getting dressed up, boozing at an open bar someone else paid for, and fighting through the existential panic over my own commitment issues to flirt with the only other person not crying at the sad ass single’s table.
A wedding’s just a big party, but it’s a party you can’t skip without a good reason. It’s not like you can text the groom an hour before the ceremony and say “Sorry, bud, I’m a no-go for tonight. Work was cray this week. Hmu tomorrow night tho. We’ll rage.”
That puts a lot of pressure on weddings. Brides and grooms are shielded from it because usually no one would be rude enough to criticize such an intimate demonstration of eternal love.
But I am. Here are the five wedding trends Charlotte couples need to ditch.
(1) Wedding hashtags
The wedding hashtag pun is the lowest form of comedy.
One option is to form your wedding hashtag out of a pun on your new shared last name. For instance, my last name is Beary, so my wedding hashtag would be #BasketofBearys. It took me six seconds to think of, it isn’t the least bit clever, and I’m going to force all my friends to type it all night.
Worse is the forced fandom. I am not tweeting #GameofJones no matter how many calligraphy chalkboards tell me to.
(2) Ditching the traditional wedding for a “party” instead
I get that you read Marie Kondo this year and now you’re suddenly a minimalist, but I take issue with the millennial trend of ditching the ceremony in favor of “a big party with all our friends.”
It’s not that I miss the ceremony. No, I’m not sitting on pins and needles to hear your childhood minister recite “Love is patient, love is kind, love is a battlefield” or however it goes.
This is about the social exchange. It’s a trade off. You buy me dinner and hire a DJ to play “Thinking Out Loud” by Ed Sheeran so I can slow dance with your bridesmaid. In exchange, I buy you a $110 floor lamp with an Edison bulb off your Wayfair registry and say “aww” at the inside jokes I don’t get in your self-written vows.
Let’s not start playing fast and loose with the rules here. If I don’t get free food or a dance floor, then you don’t get a gift.
(3) Getting married in the boonies
Do we really need to go this at a rustic chic barn that’s a 90-minute drive from Uptown? I’m sure it looks great on Instagram, but the smell of rotting wood and the horse farm down the road doesn’t have me feeling the love.
Plus, I have to stay relatively sober because at the end of the night I’ve got to drive on poorly lit back roads crawling with deer and confederate flags.
[Agenda related guide: Getting married? 10 best wedding venues in Charlotte — and their cost]
(4) The mother/son dance
I’ve never once had the urge to slow dance with my parents. I certainly haven’t had the urge to watch you slow dance with yours.
The daddy/daughter dance is on thin ice too, but what adult man looked at that and decided he just had to get in on the action?
At least with the daddy/daughter dance, we can trace it back to a horrid time in history when marriage was considered an exchange of goods between the father and the new husband. It’s creepy, but deeply ingrained enough in our collective psyche to get a pass.
Mother/son dances have no excuse.
(5) Bar limits / Dry weddings
The wedding bar is one of my favorite places on earth. It’s my safe space.
I love the nameless wines simply referred to as “the pinot” and “the red.” Even the craft beer snobs have no problem sucking down a lukewarm Stella some bartender in an ill-fitting waistcoat pulled out of a dirty metal tub of ice.
I don’t need alcohol to have fun. But if you drew a Venn diagram of all the things that are easier with alcohol and all the things required at a wedding, you’d have a perfect circle.
Small talk with strangers? Take a drink.
Dancing? Take a drink.
Having to watch people be happier than you? Take two drinks.
Fake laughing at a toast where someone’s best friend tells a story about how their best friend met your best friend? Finish your drink and pray it ends soon.
Ultimately, your wedding is about you. Do what makes you feel good.
It’s supposed to be one of the happiest days of your life. Embrace every silly, niche, cliche instinct you have. Your friends love you and they’ve never seen you happier, so they’ll smile and bear it.
But man, for these five trends, it sure is a helluva lot to bear.