Modern brides focus too much on something we never worried about

Looking back, I was just a baby when I got married at 19. Sweet and innocent, I had no idea what I was in for, but that’s not the point of this story! I recently attended a wedding and instead of questions about how the bride was feeling or even simple congratulations, talk turned to something much more important: her dress.

I say that whilst rolling my eyes. Wedding dresses in my day were either your mother’s or something pretty you’d picked out after looking at a few different stores. You didn’t fuss over it as you were far too excited getting other things organised. But now, the dress is the most important thing. Because if you aren’t wearing a designer or a vintage dress, you haven’t done it right.

This just makes me upset for al those women who want to have the perfect day but don’t want to spend a lot, but feel as though they have to splash out on a beautiful dress, lest they be judged for it. It’s also sad that that is what it’s about: what’s the dress going to look like, how much was it, is it vintage, is it white, is it off-white? Will you put it on Instagram?

So much emphasis has been placed on the dress sometimes I wonder if that’s more important to some than the actual day at hand. And don’t get me started about social media – brides fret about hashtags, filters and how many likes they get. What went so wrong that our priorities are on the materialistic and not on the love of our lives? Of course men are as blasé by the whole day as they always were – my own husband found his suit two days before and it wasn’t even perfectly dry cleaned! I didn’t notice though until my pedantic mother pointed it out. I wasn’t the least bit worried about the photos, because our smiles spoke louder than any dress.

My daughter’s wedding is coming up at the end of next year and we’re in the early stages of planning. A part of me wants her to do whatever she likes but there’s another part that just wants to shout and say that the dress should be beautiful, yes, but there’s no need to buy the biggest and the best. After all, if you’re lucky… you’ll only wear it once!

Tell us, do you think that marriages are now more materialistic than they used to be? What do you think has caused it? Social media or something else? Did you worry about your dress?