More than 2 million couples in the U.S. got married last year, according to research from The Knot Worldwide. That same study found the wedding industry is worth more than $100 billion in this country.
In addition to being fun, happy events, weddings — and wedding planning — can also be stressful. And a new podcast explores some of those stories.
Lizzie Post is co-President of the Emily Post Institute and in addition to the "Awesome Etiquette" podcast she hosts, she’s also added "Emily Post Wedding Stories."
She said the idea came from interviews she did with couples for a new version of a wedding etiquette book she’s writing. After talking to them as research, Post realized other people would want to hear their stories. So she asked them if they’d mind sharing their experiences publicly.
Lizzie Post spoke with The Show about what she’s heard from couples who have recently planned weddings, and they started with the fact that weddings can be kind of fraught events in some ways. So based on her conversations, what were some of the biggest issues people came across while planning theirs?
Full conversation
LIZZIE POST: You know, I was expecting that a lot of these stories would have BuzzFeed-like tales of woe and, “Oh, this person behaved terribly,” or “This person brought a whole entourage with them” — those kinds of things. By and large, people dealt with a lot of really good behavior during these weddings. But funny things did happen.
I just re-interviewed a couple who we had some technical glitches on their interview, and they reminded me that the dad forgot his pants. Now, he did not show up pants-less to the wedding. They found him pants. But after all the reminders, he forgot the pants to his black suit that he was supposed to be wearing, and so that was kind of like a last-minute — and he had traveled two states away in order to be at the wedding, and so there was no like, “Oh, let me just run home and grab my pants” kind of a thing. And everyone else from the town had already left, so there wasn’t like “Send them with Aunt Sue” or something like that.
But that one really cracked me up. I had a a bride who was very, very proud of the fancy porta-potties that they had gotten that really functioned like real bathroom, and she she talked — I wouldn’t say in great detail, but with with a bit of glee — about how she had one guest who was like, “I don’t use porta-potties, I am not using the porta-potties.” She’s like, “You’re going to want to use these. Like they’re good, they’re good.” And it’s just the things you don’t think about that become a part of your wedding planning.
MARK BRODIE: Yeah. Well, it’s interesting because you hear so many stories of somebody saying something or doing something — or not saying something, or not doing something — that causes all sorts of tension, especially around weddings. It sounds like those were not the experiences that you heard about.
LIZZIE POST: I heard, I mean there were tense moments for people. The first couple that we interviewed, Alicia and Kim, they planned a destination wedding in the Caribbean, in Dominica, and they didn’t realize that there’s a cruise ship that docks at a certain place every Saturday or Thursday, whatever day of the week it was they got married on.
And the cruise ship was there all week long, it was raining all week long. And sure enough, the day of their wedding, the cruise ship was gone and the sun came out, there were rainbows. It was like everything worked out.
Or someone they didn’t realize a cousin had a wife and a child, and so two extra people showed up, but it was absolutely fine. They were excited to welcome those people in. So it wasn’t it wasn’t really catastrophe things. I got a lot of stories of things that people were worried weren’t going to work out and then worked out really, really well. So that was really nice.
I don’t know if it was that people just didn’t want to air the dirty laundry or what, but I felt like for the most part, I was hearing all this all these positive things of people really coming together and making things work. Or even if they struggled with certain things like a parent wanting something a certain way, they were able to move through it and around it. And for me, that just gives me such a sign of hope that it’s not all a comedy of errors and it’s not all the bad stories that I think are are so prevalent in the media.
MARK BRODIE: Yeah. Well, so you mentioned how a lot of the people you talked to had things that they were worried about. And I wonder if if the fact that this is obviously a big event for the people who are getting involved — and in some ways for the people who are attending, you know, the parents of the people getting married or children of the people getting married, if that is the case.
I wonder if the fact that it is such a big event and the fact that people get concerned about it going perfectly, does that lead, do you think, to some of the tensions that can come up in these kinds of events?
LIZZIE POST: Absolutely. I think when you put that pressure on yourself, that can really arise. One of the things a lot of couples talked about was the fact that this was more decision-making than they had ever done in their life before. That even if they had a wedding planner or a venue who had a an event manager that was working with them, they were on task for choosing the salt and pepper shakers that would be on the table, the flower arrangements, the the napkins, and then the cocktail napkins, and then the glassware, and the this — and it was just it was mind-boggling how many decisions they had to make, which led to some good advice making it into the book about taking a break, decision fatigue, things like that.
But that was one of the places where people just felt a little more overwhelmed. I think things like weather can definitely get people nervous because that’s something you can’t control. I had very few tales, though, of “How am I going to control someone’s behavior?” And I think that was a good thing, you know what I mean? Because I think that that can stress people out.
But for me, one of the tough ones is always generational divides on traditions and things like that. I can remember for my sister’s wedding, my mom was like, “There has to be a bride’s cake,” and it’s a little piece of fruitcake that everyone gets to take home. And traditions are silly, but the bridesmaids are supposed to put them under their pillows, and they’ll dream of the man they’re going to marry.
You know, silly like really dated things like that. And my sister was such a genius. She goes, “Mom, I think you should be in charge of figuring that out.” And she then my mom didn’t go find the right kind of fruitcake that she wanted for it and everything, and there wasn’t a bride’s cake to send little slices home with people. …
It’s kind of funny sometimes the things that people will get a little bit hung up on.
MARK BRODIE: Yeah. Well, so you mentioned traditions, and I would think that that can be a very difficult thing to navigate — be they religious traditions or family traditions or any other kind of traditions. What did you hear from the folks with whom you spoke about one half of the couple wanted something and the other wanted something else? Or one side of the family, the extended family wanted something, and the other side either wanted something else or wasn’t OK with that?
LIZZIE POST: Yeah, so not in these stories, but on our other podcast, Awesome Etiquette, we got a question about a wedding where one side of the family — I think it was like the groom’s family — did not drink alcohol. Alcohol consumption and dancing were not OK. And the bride’s family, alcohol consumption and dancing are exactly how you celebrate: You drink and you dance, and this is what we do.
And they came together in a way where the dancing and the bar opening happened after the ceremony, the like non-alcoholic cocktail hour and the dinner. And then after that, they opened it up to guests who would like to stay to dance and imbibe could. And I thought that was a really smart way to handle that.
I will tell you what shocked me was — and I shouldn’t say shocked, but surprised me — was how many couples did not want to do either a first dance or a cutting of the cake. And from an etiquette perspective, the cutting of the cake was always the signal that like, OK, all the traditions have been finished, you can leave the party if you want to.
And so I was like, “Well, what did you do? Like, what was that like? You didn’t do a cake. Did you do pie? Did you do cookies? Did you do donuts? Like what’d you do?” And it was really kind of fun hearing all the different ways. But I would say a good third to 45% of the people did not do a cutting of the cake, which surprised me.
MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Lizzie Post, co-president of the Emily Post Institute, where she hosts two podcasts, Awesome Etiquette and Emily Post Wedding Stories. Lizzie, great to talk to you again. Thank you so much.
LIZZIE POST: Thanks so much, and I really hope folks will go check out Emily Post Wedding Stories. It’s a lot of fun.
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