Why I Won’t Say Yes To The Dress

I am the first person to admit that I’m addicted to trashy, reality TV.  Real Housewives, Hoarders, Intervention, Jersey Shore.  I love it all.  Well, except for one breed, wedding shows.

I can watch guidos fist pump their way through their eighth Jager bomb without reservation but something about wedding reality TV shows makes me ill.  I think it’s all the superficiality about an event that’s supposed to represent the complete opposite.  I’m fine when the Housewives back stab one another for the seemingly hundredth time.  I mean it’s what I expect them to do.  But watching brides flagrantly approach their wedding with such superficial, self indulgent mockery just seems wrong.

Take for example, Say Yes To The Dress.

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It has downgraded people’s weddings to nothing more than a dress that could pay off my student loans.  Don’t get me wrong, I purchased an expensive dress in the grand scheme of things.  But in no way did I put my financial future at risk just to keep up with the Joneses.  I broke my wedding dress budget begrudging and not because of societal pressures or compulsion. 

Besides campaigning this idea that the only worthy wedding dress is a 5 K one, this show features some of the most hideous excuses for friends and mothers.  Literally, they find the most pushy, obnoxious people I’ve ever seen.  Some bride always gets convinced by her friends to buy a cupcake, princess gown that she obviously hates.  Do we really want to be pushing this idea that brides need to cave into other people’s opinions?  I mean it’s your wedding pick what you like. 

This show just glorifies all the wrong parts of wedding dress shopping: the rich, no budget, overly indulgent brides who couldn’t tell you what a Walmart is; the snooty friends obviously push their opinions onto their unaware, helpless bride; and the consultants, don’t get me started on them.

While I dislike Say Yes To The Dress, I think TLC practically made my blood boil when I watched the hideous 4 weddings. 

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Once again, TV execs use this show to capitalize on the snarky bridezilla motif that permeates our society.  Essentially, the show has 4 strangers rate one another’s weddings to see whose is the best, with the winner getting a free honeymoon.  Really, we’ve downgraded weddings to a competition over who served the best chicken marsala? 

But what’s more hilarious is the fact the weddings are always fugly.  Seriously, they must make a habit of picking people with no taste.  Normally, I wouldn’t be one to say anything about other’s tastes, but if you are going to claim that you have the “best” wedding the least you could do is actually live up to that hype.

Even if the brides did have taste, I would still hate this show.  Why are brides competing to have better weddings than someone else?  And what is better anyway?  And even if my wedding is better than yours, why does it matter?  If anything, I would be happy to see everyone have the best wedding because I know how much hard work goes into it.  The best weddings can’t be graded on food and atmosphere.  What makes a wedding great are the intangibles, the things that only your friends and family would feel watching two people they deeply care for make a commitment to one another.

I think that’s why I hate wedding reality TV shows.  They never focus on the important part of weddings, the actual marriage (I mean that’s what it’s all about after all).  Instead, these shows glorify snarky, bratty brides that will be divorced from their grooms in less than a year’s time.

Why can’t we have a wedding show that reminds us why we are getting married in the first place?  Show me a show that focuses on two people making a life long steadfast commitment to one another with solemnity, sincerity and respect and I will give up my other reality shows.  That kind of reality is the one that should be glorified. 

What do you think about wedding reality TV shows?