CULTURE
The “Contentification” of Weddings
By: Grace Stecher, Senior Writer Edited by: Alexa Fabi
A wedding day is often considered one of the biggest milestones people will ever reach. As marriage has progressed past a transactional institution, weddings have shifted towards more extravagant parties, displaying the everlasting love between two people rather than simply signing a marriage license. However, with the rise of social media, especially TikTok in recent years, weddings have become a prime source of content for social media creators, marking a shift from these events as a celebration of true love to a flaunting of wealth and aesthetics, creating unreasonable expectations for the everyday bride.
TikToker Christine Le (@christineleee on TikTok) is a prime example of this new wave of wedding content creators. While Le tied the knot this past May, much of her content still heavily revolves around her wedding: everything from budget breakdowns, to her biggest regrets, to details she loved about her wedding. Although four months have passed since the big day, Le still has “#bridetobe” in her TikTok bio, evidence of her continuous wedding-focused identity on the platform. The word “bride” is no longer a one-day title given to women on their wedding, but rather a character for influencers to embody and create content about for as long as possible. In one video captioned “Our Destination Wedding Venue Details and Cost,” Le shares the different wedding costs with her 418.8K viewers, including the venue's astronomical price - upwards of $60,000. In a response to a comment remarking on the thousands she spent, Le said “If I wasn’t a content creator I definitely would’ve scaled wayyyy back haha.” This one sentence embodies every issue that comes with content creation: influencers with seemingly unlimited funds spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to create extravaganzas worthy of months of social media posts. What once was a simple celebratory tradition of marriage has been blown out of proportion as content creators compete to spend the most money, have the most famous guest list, and get the most likes. Where does one draw the line between spending money on their wedding for their own happiness vs. for the enjoyment of their followers? Does the line even exist anymore?
It’s not just @christineleee blurring this line. The TikTok trend “wedding dresses I tried on but didn’t love, ” where users share images of all the dresses they considered before finding “the one,” is another way that unrealistic expectations surrounding weddings are circulated on social media. As one would expect, most of these gowns aren’t cheap. Madeleine White (@madeleine_white on TikTok), an influencer with 4.6 million followers who recently got engaged, created six of these videos over the past few months, sharing a total of about thirty dresses she tried on. Many of these gowns from designers like Kim Kassas cost upwards of $12,000, an unrealistic amount for the everyday bride to spend on a single-use dress. In 2023, the average amount brides spent on their wedding dresses was $2,000 (The Knot). Few people shopping for affordable wedding dresses are sharing that process online, so when the only content circulating is that of wealthy influencers, audience perspectives on what is “normal” can be easily skewed. According to MoneyGeek, the median cost of a US wedding in 2023 was $18,525. The real median household income in 2023 was $80,610, according to the US Census Bureau. Using these statistics, it can be approximated that the average couple is spending around 23% of their yearly income on their wedding day, with many spending even more. With the market size of the wedding industry predicted to increase from $196.58 billion in 2023 to $219.8 billion in 2024, the amount couples spend on their wedding will likely rise (Nunify). This creates a dangerous standard for the average American couple encouraging unrealistic spending on weddings, an issue only exacerbated by the continued circulation of “ideal wedding” content from influencers.
It can feel like weddings are less about the celebration itself and more about creating quick consumable content for followers and a spectacle for those not “lucky” enough to be invited. Just this past June, the wedding between two TikTok influencers Alex Warren (@alexwaaren) and Kouvr Annon (@k0uvr) made headlines. Fellow TikToker Lilah Gibney (@gibneylilah) posted a YouTube vlog and multiple TikToks the day after the wedding documenting the entire wedding, all before the couple had a chance to post on their own social media and share the details of their big day. Many began to speculate if Gibney was in attendance to actually enjoy the wedding or just capture as much behind-the-scenes content as possible for her social media platforms. As social media continues to grow, how far will this go?
As users are exposed to more wedding content on social media, it is no surprise that more and more brides-to-be are hiring their own wedding content creators for their big day. Wedding content creators work alongside traditional photographers to capture raw moments throughout the day on iPhone, with many offering a 24-hour turnaround time, providing the couple with pictures and footage of the celebration weeks before the professional photographer does. Some companies even provide live social media posting, allowing Instagram stories and Facebook updates to be posted on the bride and groom's accounts while they’re busy doing other things, like getting married. Big Day Social, a wedding content company, provides a Wedding Instagram Package that includes things like four Instagram reels, over 30 photos, and the creation of an Instagram page dedicated solely to the couple’s love story, along with other social media posts, all starting at $2,000. Why does the average couple need to share live updates of their wedding for their social media followers who weren’t even in attendance, and why are they expected to spend thousands to do so? It’s true that getting quick iPhone content of a wedding day seems necessary in today’s digital world. The issue is that couples are now expected to shell out a few thousand dollars to do so, marking yet another way that unrealistic standards are being set through social media.
From influencers sharing the outrageous costs of their destination weddings and designer dresses on TikTok to the rise of wedding content creation as a new job field, the “contentification” of weddings is obvious. Unreasonable expectations about what a wedding should entail are being forced upon the everyday couple, most of whom cannot afford the lavish celebrations plastered across social media. As a society, we need to confront unrealistic wedding standards. It’s important to recognize how we perpetuate these expectations and how we are impacted by them. We don’t need to add even more stress to what should be a joyful celebration of love and union.
