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Culture


THE FAKE POOR BRIDE

Confessions of a wedding planner

By Xochitl Gonzalez
Illustrations by Daniele Castellano

Daniele Castellano
June 16, 2023
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Sunday mornings, for wedding planners, are reserved for prayer. Not because it’s
a particularly pious profession but because that’s the day when clients who were
married on Saturday figure out if they’re happy or not. Should they choose
unhappiness, Sunday is when they decide whom to blame. And Monday is when the
emails come.


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I say “decide” because weddings are funny affairs—tense, expensive, fraught with
emotion. They are revisited—by the couple, by the family, by the person paying
the bills—time and again. They mark the beginning of a couple’s new life but
sometimes of other things too: family feuds, broken friendships, a long hangover
of fiscal regret. So even if the party went great, on Sunday the wedding planner
prays.



Will the email be full of joy and praise? Or will it be one of complaint? Back
when I was a luxury-wedding planner in New York City, my business partner and I
once got an email from a bride, written as she helicoptered off to her
honeymoon, saying that her wedding had been a “transcendent experience.” A call
from the bride’s mother directly followed. “Repeat after me,” she said. “I am
bad at my job. I should never do this job again.” Sometimes the clients just
need to vent. Sometimes they threaten to sue.

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