Confessions of a Millennial Bride
From the Millennial Bride ruining big industries to being too poor or hipster to buy diamonds, I decided to find a millennial of my own to see what couples really value these days when it comes to their wedding. I had the pleasure of speaking with a lovely bride-to-be in her mid-twenties to ask about her thoughts on her wedding planning to see what stuck out the most for her about her overall experience so far: “All I have to say is it is so worth hiring a wedding planner. I’m lucky that a close friend of mine is [a wedding planner] so I don’t have to pay for one, but if I had to I’d still splurge on one!”
When I asked her what exactly she felt set her wedding apart from everyone else’s, she had a shocking, although not entirely surprising declaration: “If I could go back to the beginning to change anything, I wouldn’t have chosen to have my wedding. Don’t get me wrong, I love my fiance and our ceremony means so much to me! I just wish I would have listened to my parents when they told me that my wedding budget would be better served as a down payment on a house rather than on a full-blown ceremony.”
We continued talking about finances with the Millennial Brides, some of which many of young adults have to wade through at this point in our lives, when she suddenly turned towards me, her eyes seemingly lighting up from the inside out: “Our honeymoon fund! Oh my god, we always talk about seeing the world or going on a big adventure together in a faraway place, but we never could save up the money for it. My fiance and I were bouncing ideas off of each other about what we want for our honeymoon when we came up with the idea of a honeymoon fund. Basically, instead of having a registry we ask our guests to donate money for our honeymoon. I know it sounds totally unorthodox, but we really love the idea that people can donate as little or as much as they want. After all, we don’t want for much and we already have basic home items in our apartment.”
The Millennial Bride went on to explain how giving up the chance to put money towards a house tied into her final decision of setting up her honeymoon fund: “I know most of my family and friends would be supportive in helping us start our life. We want kids right away so a house of our own is ideal even though we can afford it right now. I’m sure in two or three years, we’ll have worked and saved up enough to make ends meet, but right now we honestly need the help. Still, we talked it over and decided it would be more appropriate to ask for honeymoon donations than to ask our family to give us a house! You know? We’re just assuming people will judge us for that decision as if we’re entitled to a house or something like that.”
We were in the middle of debating the morals of what she believed would soon be viewed as a slightly controversial wedding when she got a call from her fiance. The Millennial Bride, excused herself from the cafe to accept the call only to return five minutes later: “Sorry! That was _____, he forgot I was meeting with you today and told his parents we’d be over for dinner in an hour.”
We exchanged goodbyes and a few little pleasantries as we walked out together before going our separate ways.
In the words of the great Carrie Bradshaw: “I had to wonder”, are broke Millennial Brides lacking that special something that will afford them their dreams? Or are we just plain stingy when it comes to cashing out on big decisions?
