OPINION: “There Are Times When It Is Perfectly Acceptable To ‘Upstage’ A Bride”

Brides who expect people to put their lives on hold for a wedding are selfish.  There, I've said it. So we all know the general rule is it's not cool to steal a bride's thunder. That's probably why this image of a man proposing to his girlfriend centre stage at someone else's wedding is doing the rounds this week. Image via Imgur To me, this is attention seeking at its finest and I completely understand why the bride is smiling through gritted teeth. She will clearly be going to town on this couple tomorrow with a cup of tea and her hair in a high bun. Look, we can all agree that we won't wear white to the wedding, we won't get legless and score Uncle Jim, and we won't make everyone stay quiet while we sing Black Is The Colour at 12:30am. (It's too early, sit down.) But that's as far as this whole thunder-stealing thing should go in my opinion. After that, any bride who tries to impose rules and regulations on guests in the run up to a wedding has lost the run of herself. The 'Bridezilla' trend has been glamourized by TV programs like Don't Tell The Bride, Four Weddings and Yes to The Dress.  Yes, it makes for entertaining viewing, but in real life 'Bridezilla' behaviour is not clever and not funny. But it is real. More and more I'm hearing of brides throwing hissy fits when one of their bridal party gets engaged, or plans a wedding in the same general time zone, or god forbid gets pregnant. Rein. It. In. I get that this is your big day and you've been dreaming about it all your life, but expecting people to put their lives on hold for two years just so you can be the centre of attention is too far. You get one day. That's it. The pregnant bridesmaid issue really gets me revved up. A quick google search will glean hundreds of results in which brides rant about their "selfish" bridesmaids who have "ruined everything" by getting pregnant. Does it really matter if your guests nudge each other in the pews and wonder when your bridesmaid's due date is? Are you that self-obsessed that you can't have someone else celebrate something on 'your' day? No matter how beautiful a bride may be, in my opinion this behaviour is just plain ugly. I've seen brides give out about the hassle of extra dress fittings, the annoyance of the bridesmaid not being able to get bananas drunk in Vegas, and the mortification of someone "waddling" up the aisle. (Yes, a bride actually used that word.) If a bridesmaid were to gain a few pounds, would they be greeted with the same sighs and raised eyebrows? Actually, don't answer that.   In my opinion, there is nothing about being pregnant that says you can't take part in a wedding. Imagine if an employer demoted a woman because she was pregnant. It is unfathomable (thankfully), but that is exactly what we do to each other when we say that a pregnant woman is not a suitable candidate for a bridesmaid. Women should celebrate each other and their milestones, whether that milestone is a wedding, an engagement or a pregnancy. What is it about weddings that makes us suddenly feel that only one woman can be celebrated at a time? We should celebrate all of the women, all of the time.