Issue 10: The Wedding Coach
and other misguided attempts to avoid the Wedding Industrial Complex
Kurt: Wow! Ten issues! I can scarcely believe it!
Ursula: Ten! And furthermore, we’re coming up on wedding season. Last summer’s wedding season was mostly nonexistent, obviously, and I’m prepared for this year to be doubly bonkers to make up for it. (Note: I have not yet been invited to any weddings for 2021. Someone please rectify this.)
Kurt: This month, we’re taking a look at a new Netflix show, The Wedding Coach, hosted by comedian Jamie Lee and a handful of guests.
Ursula: I was looking forward to this show, because the premise is great: a woman who’s been through the stress of planning a wedding herself wants to help exhausted, in-the-weeds couples pull back, remember what their wedding is really about, and roll with whatever complications inevitably come along. Jamie isn’t interested in making sure you have a so-called perfect wedding, but in reducing the pressure to MAKE it perfect.
Kurt: Agreed. I was excited to see a show tackling the other side of wedding planning. Most shows either focus on how beautiful and wonderful and magical they are—or they give you shows like Bridezilla. This show tends to focus on a particular problem per episode (financial stress, “unruly” guests, cultural misunderstandings, etc.) that the featured couple is having. But when I sat down and watched the first couple of episodes, I think I was expecting something more than what the show gave me.
Ursula: The problem with putting the concept of a “wedding coach” on television is that it’s gotta BE television, which means it actually requires the drama that it purports to want to avoid. This gets cringey so quickly, like in the second episode where the bride is torn between which of her two best friends to ask to give a toast at the wedding. It’s a dilemma that any sensitive friend would understandably have trouble with. But rather than the hosts offering to talk to the two friends on her behalf—or gently questioning why she only wants one of them to speak—they set up a “toast-off” where the two friends have to compete for the honor. I practically broke out in hives.
Kurt: That toast competition was so uncomfortable. I just didn’t understand why they couldn’t both give a toast? It wasn’t a wedding speech. And seeing as how the bride gave up pretty much everything to satisfy her very traditional in-laws, let her have two toasters!
Speaking of which, this episode even features a pseudo-wedding stress meeting (wedding AA meeting?) where several spouses got together—in a gymnasium for some reason—and they all chat about their wedding stresses. And that was all of two minutes out of the twenty minute episode. I wanted to *record scratch* on them and make them do more group therapy!
Ursula: That really encapsulates what left me feeling unfulfilled—the show doesn’t live up to its own promise. And realistically, I don’t think it can. A break from planning to go enjoy a boozy bachelorette party might take the edge off for a stressed-out bride, sure, but it doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of what the wedding industrial complex does to us.
There’s also an inconsistency between what the show posits is a temporary wedding stressor and what’s perhaps a much more significant problem. By that, I mean Carson.
Kurt: How do you solve a problem like Carson? No, I’m seriously asking because the show didn’t even seem to know! Let’s paint a picture: the groom’s college fraternity bro/best friend who never aged out of the frat mentality, drinks too much, misogynistic, unlucky with the ladies...am I missing anything?
Ursula: The show describes him as an “unruly guest,” but that doesn’t even begin to describe Carson. He’s a menace! Carson’s MO seems to be to just drink as much hard liquor as possible and hit on any woman nearby. If I were at a wedding and interacted with Carson, I’d make sure not to leave my cocktail unattended.
Kurt: The show’s answer to Carson seemed to be to babysit him. Let him drink, but not too much! Let him hit on women, but don’t let him get too lewd! Shockingly enough, none of that seemed to work! I would have appreciated Jamie taking a harder stance about a truly problematic person, but I feel like Carson was there in service of the drama you were talking about. Which I think is one of my main concerns about this show. Their idea of what makes for entertaining drama varies wildly from episode to episode. In some, we have truly reprehensible people trying their best to cause chaos, and then we have stuff like canoe mishaps and wardrobe malfunctions.
Ursula: Kurt, when you and Gil were wedding planning, were there any moments when you felt like you’d fallen into a WIC trap? I’m guessing that the pressure and sense of expectation for LGBTQ weddings are different from the ones I experienced in planning a fairly traditional straight wedding.
Kurt: For the most part, we actively tried to stay away from anything remotely related to the WIC. I think our only expectations were that we didn’t want it to be like a “straight” wedding—no church, no cake, no sprawling guest list, no DJ, no toasts. Luckily, we were both in agreement on many things, like having a tiny ceremony but throwing a big reception party. For us, our wedding was perfect because we knew what we both wanted, and we were honest about what we could or couldn’t handle in terms of it. Unlike a certain gay couple on The Wedding Coach. Oh Chad and Anthony, the epitome of having too much expendable income paired with the crushing weight of societal expectations.
Ursula: Me, a few seconds into that episode: you’re having A WEDDING FESTIVAL????
Kurt: YES A WEDDING FESTIVAL. This episode in particular was what I wanted from the show all along. A couple who is ready to crack under their (let’s be real, totally self-imposed) wedding drama.
Ursula: Right—they were the sole couple, I felt, that actually benefited from Jamie’s presence. Her energy is so big and loud, but theirs was BIGGER and LOUDER. Jamie saw their desperation and did a good job of trying to help them work through it.
Kurt: Those lads were in need of some serious couples therapy. Out of all the newlyweds on this show, I could see how troubled these two were. They had a lot more going on than mere wedding jitters.
Overall, I didn’t love The Wedding Coach but I appreciate what it’s trying to do. So hope we get more episodes where they hopefully refine the formula. The show has so much heart and potential—and Jamie Lee clearly is invested in the couples’ wellbeing, but it’s unfortunate that some of the more interesting ideas are downplayed in favor of sensationalism.
So, I know I’ve talked a bit about mine and Gil’s aversion to wedding planning, but what about you, Ursula? Did you have any close calls with the WIC?
Ursula: Oh boy. I got engaged right as I was rediscovering my own feminism, which meant that I became VERY aware of how predatory the wedding industry is and primed to be enraged by all of it. I think I turned into a bit of an anti-WIC snob, which is its own brand of problematic. A significant part of me wanted to turn the concept of weddings upside down and use my and JD’s marriage to, I don’t know, disrupt something. The patriarchy, I guess? Anyway, I’m glad that that attitude empowered me to do things like wear a secondhand wedding dress and have my dad officiate and keep my last name, but obviously, my wedding didn’t disrupt anything. Nor should it have. That’s not what weddings are for!
Here’s an example of my mindset at the time: when we designed our wedding invitations, I put Jake’s name first, whereas traditionally the bride’s name comes first. I honestly thought I was being SO PROGRESSIVE AND EDGY!
The self-deprecation aside, though, it was valuable for me and JD to consider what weddings are for, what traditions and norms we wanted to preserve in our own wedding, and what we wanted to leave out. That’s the sort of critical examination I wanted from The Wedding Coach. When, in the final episode, the bride’s dress is discovered to have a broken button, I don’t want a talking head of Jamie explaining that under no circumstances should the bride find out that her gown is ruined, or footage of the bridesmaids scrambling to fix it amidst hushed tones and anxious looks. Isn’t this the kind of “imperfection” or “drama” that we’ve been told, up to this point, we don’t really need to worry about at all?
Kurt: Which is why I wanted to love The Wedding Coach more than I did. The messaging is super murky: do we worry about a missing button, or a predatory guest, or halt everything to deal with our issues, or try to not fall out of a fucking canoe (seriously, that canoe)?! The double standards are all over the place!
To your other point, even I felt some looming guilt when planning our wedding, because I felt like I had to live up to some imaginary standard. And marriage wasn’t something I was ever taught to desire! I wasn’t brought up to anticipate finding “The One” and planning a big event with my family and friends from near and far. But didn’t I want those things? For some inexplicable reason those feelings were there. I’m eternally grateful that Gil and I were totally on the same page when it came to all that stuff, i.e. fuck the WIC. Because I could see a scenario where I would have gone all in on the pomp and circumstance—and I hate that that is somehow a part of me!
Maybe I was swayed into the mindset from the many, many, straight weddings I’ve attended over the years. I think it just goes to show that the WIC has its claws in so many of us, no matter how divested we think we are from the idea of weddings.
What did y’all think? Have you watched The Wedding Coach? Are you planning to? Do you love the WIC? Have you watched Muriel’s Wedding, an excellent film about friendship and our obsession with the Wedding Industrial Complex? Why not? Are you somehow too good for Toni Collette? You’re not! None of us are!
See you next month!