This little blog post has been rattling around in the back of my mind for a few months. Perhaps the idea has been there for all of the 15 years I’ve been writing English Wedding. Every time I see that posed image of a groom and bride embracing, but his face is obscured because the bride’s front and centre, it reminds me. Why are we treating grooms like they’re a backdrop? Why’s it the norm to hide grooms? I think I know…

First though, a shout out to all my documentary wedding photographer friends. I love you, because you’re not hiding grooms behind brides! Honestly, this is one of the top reasons I love documentary wedding photography more than any other style. The other was put beautifully by a recent interview on the Nine Dots podcast: documentary rules because one day these people will die. But I’m saving that one up for a future blog post! (Do email me if you’d like to be quoted!) Back to grooms, and while documentary wedding photography is where equality in weddings SHINES, this style isn’t exactly the darling of mainstream wedding media.

Why are magazines still flogging the “weddings are for women” look?

So. We have a raft of wedding print magazines with women’s faces on the covers. (Quick Google search for reference: 14 front covers found instantly; 14 women and 2 men. It’s not scientific research, but from within the industry, this is something we already knew, right?) What’s wrong with equality, print editors?

Not all weddings have a bride. I have, and will ALWAYS champion LGBTQ+ weddings in this corner of the internet. How many grooms are picking up these magazines in supermarkets? Is it because men don’t buy magazines, that all these women are smiling directly at me from Tesco’s shelves? I don’t know. But those shelves – and the publishing companies filling them – are excluding half of the population and discriminating against men marrying men – when they should celebrate equality and every kind of love.

Why put so much pressure on brides alone?

For anyone wondering if this is a positive: empowering women, celebrating independence in an arena (weddings) where we take centre stage.

Weddings are partnerships. Weddings should never be “all about the bride”. Of course, finding a dress is important and exciting to everyone who’s wearing one for their big day. I will celebrate the once-in-a-lifetime experience of wearing a wedding dress along with the very best of them – but I wish there were more outlets really championing the joy of finding impeccable, smart, gorgeous wedding menswear too.

And by placing all the emphasis via front covers and styled photoshoots on brides, we’re exacerbating what became cutely known as wedding “planxiety” a couple of years ago. Only it’s not cute: it’s real. Some – not all – brides-to-be are feeling they have to stage manage perfect weddings with every detail curated and coordinated, and it’s breaking them. Wedding stress is real. Advice (including from mental health professionals) here.

I’ve always been more than a little cynical about the wedding print magazine industry. Back in 2010 I sat down with a pile of wedding magazines and counted the number of pages devoted to a) advertising b) advice and editorial and c) real weddings. In almost all of the publications I looked at, over 80% of the pages were completely devoted to advertising products to buy for weddings. Often, the first thirty pages were full page dress advertisements. And to me that said, loud and clear, that wedding magazines’ existence and purpose was to sell: to persuade women they needed to spend a fortune on weddings. (Not true. And I honestly don’t think we believe them any more.)

Perhaps there’s something in the idea that the people behind those print magazines think women are an easier target for their marketing. That we’re more easily persuaded to spend our money on pretty things we don’t need. Maybe the publishing companies are the cynical ones, targeting women exclusively they think because we’re easier to exploit for money?

 

Equality is the way forward: the wedding media can drive that change

Wouldn’t it be nice if brides knew they weren’t alone. If the expectation that weddings were “a woman’s thing” didn’t exist. If we all knew that weddings were a journey for couples to make together, and that planning them was the first step couples made together in their lifelong commitment to one another.

But why would we? Who would ever think, faced with a supermarket shelf full of grinning women in white and veils, that women weren’t alone in planning their weddings?

It almost feels like a trend, along with the shift towards highly personalised, unique and alternative weddings, that more couples are looking to an authentic wedding that just feels like them. A day that reflects who they are as a couple. I’ve seen more weddings where grooms are equally involved in everything over the past few years. It makes me happy. (It could be that more submissions to English Wedding are coming from those documentary wedding photographers I told you I loved so much.)

Wedding blogs are still – 15 years on – leading the way

Wedding blogs have a role to play if we’re going to shift the wedding media’s outlook so grooms are an equal focus for the industry. Rock n Roll Bride is fabulous for challenging gender stereotypes amongst wedding publications (fabulous, actually, for many, many other things). It’s on social media where I see more traditional posts which support the old fashioned media: weddings often still look like a women-only parade. Even the massive instagram accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers are posting masses and masses of flowers, impossibly feminine styling and insane dresses (but no suits). So while I have absolutely no influence over the future of weddings on instagram, I have utter faith in the side of the wedding media I do know, and that’s blogs and photographers.

… and here at English Wedding:

I promise to keep sharing images with grooms, and weddings where there is no bride. And I promise to love those images equally.

I promise to always follow documentary wedding photographers whose work I adore because it doesn’t exclude men. (Note: I do adore how the wedding photography community represents equality more than it did when English Wedding began in 2009. Most wedding photographers were men when this blog started! Now, photography communities have the most amazing mix of everyone, with women and men and people in between, and I love that.)

And I promise that I will do my best to drive the change from weddings being seen as the responsibility of only women, to a joyful collaboration and a partnership between couples who are head over heels in love, where no one has to hide behind their partner so the photo looks prettier.

---

Header image by Cansu Hangül on Unsplash