So, some deeper thoughts today than I've put on my blog in the past...
I'm not a bride yet but when I was maid of honor for my friend Jessica a few years ago, she introduced me to the blog Offbeat Bride. OBB was a beacon of common sense for us in the crazy world of weddings and long after her wedding was over, I've continued to read it, inspired by their straight talk and open-minded views on weddings and life in general.
I'm not a bride yet but when I was maid of honor for my friend Jessica a few years ago, she introduced me to the blog Offbeat Bride. OBB was a beacon of common sense for us in the crazy world of weddings and long after her wedding was over, I've continued to read it, inspired by their straight talk and open-minded views on weddings and life in general.
Offbeat Bride and another blog, A Practical Wedding, both write fairly extensively on the issue of the "WIC." WIC stands for Wedding Industrial Complex and essentially, it refers to the wedding industry as a whole, which is generally characterized by its tendency to pressure people, primarily women, to spend tons of money on ridiculous stuff that they don't need. This market tends to be full of weight loss supplements, over-priced dresses, and "personal details" that every bride just has to have. It's perpetrated by slick wedding websites, pushy sales people in overpriced salons, and (my guilty pleasure) wedding TV shows.
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| Mason jars and chalkboard. A (beautiful) wedding that was inspired by a bride's desire to incorporate as many of her Pinterest wedding pins as possible into her wedding. Via weddingchicks.com |
The thing is, as OBB bride's editor Ariel wrote, any wedding business, no matter how indie or alternative, becomes by default a part of the wedding industry. I was reading this article from APW on Friday and I got to thinking, if all of us who are trying to keep it real, but have wedding-related business, are technically part of the WIC... how can the whole thing really be all that bad?
