thinly-veiled
the internet is having a debate over the timelessness of chartreuse and burgundy and i’m still trying to figure out how i ended up with wedding brain
To start with — a defense. I didn’t plan this. When my partner asked me to marry her outside of my favorite karaoke bar, there were very specific concerns on my mind. Whether I would make it back in time to sing Defying Gravity. The lychee cocktail I’d left precariously close to the edge of the table. The cigarettes she had lured me outside with, conspicuously absent from the outstretched hand that held a small gold and emerald engagement ring. The “oh my god fuck are you fucking serious right now has this been your fucking plan the whole fucking day” that flew out of my mouth at a glass-piercing decibel at the exact moment a 7-year-olds birthday party filed out of a nearby door. None among them was how I would make my very special extra important day timeless on social media.
This month a bomb went off in the 2026 wedding community. The target? The incredibly trendy burgundy and chartreuse color palettes that everyone seems to be picking. It was a bloodbath, full of brides already nervous about payment plans and venues and menus and guest lists. They’re stressed, losing weight, googling facial balancing med spas and suddenly they’re being told by an onslaught of voices that their color choices will ruin their wedding. It’s also, in the grand scheme of internet discourse, decidedly a nonissue. Lindy West is married to someone who would email a journalist with their full name and call them a mean girl for the most chill profile of all time. A bad quasi-feminist horror novel got pulled for AI allegations — months after it was already available in the UK. I cannot escape to food for small joys without an underpaid service worker asking me if I want to put protein in it. Who cares what color scheme people are using or not using for the weddings we won’t go to?
There’s an easy essay about how wedding content — and the industry itself — works because it preys directly on people’s anxieties and fears, which are heightened by the sheer cost of even the smallest of weddings. But the most baffling part of being a person planning a wedding is just how easy the entire debacle can consume even the most levelheaded person. I know wedding brain is catching — because it happened to me, entirely without me noticing.
I got my ring and immediately called myself a child bride. I got drunk the night my partner proposed and loudly told anyone who would listen that we would be having a bar wedding. No ceremony — just tequila shots. I found a free dress on Facebook marketplace and it was ugly but it was free. I felt better than other people because I only cared about how I looked in the context of how much money I had spent on this archaic ritual. My participation was an ironic one, hilarious in my recognition that I would not be caught up like the others. Then something changed.
I can’t be sure but it must have started with the dress search. I had bookmarks on SSENSE and an easy 30-minute appointment at a vintage bridal shop. My budget was $500. Then it was $1,000. I had another appointment. And then another appointment. It was vaguely white outfits, then white dresses, then taffeta concoctions pinned and bungee corded to my back, stretched tight across my middle. The budget became a temporary hold, then an ever growing concept. It could fit and accommodate any feeling. Yes, this look is $6,000 but just imagine how you’ll feel walking down the aisle. (There is no aisle.) Think about how it will feel to be the most beautiful woman in the room. (I am not a woman. My partner is a woman.) You can’t put a price on your special day. (You’re right — WellsFargo can.)
There’s also no privacy in a bridal setting. You are a commodity. Being a bride means immediately transforming into a concept — one who will wave a credit card around if you psychologically manipulate them enough. You suddenly have to get really cool really fast with meeting women and then letting them manhandle the soft tissue of your areola into plunging necklines and satin cups. You are flesh and not flesh. A body and also a frame that has a shape and does not fit the size 2 dresses that they shove you into. You believe you are immune to social media’s impact on the psyche and then you are thinking about how this gown will photograph at a phone free ceremony. (Now there is a ceremony.) You have a plan to gather all of your loved ones around whatever bar in Brooklyn will let you reserve it on a weekend. Then there’s aisle songs, wedding signs, guest books, and having to go through the indignities of adding “black girl” to pinterest searches at the ripe age of 27. The final moment of insanity for me? Making a bridal appointment for a couture designer shop where the cheapest dress was $10,000.
I’ve been calling it wedding brain. There’s this fog around my head that I can’t seem to shake when it comes to this event. My TikTok algorithm tells me every three swipes about the “biggest mistakes people make that ruin their special days.” I am constantly asking people how much they paid for their weddings. I am researching new credit cards. I am cutting out photos of perfect wedding cakes for my partner and I to cut. (I do not eat cake.) Some days I wake up and find that in my haze of scrolling, I’ve emailed another vendor about a service I cannot afford. These include personalized themed invitations, a self-serve sticker bar, even a lesbian oyster company that comes with servers they call “roving shuckers” for a cocktail hour. (Now there is a cocktail hour.) And my wedding colors, which are not burgundy and chartreuse, but aren’t not burgundy and chartreuse are getting dragged online. A normal response would be to ignore it, or laugh at how popular a color scheme can become. Instead, for a moment, it felt like my entire world had shattered.
And yet among these feelings, these facts remain. I am excited to profess my love in front of the people who helped our relationship start and grow and become the most precious thing in my life. There is something gender-wise that excites me about being able to get married and also not fully give into the concept of girl. Having a wedding also means that there is a very real chance that a KitchenAid mixer is in my future. Wedding brain is not a past experience. It’s a current spectre, something that leaves and then emerges again when I least expect it.
We are six months away from our wedding day. (I know this because Zola keeps sending me reminders.) When we say I do in front of 150 guests, we will already be married. I will be wearing a dress I got from a vintage shop that is technically someone’s spare room. I will not have a perfect night because those do not exist but it will be beautiful and happy and I will most likely be glad that it happened. But I’m not at that night yet. The six months in between me and my wedding are a minefield of possible anxiety, fear, regret, even rage. I know who I’ve become in the process of planning this event. But who will I be when I wake up the day after?