Bride Says $50K Wedding Ruined Her Life!

It was supposed to be a perfect wedding… and it turned out to be a nightmare!

So says a British bride named Lucinda Rose, at least. Rose is a child psychologist in the city of Cheshire, England, and she spoke to SWNS about her September 2023 wedding to Ian Brown. Now, her takes on the process, the planning, and the ceremony are going MEGA viral!

Brown, 43, popped the question to Lucinda in January of 2023 after 16 months of dating. Immediately, the 39-year-old woman said yes. Wonderful!!! And then the craziness began. The duo was fast able to secure a venue for their September wedding. But having the venue started the terrible toll, as Lucinda noted:

“The wedding took over my life from the second we booked the venue. … We paid this massive deposit, so there was a lot of pressure to get it right. It was a massive mental and financial load and it just kept snowballing.”

Initially, the couple wanted to have about 50 guests at the wedding, and spend only £15,000 (which is roughly $19,000 USD). But soon, their invite list more than doubled, growing to 120 people. And their budget more than doubled, too, up to £40,000 (which is about $50,000 USD). Then, swept up in the magic of the forthcoming wedding, Rose admitted she splurged on adding a string quartet, a horse and carriage, an ice cream van, and a fireworks display.

*Record Scratch*

Hold on, SERIOUSLY?! It wasn’t required for her to do any of that. LOLz. If costs were a concern (which they were!), surely she could have dropped the fireworks or something, right??? As it turned out, Lucinda did start doing DIY projects to save money. That included putting together bags of confetti and personally decanting shots of limoncello into tiny bottles for guests. But all that DIY stuff came at a cost to the rest of her life! Lucinda explained:

“The month before the wedding, I was so consumed with doing, making, finding and buying wedding things that I barely slept and hardly saw Ian.”

And then she was so stressed that when the actual day came, it wasn’t fun for her!! She said the wedding went off “perfectly,” and yet she didn’t remember a moment of it:

“I started to feel a sense of dread about it — and on the actual day, I could hardly focus. For months after the wedding, my memory of the day was completely gone … I felt ashamed that I felt that way.”

Womp womp!

Reflecting on what she alternately called the “wedding blues” and “literally burnout,” she added:

“The wedding ruined my life for three months. It’s this whole societal thing. As women, we’re taught to want the day to be perfect — but at the end of the day, life isn’t a Disney movie.”

She was then surprised to feel both exhaustion and guilt even after the wedding was over! Lucinda recalled:

“At times, I couldn’t wait for the wedding to be over — but then when it finally was, I was too burnt out to do anything. It was the emotional side too, thinking, ‘Why don’t I feel like others?’ And the guilt over the money spent. … I felt guilty and ashamed about it.”

In the end, Lucinda wants other brides-to-be to realize early that they shouldn’t succumb to the terror of planning a “perfect” wedding. Instead, she says they ought to be open about their feelings and anxieties:

“As women in particular, we’re so conditioned to think our wedding will be the best day of your life. So it’s lonely and isolating when you don’t feel the way people expect you to. It made me feel so much better to have others tell me that was what they went through too — more people should be open about it.”

Yeah, that’s great. No qualms about being open and honest. But again… if the “perfect” wedding is stressing you out to the pointing of allegedly ruining your life, you are allowed to drop all the extras and just get married in a simple (and cheap!) ceremony! There’s no law requiring you to have DYI confetti, a string quartet, a horse and carriage, an ice cream van, and a fireworks display at your big day!! Girl, like, come on now. Seriously??

[Image via Glam/YouTube]