By Penny Cronin
Saturday Oct 3 2009

The dress was white and expensive and the bride looked like an angel, albeit an angel with a tense expression on her face. She was a nucleus of stress, orbited by an anxious mother-of-the-bride and a couple of half-terrified bridesmaids, as she prepared for the most important day of her life -- the climax of more than a year of planning, faffing and fretting.

The air was thick with the sense of impending Armageddon, as the bride sat there like a bomb with a half-lit fuse. Anytime anybody said something, or did something, they held their breath in case she would go off. Then poor, proud daddy bounded in to the room to see how his little girl was getting on, got a bit too close to her dress and that was the catalyst for the whole crazy wedding-day-stress-atomic-bridezilla-bomb to explode.

"Get off my f***ing dress, dad!" she roared.

"Yesterday was a bit of a wet day," explained the wedding photographer who witnessed the explosion. "So the stress levels were high. Immediate family always bear the brunt of it."

Irish weddings, which used to be nice, simple, family affairs, have become big business in recent years, with couples spending tens of thousands of euro on their big day. The recession has cooled the spending somewhat, but Irish weddings are still plentiful -- according to the latest CSO figures there will be 30,000 Irish weddings in 2010 -- and if the stories wedding professionals told Weekend magazine are anything to go by, the stress of it all is making some of our brides behave badly; some of them very badly indeed. The weather, it seems, is frequently the straw that breaks the Irish bride's back.

"I don't know why so many Irish women who have lived here all their lives suddenly think that the country will turn into Lanzarote just because they are getting married," the photographer chuckled. "It's always raining here.

"If the weather is bad, there would always be a low cloud in the house," a make-up artist confirmed. "I did one wedding where it was raining but the bride hadn't realised. When I went up to the room, the mother-of-the-bride whispered fiercely: 'Whatever you do, don't let her look out the window.' I had to start her make-up pretty much in the dark. Of course, they couldn't hide it forever and when she realised, the bride started crying and shouting at everyone because it was raining and accusing the mother of not putting out the Infant of Prague."

The term bridezilla -- to describe brides behaving badly -- was first used by wedding planners operating in upmarket New York, who organised weddings for the very demanding Upper-East-side ladies.

With the increasing commercialisation/Americanisation of Irish weddings, the insights of American author Rebecca Mead, whose book One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding is a good analysis of the American wedding industry, can, to some extent, be applied here.

"Everyone wants an authority to tell us how to do something as momentous as planning a wedding," she says, "but since we've rejected many of the authorities that used to govern the behaviour of people, such as religion or family, the most powerful authority to turn to is the wedding industry itself. And it's there to sell you stuff. They grab you by the lapels and say, 'If you don't do it the way we're telling you to do it, if you don't seize this one occasion to have the perfect moment, then you're losing your once-in-a-lifetime chance'.

"In a way, it's surprising that more brides don't go bridezilla. There's so much pressure on them to choose their signature hors d'oeuvre and make sure that their chair-back ties co-ordinate with the inside of the save-the-date envelopes."

One Irish wedding planner tells a story that bears out Mead's analysis. "I think the best ever example of a bridezilla I had was a beauty who changed the whole layout and design of her stationery at the last minute due to the fact that she had bought her wedding shoes. On the back of the shoes was a little organza bow -- so she changed everything on her stationery order to include an organza bow to 'tie in' with her shoes.

"Recently, I had another bride call me during the wedding meal to ask me where I was, as there was a major issue that I needed to sort out. What was it? There were four candles in the bathroom that weren't lit."

In fairness to brides, it is easy to see how the pressure can become too much. Psychologist Alison Keating believes that people who like to be in control are more likely to become bridezillas, though she stresses it is not inevitable.

"If you like to be in control it can affect you more. Also, you are not just dealing with your family; you are dealing with his family. That's a lot of different types of people trying to work together."

One Irish hotel manager candidly admits that dealing with controlling brides is often the hardest part of his job.

"Some brides just can't let go. They have to be involved in everything -- and I mean everything, from table settings to match books, menus on the table, and all that. Some even ask if we can change the colour scheme of the room," he says.

"We've seen brides who were wandering around at four or five in the morning, still trying to organise everything."

Life coach Karen Slattery, who has worked with fathers-of-the-bride who are anxious about their speech, concurs with Mead's analysis and believes the profligate spending during the Celtic Tiger is at the root of the problem.

"They worry if it will be as good a show as that of their best friend who got married the year before. I think that people want the day to be so perfect that their expectations are too high. It is the build-up and the anticipation of the thing."

Another stress peculiar to weddings, according to Slattery, is the fact that it is probably the only time in your life when all your friends and family are in the same room.

"And all eyes are on you. Sometimes, it is easier to get up in front of a bunch of strangers than it is in front of family and friends. And it builds up in your head in the run-up to the day."

The older brides can often be worse, according to the make-up artist. "They get more caught up in the whole 'it's my day' thing. I remember one in her mid-30s in particular who had a 'moment'. There was the normal hustle and bustle of the morning of the wedding, the hairdresser was there as well as myself and the rest of the usual suspects, and all of a sudden the stress got too much for the bride, who was in the middle of having her hair done.

"She told everyone to shut up, that she was having a moment. No one could say a word and the radio had to be turned off and there she was taking deep breaths. The hairdresser and I were just standing there in shock.

"Sometimes I would feel like laughing, but you actually come away very drained. You really do."

Alison Keating, who practises at the bWell clinic in Malahide, Co Dublin, reports a rise in the number of brides using their services in recent years. So much so, that a section of their business is dedicated to dealing with the stress associated with weddings.

"We predominantly work with anxiety and depression and I have seen a couple of brides who have completely lost the run of themselves, so we do specific relaxation sessions for brides, or for anyone in the family. It's not always the brides I would see, sometimes it is the bridesmaids, or the mother, or the mother-in-law. Weddings bring up all sorts of feelings for people."

According to Keating, bridezilla behaviour often masks underlying problems in family relationships and friendships, and she has seen total breakdowns of friendships and massive rifts created in families as a result of this behaviour.

"I have had bridesmaids come to me who have been very upset and friendships have ended. It is a big web. The bride is upset and the bridesmaid is upset but nobody is communicating. One person can throw a situation off. You are dealing with high emotions."

The relationship between a bride and her bridesmaids can, at the best of times, be a fraught one, and the hierarchical structure of the relationship can bring up years of jealousy and resentment, as illustrated by another Irish make-up artist.

"I am hard to shock as I have 15 years' experience doing weddings, but there was this one girl who did manage to make my jaw drop. It was the morning of the wedding and there were three or four bridesmaids and the mother-of-the-bride to be done.

"The bride called me out to another room. I thought she was going to talk to me about her make-up or pay me or whatever, but she basically asked me to make the bridesmaids as plain as I could. I thought she was joking but she was deadly serious. She said, 'I really don't want them looking well. I want to be the one to shine today. It's my day'."

Self-medication is becoming quite common with the bridal party, according to the make-up artist.

"Valium is quite a common occurrence with the mothers-of-the-bride. Rescue Remedy is another big thing. Personally, based on my experience of weddings, I don't think Rescue Remedy works, but the brides swear by it.

"Usually, people would have one or two sociable drinks to calm the nerves, but I have arrived on the morning of more than one wedding where the bride couldn't even walk. And she would have a big drunken face on her.

"I had a bride recently and I would say she was only topping up from the night before. Even when I had finished the make-up I couldn't hide the fact that she was drunk. She had that vacant expression on her face. You meet all sorts.

"People can be a bit rude because they have forgotten their manners in the heat of the moment, but usually you are treated with respect. If they are not nice to me I will just make them ugly," she laughs.

Bridezillas, be warned.

- Penny Cronin

Irish Independent

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