The Great Sweetheart Table Debate
By: Stephanie Brown
Tags: Bridesmaids, Neoliberalism, Weddings, Labor, Bridal

To give you just a taste of how mad people get about where the wedding party sits, this was posted last week in one wedding group I’m in:

Hot take of the Day: PLEASE do not force your wedding party to sit at a head table with you and then not allow their dates to sit with you as well. I was in a wedding back in March and I am in another wedding in October where my fiance will have to sit alone (not knowing anyone at the wedding) because I have to sit at a head table that doesn’t allow plus one […] I feel like this should just be common courtesy but it seems like soooo many weddings still do this, and it’s so uncomfortable for significant others who don’t know anyone else at the wedding. Am I wrong?

Y’all, the admin had to SHUT OFF COMMENTS on this post because it caused such unrelenting heated debate.

In the bridal magazine articles I’ve read on this topic, the author generally lays out a list of pros and cons without passing judgement: head tables and sweetheart tables give your photographer a good view of your faces, head tables let you hang out with friends who may live far away, sweetheart tables give you some time alone and let your wedding party sit with their plus ones or other friends. These articles contain judgement-free advice.

This comment section was not like that. Off the bat, the original poster made the mistake of framing the decision in terms of morality, which is a whole other fascinating topic for another post. And, of course, things spiraled from there.

I picked out a few comments that encompass the gist of the main points:

“We are all adults. Your SO can be away from you for an hour during dinner. Is it ideal? No. Will they survive? Yes.” “Or do what you want because it’s your wedding and it’s not your problem if your bridal party’s significant others don’t know how to socialize….they won’t die if they have to sit with strangers for an hour or two during dinner.”

My favorite theme were the “survival” comments. It’s a low bar if your only hope is that guests don’t die at the wedding (though, given the number of superspreader weddings over the past two years, maybe not).

“They are in my bridal party-not their boyfriends. Whether their dates are comfortable isn’t really my concern on my wedding day.” “When you commit to being a member of the wedding party, you should know that you are obligated to the bride and groom on that day. That’s the purpose of the wedding party.” “I’m not saying I wouldn’t do my best to seat people I think would get along with each other but to expect a seat at the head table because you’re uncomfortable being a grown adult capable of socializing is a bit entitled.”

This take that your role of friend goes out the window on your wedding day and you no longer have to care about anyone but yourself is a baffling one to me. If you go to too many weddings like this, odds are you will end up hating weddings. I asked Brandon what he thought of these comments and he said “I would not want to be friends with any of these people.”

And on the other side:

“It’s just the principle to me and like others have said, I feel like the ‘my day my way’ attitude is off putting and shows a lack of empathy for others. To each their own I guess.” “If people in your wedding party are your closest friends and family, you should probably care about if their SOs are comfortable or not. ::shrug emoji:: I don’t feel like this is a very controversial take.” “Oof, threads like this always highlight an extreme lack of empathy.” “I feel like that is SO RUDE to do to your bridal party.”

This isn’t an anomaly either. I found a few TikToks with equally heated comment arguments. You can click through the video to find them.

As you can see in the comments, the arguments tend to fall into one of a few categories:

The wedding party and the guests are there to accommodate the couple. Their comfort is secondary. The couple are the hosts and they should accommodate their guests. Their comfort is secondary. Don’t tell me what I can’t do.

Cards on the table, I usually side with those that see the couple as the hosts of the party who should care if their guests have a good time. To be fair, I AM a triple libra and empathetic people-pleaser, but what’s the point of throwing a big party where a bunch of people are miserable?

To be fair to the opposing side, we are taught from a young age in these Modern United States that we should put our needs above others. And we’re also taught from a young age that brides get what they want on their “most special day.” In my last post, I talked about the tension between individualism and tradition. In some ways, this debate speaks to the tension between individual needs vs community needs at the wedding.

I was talking through my thoughts on the commenters’ arguments with Brandon and he mentioned that he hates when people see “member of the wedding party” as a job rather than an honor. And that’s exactly the disconnect in this debate, I realized! And it’s how, as promised in the tagline, I can connect head tables to neoliberalism.

In the (digital) pile of articles and books I’ve now read about weddings, neoliberalism is a key theme in the explanation of the “my special day” discourse. Neoliberalism is a word that you’ve likely heard tossed around, but might not completely understand. It’s a complicated and a confusing term, since in the U.S. we tend to associate “liberal” with “Democrats,” and since, as this helpful article lays out, it has been used to describe four different, but overlapping phenomena:

Neoliberalism” stands, first, for the late capitalist economy of our times; second, for a strand of ideas; third, for a globally circulating bundle of policy measures; and fourth, for the hegemonic force of the culture that surrounds and entraps us.

In cultural studies, we primarily look at the fourth strand. This strand uses the term neoliberalism to describe how, since about the 1980s, we see every aspect of our lives through the lens of the market and capitalism. Instead of being allowed to be full human beings, we are taught to prize productivity, competition, wealth, and individualism above all else.

An example I often use to explain how this looks in practice is social media. Think about the way social media platforms bring our private, social, and cultural lives into the economic sphere. Tinder teaches us that dating is a matter of scarcity and demand. Instagram and YouTube teach us to self-brand. Etsy teaches us to monetize all of our hobbies. All social media asks us to create “content” out of our emotions.

Neoliberalism teaches women that the road to empowerment lies not in activist feminism, but in buying things, making choices, and having power over other people. In her book Wife, Inc, Suzanne Leonard (2017) looks at how neoliberalism and the language of professionalization animate every stage of what she calls “the wife cycle,” from dating, to the wedding, to the job of being a wife in the 21st century. In her chapter on weddings, she argues that brides have come to view wedding planning as both a job and a chance to make empowering choices to create their perfect day.

Leonard and other feminist scholars often discuss the role neoliberalism plays in the extravagant consumption on display at weddings, but these concepts also explain where the “bridesmaid as job” discourse comes from. Under the logic of neoliberalism, a wedding is a work place where all guests must do the labor of making sure the couple, and especially the bride, are happy. Under this logic, just like in modern U.S. workplaces, guests’ needs are subsumed to that of the company (the couple) and they are called entitled or fired if they ask for their own needs to be met.

The language of work and jobs are all over the wedding planning boards. Every day, for instance, someone posts a story about they had to “fire” one of the bridesmaids for not falling in line with what was required. Brides often suggest to one another that they should choose a maid-of-honor not by who they are closest to, but who is willing and able to put in the work. More and more, brides are giving their bridesmaids what amount to contracts, laying out the requirements of being in the wedding.

It is perhaps unsurprising that in a country that increasingly turns every part of our lives into labor, wedding parties and wedding guests have seen their roles shift from community to workforce. If every part of our lives is built on the logic of the market, then why would weddings be spared.

If you are a bride or groom: resist the urge to treat your friends and family as your employees. And, if you find yourself being treated like an employee as a wedding party member? Unionize.