It’s no secret that COVID-19 has, um, changed a few things. You know, like our whole way of being and also, my entire industry. Weddings have, completely understandably and for very good reasons, had to adapt during a global pandemic.
I’ve talked a lot about what this means, from what a COVID safety policy looks like for a wedding to all of my feels about how much extra work this means for many couples to a list of resources for my fellow wedding vendors who are just trying to make it through.
This post isn’t about any of those things. This post is about word choice.
Sequel weddings and other “fun” words
A few weeks ago, I got an email from a big-name wedding brand that I won’t name here but that rhymes with “Hola.”
Hola sent me a flowchart to answer the question “Is a micro wedding right for you?” Clearly, they think I’m the one getting married but jokes on them. Already hitched! Still, I have an abnormal interest in all things weddings and so I did the thing they wanted me to do. I opened the email and I clicked the provided link.
It took me to this page.
Honestly, the advertised flowchart was a bit of a disappointment — is there any answer except “yes” to the question “Do you want to spend as little as possible?” — but what I did find interesting were all of the words.
I am a wedding planner who has been coordinating weddings for more than four years. I am also a major geek about weddings. I practically collect this stuff when it comes to weird shit that my industry does. And yet, despite my nearly incessant monitoring, I had somehow never come across the term “sequel wedding.”
What are sequel weddings? Hola defines them as: “large celebrations in honor of a newly wedded couple … These events can take place one week, one month, or even several years after a couple officially ties the knot.”
So, it’s what a lot of my couples are doing because of COVID. Getting married this year, having some kind of celebration next year. I had no idea it had a name.
Also included in this same article were two other shiny words: microwedding and minimony. I was previously familiar with both because, again, I’m a super fan but it was interesting to see the terms defined. I’d always thought of them as interchangeable but Hola says “No, no, my friend. They are most certainly not.”
“Micro weddings are quite literally smaller versions of traditional weddings, meant for 50 people or fewer.” We’re talking 30 to 50 guests and, per the website, a completely unhelpful price range of $1,000 to $10,000.
Minimonies, meanwhile, are “small gatherings of 10 people or fewer including a photographer and officiant.” They’re 10 to 15 guests and cost an average of $300 to $2,000. Like a fine wine, a minimony is often paired with a sequel wedding so you can have, as Hola puts it, “the best of both worlds.”
What is my problem? Why do I so strongly dislike these words?
I hate them because to me, a wedding is a wedding is a wedding. If a marriage was born from the event that we’re referring to, that event was a wedding. End of story.
I know I’m alone in thinking this (or at least alone in shouting it quite so loudly). People have, after all, differentiated between “elopements” and “weddings” for centuries.
This I can more easily swallow even though, for me, the term “elopement” will always invoke the sense of fleeing by midnight that reading Jane Austen imprints onto the impressionable teenage brain.
But sequel weddings? Minimonies? Micro weddings? Aren’t these all just names for the same thing that already has a perfectly good name? You know, like “wedding.”
Maybe I’m being ungenerous. Maybe we need to create new words to give us a sense of control in a world that feels completely out of control. This is the same reasoning for why I’ve taken up a new and passionate interest in cross stitch during COVID. There is something inherently calming about defining something, whether it’s a six-inch hoop of Aida fabric or a party that you never thought you’d have to plan.
Except, of course, it’s not couples who are doing their best to popularize these words. It’s businesses. It’s places like Hola who stand to make a profit if they can market not just one event but two or even three.
What’s in a name?
I make my living because people hire me to work their wedding. Or their elopement. Or their micro wedding. Or their minimony. Or their sequel wedding. I clearly am OK with the actual event that is happening if it’s being done in such a way that prioritizes health and safety.
What I’m not OK with is making couples feel like there is something new to buy and that if they don’t buy it, they are not getting “the best of both worlds.”
There is only one world. This world, and it’s the world where you and your partner — and nobody else — get to decide how you give birth to your marriage. As long as you know that, I don’t care what the hell you call it.