Going to a wedding alone: the single woman's guide to surviving wedding season

Going to a wedding alone when everyone else has a plus one is one of the most quietly expensive, emotionally exhausting and occasionally humiliating experiences of being single. This episode is the bible for single women at weddings and for the couples planning them.

I am writing this from Mumbai during Indian wedding season, where the city looks like a Bollywood film set and the celebrations last for days. It got me thinking: why do Indian weddings look so much more fun? And why, as a single woman, do I dread a western wedding invitation?

Etiquette expert Jackie Vernon-Thompson joins me to answer everything nobody tells you about navigating weddings as a single person: how to handle the plus one conversation, how to decline a wedding invitation without destroying a friendship, whether you are actually obligated to attend a bachelorette party, and why - according to Jackie - wishing wells at weddings are genuinely rude and should be retired immediately.

We also talk about a theory I have been sitting with for a while: when couples throw out all the traditional wedding etiquette rules to make the day entirely about themselves, they stop thinking about their guests. Main character energy is great for the couple getting married. It is expensive and exhausting for everyone else in the room.

According to LendingTree, 40% of wedding guests have gone into debt to attend a wedding, and for bridal party members that number jumps to 62%. And 48% of Americans are secretly hoping they are not asked to be in a bridal party this year because of the financial and time burden. The etiquette around all of this is broken. This episode fixes it.

Jackie Vernon-Thompson is a Certified Etiquette Consultant, #1 bestselling author of Transformative Etiquette, and founder of From the Inside-Out School of Etiquette, featured in HuffPost.

In this episode you'll learn:

• How to go to a wedding alone without feeling like the exhibit
• The exact etiquette around plus ones for single guests, what you can ask for and how to ask
• How to decline a wedding invitation without damaging the friendship
• Whether couples should pay for their guests to attend bachelorette and bachelor parties
• Why wishing wells are considered rude and what good wedding gift etiquette actually looks like
• How to decide whether you actually want to go to a wedding
• How wedding etiquette has changed in the past 20 years and why bucking tradition is putting pressure on guests
• How couples can be more inclusive of their single guests
• Why Indian weddings look more fun than western weddings and what western couples could learn from them

Whether you are heading to a wedding alone this summer, trying to figure out if you can say no without the guilt, secretly relieved someone cancelled their engagement, or planning a wedding and want to actually be a good host to your single friends, this episode is for you.

Jackie Vernon-Thompson: transformativeetiquette.com · @fromtheinsideoutsoe

Substack memoir - the Last Year of Single story in real time: breesteele.substack.com

Instagram: @breesteele.mp3

Host and Executive Producer: Bree Steele

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.