Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Weddings

Episode Date: August 30, 2022

Weddings: Filled to the brim with ritualistic ceremonies, patriarchal traditions, power abuse, bank-breaking costs, conformist uniforms, and false promises galore...sound familiar? Sounds like a freakin CULT to us. This week: Amanda and Isa discuss wedding ceremonies and the lengths people will go to for the "best day of their life" with writer, author of "Trick Mirror," and professional wedding critic, Jia Tolentino. This is Isa's Parent's flower business! danisaflowers.com Dipsea is offering an extended 30-day free trial at DipseaStories.com/CULT Go to DadGrass.com/CULT for 20% off your first order.

The views expressed in this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Hi, Sounds Like a Cult pod. This is Grace calling from PA, and I think the cultiest thing about weddings is the patriarchal cult behind wedding culture, which really has to do with things like the father giving away the daughter, and the vows sometimes being really rooted in sexism.

Hi, my name is Casey, and I'm calling from Gardena, California. I just started planning my wedding, and the cultiest thing I've noticed so far is that the wedding industry wants every wedding to look like it jumped out of a Pinterest board. The same cursive font, the same twinkle lights, the same charcuterie board in the shape of the couple's last name, and if your wedding doesn't look the part, it's not worth it. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm Issa Medina, and I'm a comedian.

I'm Amanda Montell, author of the book Cultish the Language of Fanaticism. Every week here on our show, we discuss a different fanatical fringe group from the zeitgeist, from chiropractors to swifties to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? To join our cult and see culty memes and BTS pics, follow us on Instagram at SoundsLikeAcultPod. I'm on Instagram at Amanda underscore Montell, and I'm on Instagram at Issa Medina, I-S-A-A-M-E-D-I-N-A-A,

where you can find some bloopers of us when we mess up and forget to say a legendly. And feel free to check us out on YouTube where you can watch our show or hit us up on Patreon at patreon.com slash SoundsLikeAcult, where you can listen to our episodes ad-free. Here comes the show. All dressed in... No. No, no, no.

We will be talking about the cult of... I really wanted to say child brides, but that's not... Oh, well, that's an actual cult. That's a denomination of the larger broader cult that we'll be talking about today, the cult of weddings. Yeah, boy, oh boy, do I have a story for you. Oh, boy, oh boy, do I have a story for you. Yeah.

I find weddings to be the cultiest, and people think that I'm unromantic because I find weddings creepy and conformist, but I'm like, no bitch, I love love, I love celebrating, and even I sort of love monogamy sometimes, but I don't love weddings. Yeah, no. Well, I don't hate weddings.

No, me neither. I like enjoy them as a party, like I love to party. Yeah, me too. But I think for me it was like, I was like, hey, I finally have a platform, and my cousin's gonna hear about it. We were like, can we do this because of revenge purposes? Yeah, it ended up being for the best

because the wedding was in Columbia, and I would have spent so much money to get there, which is part of the reason weddings are culty, and we're gonna talk about it. Yeah, I love weddings for their cultishness, and I hate weddings for their cultishness, and that's the cognitive dissonance we tend to live in on this podcast.

Weddings are probably the most mainstream cult we've ever covered on this show, but right off the bat, even though weddings are supposed to be about celebrating love and family, they could actually be summarized as a cultish system of conformity, toxic power dynamics, and financial exploitation,

all under the guise of tradition and in service of the best day of your life. Getting a divorce is so expensive, and especially if you don't sign a prenup, ladies and gentlemen, and all people sign your prenup, even if you believe in love, save yourself the money and the hassle for later,

you know, it's just in case. Oh, you can't predict where life will go. Life is just a rapid river where you can't predict where the rocks. Rapid river, yeah. I feel like you're applying climate changes coming for us all. Yeah, you don't know how climate change

affects your marriage. Okay, speaking of the end of the world, let's talk about why does your intuition tell you that weddings are a cult? Because for me, I remember when I was working at that beauty magazine, where all of my colleagues were like mid-20s, a different person would get engaged,

like once a week, all of a sudden, these independent, unique human beings would come into the office and participate in this engagement ritual that seemed like they were all suddenly lobotomized. They would come in and they would have balloons on their desk and everybody would be shrieking as if their whole life, everything they'd ever accomplished,

everything they'd ever dreamed of was null and void because now they were getting engaged. I feel like that's especially culty to me when it's happening in the workplace, because when I see someone I know get engaged, I'm happy for them because I know how happy it is making them. You know what I mean? I know them personally and I'm like, they've really wanted this for a while

so I'm so happy for them. You can still be happy for a co-worker, but a lot of the times, the shrieking... The shrieking? The shrieking is where it is kind of becoming this out-of-body, cult reaction. I felt like they were reacting that way because of the pressure.

And peer pressure is such an underrated ingredient in the recipe of cult influence. Across the gender spectrum, I think there is pressure to lock it down and get married, but I think especially for women, the term spinster exists because it's contemptible for women not to be married. That expectation is getting less and less intense.

But actually in the 1800s, the term spinster was a legal term for unmarried women who had to learn to spin yarn to make their own money because they didn't have a husband, which is actually inspiring. We should low-key reclaim spinster. I mean, my grandma, on my dad's side of the family, got married in her 30s.

Oh. And for that time period, that was on her logic. Yeah, people thought that she was going to be alone for the rest of her life. But lucky for me, she got married to my grandpa, and then I exist now. Oh, yeah.

I love that you exist. Yeah. I also think it's important to highlight that about weddings not marriage. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I also want to mention by way of disclaimer, and this disclaimer comes with all of our episodes,

that we are not going to be able to touch on everything. So I'm sure that there are culty traditions all around the world associated with weddings. But today, we're mainly going to be focusing on the Western practices because that's what we're familiar with, and that's what we have time to touch on. You know, there's so much to be said about the impact

social media has had on the cult of weddings, like people becoming wedding influencers and attracting thousands of followers to be like voyeuristically obsessed with a wedding they have nothing to do with. There's so much to say about fringier Western wedding rituals. Like, oh, my God, I have personally gone down rabbit holes

watching Mormon wedding videos on YouTube because they're so stepparty and culty. Look that up later if you're feeling weird. But today, we're just going to be examining the topic from more of a bird's eye view. We are talking about weddings, but of course, in order to discuss the background, we have to talk about marriage itself,

and that's been around for over 20,000 years. And since then, we've had different cultures around the world create their own customs for their weddings. Something that's really weird to me is that a lot of wedding traditions that we now take for granted or we think are really wholesome,

they actually come from a really twisted origin. For example, many wedding staples like veils and bridesmaids were originally tactics used to ward off evil spirits whose aim was to ruin nuptials. In medieval times, brides started to carry bouquets made of garlic and herbs. Thank God that changed because my parents

own a flower business and they don't grow garlics or herbs. Oh, shout out to your parents' flower business, Danisa. My parents, actually, a lot of people don't know this. They own a wholesale flower business. It's called DanisaFlowers, D-A-N-I-S-A, flowers.com. Buy flowers for my parents at wholesale prices.

They're not gonna crank up the prices just because you're getting married. They want you to be happy. But, yeah, in medieval times, the bouquets were made of garlic and other herbs and they were used to disguise people's body odors. Oh, yeah. And then I also read that the popularity

of the June wedding is because back in the day before it was customary to shower twice a day, people would take their annual bath in May. Oh, spring cleaning vibes. So by June, they would smell good and that's when they wanted to host their wedding. That's kind of weird to me

that they still would do it in June. If you take your bath in May, do it in May. Do your wedding the day after your bath. I guess people didn't want their weddings to all be on the same day because that would be competitive. And also, if everyone was taking a bath in May, then everyone's busy taking baths.

They're not available for the wedding. But if I went three days without showering, you don't want to be around me. Don't mean either. So many wedding traditions are based on the idea of women as property. Engagement rings were used to dictate ownership and they still are.

I was literally just about to say men don't have to wear engagement rings. It's only the woman who wears the engagement ring. Men are shallow and like sparkles, I think even more than women. Oh, 100%. But obviously the ring is like to show that you're taken. So to me, it's just a little suss that

the man is only taken once the formal wedding has happened and the woman is warding off potential prospects as soon as she's engaged. It's almost like Stockholm syndrome because once you have that ring on your finger, it creates the sense that this capture is the most celebrated moment of your life

when really that's a shackle on your finger. So we know where Amanda stands. I still kind of want one. They're pretty, but I don't want it to be a diamond. That's the other thing is like, we don't question any of this conformity. And that's why weddings formality often feels forced because when you zealously go along

with strict costly rituals without questioning or knowing where they come from just because it's what you're supposed to do, that is cult membership. Speaking of Stockholm syndrome, apparently like centuries ago, a groom had to kidnap the bride of her family disapproved of their union

and the best man was put in place to defend the groom in case the family retaliated. Oh my God. Isn't that crazy? People are literally like forming armies. I know. And defending the family. I guess that's where family pride came from.

Life was so exciting back then. Hi, my name is Clem. I'm calling from Columbus, Ohio. The main thing that robs me as culty about weddings is when they're saying the vows. All the vows that I hear at weddings just sound really culty, like their souls will be binded to one another

and you will stay with each other through sickness and through hell. Like, what? Are you here to tell me that that's not culty? Hey, Issa and Amanda. My name is Michael from Miami and I think the cultiest thing about weddings is the cost.

Similar to the pink tax with weddings, if anything is labeled as a wedding, then all prices are increased from flowers to venues. I went to one where the couple took out a loan to help pay for their wedding. Speaking of how insanely expensive weddings are, I just want to plug my parents' business again. It is denisaflowers.com.

That's D-A-N-I-S-A. Flowers.com, it's a combination of my sister's name and my name, Danny and Issa. They are a wholesale flower business, so they sell flowers in bulk at wholesale prices. So if you want to plan a wedding

without the fucking expensive-ass wedding price bumps, then you should buy flowers for my parents. Another really creepy origin is, like, the bridesmaids. They dress to like to confuse vengeful spirits from harming the bride. Like, that's why all bridesmaids dress the same.

Why was a wedding so, like, creepy and spiritual? And, like, why was everyone so scared? Well, because it was, like, pre-enlightenment. People didn't know anything about the world yet, so they thought that, like, spooks and spirits and sprites were controlling everything. Honestly, that sounds kind of magical and fun.

Yeah, now all we have is the algorithm. Yeah, exactly. Exactly, the ultimate God. But it's just wild that we still hang on to these completely delusional traditions because I don't know, we're not creative enough. Yeah, devil's avocado. I'm bringing that back as someone who, like,

loves to, like, make cookies around Christmas time. I like tradition sometimes, but I do think that it takes away from people's, like, creativity because it's, like, so easy to fall back on widespread traditions and not create your own. And I think, like, the most fun traditions are the ones that, like, you make with your own family.

100%. You make them up yourself. Oh, I think traditions can be a beautiful thing. They're used to, like, root people in their culture and community and family. They provide a place and space for belonging. You know, they do what cults do on their best day. But when you take a tradition that was maybe rooted

in spirituality and superstition and you make it capitalist, like, now all those bridesmaids have to spend $300 on, like, a sage green dress that they hate and will never wear again. And that's when it becomes problematic. Yeah, and even the bride wedding dresses are so expensive for literally no reason because they know they can charge it for the purpose of a wedding.

Let's talk about the cost because it's not just, like, emotional. It is financial as well. Before the pandemic, the average cost of weddings was about $33,000 in the United States. That is more than half of the median annual household income in the United States, which is insane that for, like, one night and one party, people are willing to pay that much money. The average number of guests in 2021 was 105.

But pre-pandemic, the number of guests was around 131. That does sound like a lot. But in a way, when you have, like, the bride and the groom and the families, because the culty thing about weddings is that it's not just about the bride and the groom. It's about their parents. It's a family affair. And you don't get to just have what you want.

The average number of vendors hired for a ceremony was 14 in 2021. It's like running a small business. It really is because, like, you can't just hire the wedding planner. It's like you have the venue, the photographer, the caterer, the chef that makes the cake, because you can't just get the cake at the caterer. You have to go to the special bakery, the hair and makeup, the goddamn DJ.

Yeah. And of course, the florists. That I'm going to do another mention of my parents' business. They are wholesale. So that's the thing is, like, what you can do to, like, cut costs is design your own bouquet and, like, buy from a local wholesaler, like, my parents, which is Denise's wholesale fresh flowers. They do ship all over the country.

And it can be, like, a fun activity where, like, you know, you make the bouquets with your friends, and it's less culty because you are spending less money. It's not only costly to throw a wedding. It is extremely costly to attend a wedding. The average cost to attend a wedding is $460, with $160 of that being for a gift. Thank God most of my friends are too weird to get married.

Yeah, no. I mean, I, like, was famously in a sorority, but I was that involved. So I wasn't very tight with a lot of my sorority sisters. Therefore, I'm not getting invited to, like, all their weddings right now. Which I am totally fine with because it's not that I wasn't friends with them. It's like I wasn't, like, at the level that they're inviting me to their wedding. I'm like, great.

I don't want to pay $900 to go to Charlottesville, Virginia. Thank you. All of the wedding labor falls on the shoulders of the bride. Oh, yeah. And that creates this bridezilla stereotype. Especially now that, like, western culture has normalized, like, weddings as such a party. I think a lot of men in the relationship want the party as well.

They want the wedding almost as much as the woman, but they kind of shrug it off and pretend they don't want to because they don't want to do the work. Yeah. And it goes back to those, like, gender stereotypes in the house. Even if you ask your husband or your partner to help you with chores or to help you with running errands, you still have to do the emotional labor of telling them exactly what to get

at the grocery store, exactly what to do. Because, like, men play dumb, or, I mean, maybe they're not playing. Yeah. But, like, gender roles completely assign domestic labor to women. There is nothing about being a woman that better suits you to planning a wedding. Exactly. Like, there is no reason a man shouldn't want to or shouldn't know how to plan a wedding.

This reminds me a lot of something I recently learned about, which is weaponized incompetence, which is something that a lot of men in, like, cis-hetero relationships do. They, like, act like they don't know how to do the dishes or they don't know how to wash clothes or when they go grocery shopping, like, the woman has to give them a list of what to buy. And it's this weaponized incompetence,

because then it puts the brunt and the emotional labor on the woman. And that happens so much with weddings. Also, if you think about it, aren't, like, men supposed to be strong in, like, planning events? You're, like, carrying boxes and, like, putting things on the wall. Like, isn't that for manly people? I just don't like how women are sort of pressured into, you know, caring excessively about the wedding,

spending an ungodly amount of money on the wedding. That forces them into this bridezilla role, which is, like, how dehumanizing is that to literally paint you as a scary lizard? Yeah. Bridezilla. Especially if the man is not expressing as much interest, even though they care internally,

then the wedding and the cost of the wedding can be put on the bride as this sunk cost. Like, the man can hold it over the woman and be like, oh, I spent, like, all this money on our wedding, even though, historically, the bride's family should be paying for it. I think today, a lot of the time, the couple is paying for it together.

And so even though the man wants the wedding as much as the woman, they act like they don't, it could be, like, when they're having their fucking, like, midlife crisis. Oh, oh, oh, there is this sort of power struggle over it. They're passing the wedding off as, like, this is your thing. Exactly. It's really a shared thing.

Exactly. But society makes it seem like it's the woman's day, even if they don't fucking want all of that pomp and circumstance. Yeah, exactly. I resent the bridezilla culture because it, like, coerces women to create these mini-cults where you have to, like, do and say everything that the bride does. There's this encouragement of narcissism,

wedding pressures can prompt brides to get so fucking judgy of each other with their flowers and their invitations. And I think this plays into the girlboss cult that we've brought up in past episodes because I've heard people celebrate the wedding industry for being a space for women entrepreneurs to thrive, but there's still so much covert racism and classism and politics in the mix. The wedding vendor world is apparently replete with, like, unspoken handshake deals and alliances and betrayals

all behind the facade of, like, T-Roses and cursive fonts. It just makes me never want to be a bride because I'm afraid of the cult leaders I'll encounter and, honestly, of the cult leader I might become. Hi, I'm Melanie from Minneapolis and I think the cultiest thing about weddings are the exit costs of saying no to being part of one. There can be so many reasons that you don't want to be in a wedding,

whether it's financial, you're not really close with the person, but if you don't, you risk losing that person as a friend, the disapproval of other people who did say yes. It's just a lot. Hi there, my name is Carson and I'm calling from Missouri. I'm currently planning a wedding and I think the cultiest part of the industry is the way they manipulate language to make you feel guilty

for not spending a certain amount of money on experiences or items like a dress or a ring. They make you feel like if you aren't investing in the wedding, you are devaluing the relationship. Let's get into it. Your cousin. Yeah, because, okay, obviously I love my cousin, but we are still not on talking terms

and that's because what happened was she threw a bridesmaid party. She invited all my cousins except for my sister and she invited me as well. And so I emailed back and I was like, hey, was this like a typo? Did you forget to include my sister? She was like, no, I'm just not inviting her. And I was like, all right, well, you invited like

and who are like across the world and your bridesmaid party is in New Orleans. So, you know, you know that these people are coming and you chose to exclude my sister. So I was like, I think you should invite her. You guys live like 10 minutes away from each other in fucking Brooklyn, like get lunch and fix your shit. And she was like, no, like this is the one thing

that I have control over and I do not want to invite her. And she was like, and I already went above and beyond by inviting her to my wedding when I didn't want to. And I was like, I was like, okay, if you didn't want to invite her to your wedding, then like, don't worry, we just won't come. I threw it back at her thinking that she would be like, I'll do it for grandma.

Like we never see each other. It's in Columbia. Like the whole family's going to be there. And instead she was like, you were so rude to me about my bachelorette party that you're actually not invited to my wedding either, unless you apologize. And I was like, I'm not apologizing for standing up for my sister.

So like, I guess I just won't see you at your wedding. Dude, stories like that are so common. You can literally look up lists of extreme bridesmaid stories online, grown women throwing tantrums, replacing bridesmaids at the last minute because they don't match the aesthetic. And I think the excuse for a lot of this behavior and this makes me really sad is women are like bracing

themselves to feel invisible for their marriage. Not that this is me generally speaking. And so here your wedding is the one day when you get to feel like a celebrity. I actually think it's because women are so used to being silenced and they're so used to being put on the back burner. And when you are given a wedding

or when you are planning a wedding, you are finally like the star. You are the center point and everyone needs to listen to you. This lack of power leads to this like power hungry attitude for sure during the wedding planning process. And it's like, shouldn't this whole thing be to like be with family and your loved ones and like it be like a loving memory.

They get so power hungry. Totally. And blindsided by that. Honestly, I don't think it's entirely their fault. It's this idea that they like haven't had power their whole life. Totally. Now is the time.

All of this just makes me think of the conversion, conditioning and coercion necessary to join a cult. It's like, you go to an amazing wedding or you try on a wedding dress that makes you feel important and beautiful. And that's your conversion event. Society has your whole life conditioned you to think that this is going to be the best day of your life.

And now you're coerced by the cult of capitalism and patriarchy to want to participate in this. So before you know it, like you don't recognize your own individuality because you are fully participating in this cult. The reason that weddings have been able to like get in our head so much is because traditionally brides were getting married so young.

Like carrying the bride across the threshold was actually symbolic of the bride unwillingly leaving her family. Yeah. Women were so young, they actually didn't want to grow up. They didn't want to get married. And they had to to become an adult.

Even now, think of like daddy walking his daughter down the aisle and giving her away to the husband. This tradition is like ingrained in our brains, like a stamp. Like a, what do you call those things? What did they do to nexium people? Like a brand. Yeah, it's like a branding on your ass.

It is, it's branded into us. And it goes so unchallenged. And this is one of the reasons why it's such a hard industry to subvert because there is so much pressure to put on this performance to validate that like you're a worthwhile person and you've brought honor to your family by being successful. I mean, even my family,

I like, I thought my parents didn't care whether or not my brother and I got married at all. But when my brother got engaged last year, my parents were like so proud. They felt like they had done something right. They raised a son likeable enough to get married. I guess. That's so funny.

There's no disapproval, but it's like you can almost see the disapproval by the level of approval when it does happen. I was just like, I didn't realize there like was this pressure on me. I always just thought my parents wanted me to be very career accomplished, but apparently they want me to have it all.

Yeah, they do. And you know what? I'd go to that party. Casey? Pop the question. No, I'm just kidding. Let's contextualize the cult of weddings in the culture of 2022.

I think the biggest one is the fear of missing out. Because the thing with like the wedding industry and conglomerate, I don't know what to call it, but it really goes deep between the ages of like 27 and 34. It's like those are, I just made up that number from like personal experiences being a woman in this society. You would think that the pressure to get married

is decreasing, but actually a recent survey found that millennials were far more likely to feel pressured to get married compared to other generations. I think that's why I don't fully relate to millennial culture and I'm more of a cuss, because I don't feel the desire or need to get married at all. And I also don't feel a pull towards that tradition in any way.

Like, I wonder what Gen Z's data will look like in relation to marriage as they get older. Millennials' lives have been so destabilized by the 2008 economic crash and the pandemic and everything that we were promised. Like you can be whatever you want to be. Ended up not necessarily being true, so we rely on traditions like weddings to sort of ground us.

Yeah, and I also think the pandemic, because it froze everyone's life for two years, it kind of was this like fast forward moment for like a lot of people. You went to sleep and then you woke up two years older and then all of a sudden you were feeling that pressure. Whether you were organically going to feel it or not, it's like that idea that we like lost two years

during the pandemic. If you weren't in a relationship, you were very alone. And so maybe it was like this idea that like you want to have a partner for life, which you can have without necessarily getting married, for sure. Or without throwing a wedding. Or it was the idea that you didn't want to be alone,

but also the idea that you wanted to celebrate life and then you wanted to have a reason to see family and friends. And so like all of this kind of put in the hot pot of the pandemic, it came out with like people being more likely to want to get married. That's one thing that I do love about the construction of a wedding is that it is an excuse to bring back everyone you love together and you don't get a lot of those. I guess I wish that there were more excuses in society

to reunion with your family and friends and that you didn't have to have a fucking wedding to do that. Yeah, whatever happened to the tradition of big birthday parties? Well, you know me. I love a big birthday party. Exactly. I also think that we can't ignore the fact that weddings and marriage play such a central role in actual history.

Yeah. A.K.A. the Unification Church is known for throwing these mass wedding ceremonies, these blessing ceremonies where 4,000 people will get married in an arranged ceremony at once and they all dress in identical outfits. Yeah, I was just going to say, I mean like the cult symbols and traditions are there. Everybody's wearing white.

The bridesmaids are all matching. But think about it, in regular weddings everybody's wearing white too. I know. No, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah. It all comes and stems from that. The desire to want to control who partners with whom and when and how, then leading to like who reproduces with whom

and when and how is such a cult leaderish pursuit and in fringier groups, that control falls in the hands of that like singular charismatic cult leader and in mainstream society that desire to want to control who partners and when and how falls in the hands of the government. White supremacy, you know. And that's the thing about having these like official ceremonies is that then they are officially tied to higher ups in the cult

and that could lead to them having children together which makes a member less likely to leave because what are they going to leave their child behind? Right, right. You know, and those are kind of the same things you could say for weddings, marriage and divorce, people stay together for their children. It is binding.

Up next, we're going to talk to a journalist and author, Gia Tolentino. She is a professional wedding skeptic and she is also a fellow alma mater of the University of Virginia. Yes, and against her wills sort of, she is also now a married woman. Yeah, which we're happy for her because it makes her happy but not for the reasons that you might think.

Yeah, Gia wrote one of my favorite books, Trick Mirror. It came out in 2019. It's an essay collection. And in that essay collection, she wrote a piece critiquing wedding culture called Ivy Dread that I really connected to. So we're going to hear from her now. Do you want to tell our listeners who you are,

like introduce yourself? My name is Gia Tolentino. I'm a writer and I am a notorious wedding hater, I guess. Although, you know, I mean, like I do love to party. I do love to party with my friends. I love that because I feel the same way. Yeah. How would you describe sort of like the origins

of your relationship to weddings and how did you start critiquing them in your work? So the origins of my feelings about weddings have everything to do with the kind of institutions that I was raised in, I think. I grew up in Houston, Texas. I was on scholarship at this very rich, very white, very evangelical Christian school.

So it's like everything was the most normative that it could possibly be, right? Like the community I grew up in, they believed so strongly in the things that most weddings like imply, which is that the singular aspiration of American life is to be a rich white family that cares so deeply about itself.

All ideas of security and aspiration were locked up in like the traditional nuclear family and kind of these displays of consumption. I grew up also socialized into so many girly things. Like I did dance. I had to take like etiquette classes. Like it was just this bullshit like, you know, and it was just so implicitly designed

around this like specific idea of like rich white, like aspiration that was like everyone in the world should be this kind of person. And as much as like my upbringing put me in touch with like the pleasures of conformity and like the ways it feels good to be like swept up into tradition and ritual and kind of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous sort of performance.

It feels so good to be bad. Well, you know, it feels so good to be basic, I think is the thing. Yeah, that's why people are basic because it's like for a reason. It's so easy. And our culture valorizes it so much. It is the singular idea of aspiration

that is still like, you know, I think dominant. Like I would do theater and all of the rituals around like putting on a bunch of makeup and putting on a dress and performing for people that I like would partake in. And then I went to UVA University of Virginia. You know, and I was like, I was in the Greek system and the whole thing was just like increasingly obvious

as a way for people who were like equally rich and attractive to assortatively match themselves with other people that would be equally rich and attractive. And everyone was always going to like these date functions. I think that the weirdest part for me about that, like the equally rich, equally attractive thing is I remember girls in my hall like meeting guys

in certain fraternities and I was like, Oh my God, they're like matching with each other to like get married. Like I feel like the intention was always to like end up with these people in the end. It's our version of arranged marriage. We have such disdain for that. And yet we do it too.

I feel like that's why I like never dated at UVA because I was like, I don't want to end up with any of these people, but also probably cause I was queer. It was all of these things built up to the fact that, and then at the same time, I'm an extremely social and extroverted person who loves to, you know, fucking party every single night.

You know, like it was, I spent every day between 18 and 26, like just getting drunk five nights a week and having an amazing time with my friends and my boyfriend who I started dating. He also went to UVA, but was older than me, and we started dating right before I went to the Peace Corps in 2009. Like I think the impetus for that wedding essay

that I wrote in my book was that we were starting to go to like 10, 12 weddings a year when I was 22, and it just never let up. And so, and I was making like $20,000 a year, and yet this was just taking over. Like so much of life was revolving around this singular vision of what you should aspire to, and I just felt all of this discomfort building.

And then this was like, I think time is already different, culture is already different now than it was in 2012, but it was like people were like, when are you getting married? And I would, that question would be so angry, you know? Yeah. It's always the next thing too.

Like even people who do get married, it's like, when are you having kids? And then they have kids. It's like, where's your kid going to school? And it's this like never-ending train of questions that it's like, can you be a little like, have a better imagination? Like, do you not know how to have a conversation? Like, why are you revolting

to like the easiest question to ask? It's like small talk, but at the same time so loaded and pressurized. It's like, God damn, can't we talk about American Idol? And I also find it like increasingly, like as I started to develop like the political ideology that, you know, like this was also,

I was like kind of moving from like, I think when I graduated high school, I was like, I hate the politics of this community, but like, I don't know. Like I was like, maybe I'm moderate. Like maybe I'm a moderate, you know? And then like I went from there to being, you know, just full on left socialist, you know,

within however many years, I just started to feel very strongly that all of the things that are implied when people are constantly asking, when are you going to get married? When are you going to buy a house? Like, where's your kid going to school? You're doing public, you're doing private. It was like all structured around this idea of security

and opportunity belonging to the nuclear domestic family and this idea that like, you know, you have your youth and then you get married and then you lock it down and you, all of your effort becomes concentrated on shoring up and protecting and sort of gilding this individual, like nuclear family. And I was like,

I think that that ideal is so destructive to American society. It's like completely erased any idea of like collective care and collective aspiration. It's all contained within this idea of the like safe, happy, rich family that is, you know, like ultimately really destructive. Yeah. And I feel like even though it's literally going towards coexistence

with like your family and your children, it kind of creates this idea that you have to prioritize like one person in the family. Like when you get married, you have to prioritize like the man and then when you have children, you have to prioritize the children. Even though it's like collective family unit,

it like isolates people within that group. Yeah. It's a privatized collective rather than like a true collective, like the public one. That was also one of the reasons it's like, I have technically a husband. I have a child and it's like, and it's like, I don't want them to be the purpose.

You support your child. I allegedly have a child. But it's like, I don't want them to be the soul. I mean, this was like a big thing for me after having the baby too. It was like, I don't want all of my affection and effort and care and protection to go towards this baby. Like I want it to remain in my community and among my friends. Like I want my friendships to be just as,

if not more important to me on plenty of occasions than this little domestic unit I've found myself in, you know, but I think so much of our culture really, really prescribes opposite, really prescribes like, you know, you meet so many like straight men, especially who like meet their wife and never again make another friendship with a woman, you know, and so many straight women who like meet their husband

and will never again make another male friendship. And it closes off the world that we're supposed to, that, you know, that I dream of. You claiming to be an extrovert and like a communalist and loving to party and not wanting to sort of like hide away and, you know, be like shriveled up and dying in your house as like a wife that you are. That attitude can protect people from cultishness

because like our radical like individual attitude in this culture is so much of what makes us like put our faith in a leader in one singular institution. And the fact that marriage, the institution of marriage is born in the institutions of weddings, which are like so individual and such a celebration of the self. It's like it just sets you up for that life of despair. Yeah.

It's the great thing of like American consumerism where you are offered the illusion of individual choice while you're being pushed into like perfect conformity with like a certain kind of invisible ideal. And again, like I say to someone that's had a fucking great time at every wedding I've ever been to. And I, and I'm like going to two of my best friends this summer. It's going to be, I'm going to have an amazing time,

but it's like you get the mariachi band that plays stay by Rihanna. You know, you do whatever like individuates it. To me, I think the only way to individuate yourself on matters of weddings is to decline to participate in various things. Like there's no way to like pick the perfect father-daughter dance that isn't like a typical father-daughter dance. It's like you just got to not do it. Like, you know?

Yeah. Like the only true way to subvert is to decline. Hi, this is Stephanie from Seattle. And I think the coldest thing about weddings is people caring so much about the aesthetics. I was asked to be in a wedding. As part of the wedding party, I was asked to cover up a gorgeous flower tattoo

that I have on my arm. She wanted her wedding photos to look clean. My name is Mary. I'm a wedding photographer from Maryland. I think how bride-centric the language that the wedding industry uses for weddings is just so culty. For years, I and just like other queer and gay and like-minded wedding professionals

have been trying to de-gender the language we use. But the term bride to describe everything is just so insidious. It's not wedding party. It's bridal party, not bouquet. It's bridal bouquet, bridal makeup, bridal salon. And it's just like for literally no reason. I want to say thank you so much for agreeing to do this because when I saw that you got married,

a polite person would be like, congratulations. And I was like, hey, do you want to talk about the cult you just joined? The people that know me best were all like, I'm sorry. They kind of appropriately sensed my feelings about it. And they were like, I'm sorry you had to do that. And I was like, thank you because I'm pretty upset about it. I'm not happy to be quote unquote married. I can't get the word husband out of my mouth.

It is a disgusting word. And wife is bad too. Yeah. Oh, no, I could never. So I started screenwriting during the pandemic because I had a baby in August, 2020. And it was a kind of work that was much more conducive to not having full-time childcare.

And just kind of working in hour-long snippets that I couldn't really schedule for a long time. And the WGA for screenwriters, it's incredible health insurance. You can ensure your entire family for $600 a year. And my partner Andrew, he always has wanted to take a year off or two years off and be the primary caregiver. He spent four months, four or five months taking care of Paloma or baby full-time.

So he needed health insurance. We also figured like if he wants to assume a primary caregiver role in the future, like I need to be the one with the health insurance. And he had always been the one with the health insurance. And so this was like the clear way to do it. $600 a year for family health insurance. I was like, sure, I'll do anything. Did you guys have a wedding or did you just get married legally?

I wanted to just walk into City Hall, but the appointments were so hard to get because you can't walk in since COVID. You can't just do what you would do and walk in at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday and just in and out of the ugly fluorescent room, which is what I would have preferred to do, but it was like trying to get LCD sound system tickets

to the farewell tour. Like I had to log on at 8.59 a.m. and then refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh and try to get one of five slots that would be released at the top of every week. I tried for weeks and could never get one, but you still have to get like a minister. You still have to get a religious figure.

It either has to be in the eyes of the government or in the eyes of a church. So one of our friends had already been ordained to do another friend's wedding. And so we just, we went to one six nine bar on like a Friday night at five with our baby and our friend was the minister and our other friend was the witness.

And then a friend came and took a few pictures. No family, no friends, no party. I felt crazy the whole time I was doing it because I had thought of my relationship as the singular zone that would be free of coercion. Like this was the space in which you could resist the normative impulses of the state and of like nuclear family capitalism.

And you know, it's just, I thought that my relationship with him would always be one in which we could like remake whatever we wanted the whatever way we wanted. You know, and then I was like, no, I like the lack of universal healthcare in this country is forcing, you know, is forcing me to do something that I never wanted to do, still did not want to do. That you like famously never wanted to do.

I don't know if I'm extremely unsentimental. Like I think I'm very affectionate. And I think I'm very loving, but I hate ritualized occasion, which is one of the reasons I think I never wanted to get married. I would categorize that as like classic cultural cynicism. You're just like, the fact that this is a default tradition that we're all supposed to embrace

inherently makes me not want to do it. And I relate to that. I get why all of it is like, you know, warm and feels good. The specific things that the straight wedding valorizes, like I find kind of politically abhorrent as well. Yeah. No, it really is shocking. When you go to a wedding and you hear everything that they're saying, you're like, what year is it?

Yeah, because I'm so averse to ritual, it's like Andrew and I don't celebrate our anniversary. It's like, you know, we're just like whatever, like every day should be the celebration. You know, like every day should be like, you know, we don't do fucking Mother's Day or Father's Day. It's just like every day we should all be cherished by each other like it is our last, you know?

You're like, I don't need the institutional permission. Like I'm gonna do it my way. Yeah, and I feel so strongly about that specifically as it relates to weddings. But I did also feel this like parallel, like if not for Andrew specifically, my life would look incredibly different. Like he's more traditional than I am.

I certainly wouldn't have a child at this age if not for him. I did have like an overwhelming rush of gratitude for the like particular state that my life had ended up in because of him. You still like followed like a trajectory of events that like you wanted to like because you weren't doing what like government told you to do, you were like doing what you wanted to do. I feel like that's what leads to true happiness.

That's why so many people who like find themselves getting married before they want to or before they're ready or having kids before they want to or before they're ready. They haven't done what they wanted to. They say that queer parents like raise the happiest children because it's so hard to adopt children that it's like you really need to want to have children. You're probably going to raise a really happy child

because you know, you did what you wanted. Well, yeah, and I also think with queer parents too, it's like you have to think through every gender role from ground zero, right? And I think that that like you start in sort of like a like a Rawlsie and veil of ignorance or whatever. And it's like you have to make you have to affirm the world you want because none of it's been prescribed to you yet. I think that that's kind of the model way of how to approach like any sort of.

Yeah. Yeah. I was your own standards. Yeah. What do you think is like some of the most cultiest aspects of American weddings specifically? Most cultish aspects of the wedding. So it's like the total aesthetic conformity, right?

That like we could all close our eyes and picture, you know, an amalgamation of all the weddings that we've ever been to that would closely resemble all of those weddings, right? Yes. Just the like absolute aesthetic conformity despite all of the the feigning of in, you know, of like your wedding just going to be so you, you know, details, the illusion of individuation when everything is actually like exactly the same.

And the way that on the day of like everyone has to pretend that it's so individual to the couple, you know, like I find that quite culty. The shared delusion, it just reminds me a bit of the show Severance where it's like now we're going to go to a wedding and we're going to take out our brain a little bit. Yeah. And we're just going to pretend like this is the most unique romantic thing. Exactly.

Exactly. Here's another thing. Like I think y'all have probably felt this talking to your friends that like almost every single person that you talk to who's getting married it like feels like it's too much like feels like the whole thing. They're like, yeah, like it's not really me that wants to with someone else. So many people have an internal problem with it and then still participate. Yeah.

Also the fact that people tend to regret like this is I don't know anyone that has spent a significant amount of money on a wedding that does not eight years later wish they could have saved it and put it towards a down payment on an apartment. Like there's silent regret. Yes. And obviously people don't regret their weddings, but I do think people are like, man, if I could do that over again,

I would do 50 people and I wouldn't, you know, I think that most women today would agree that like the idea of dressing up as sexy, virginal princess is totally insane. But yet that's what everyone still does. You know, like, yeah. And you know, obviously all the gender stuff, like the weddings that I've gone to, the most culty ones were definitely like the early, you know, when I was going to them in like 2007 and vineyards near Charlottesville.

Yeah. But like gay weddings, there's no like daddy walking daughter down the bride. Like, you know, like that stuff, like the father giveaway stuff is the most obviously like horrifically cultish and yeah, it's culty, but it's also like sentimental, you know? No. That's how we always excuse these culty things. We're like, it's tradition.

Yeah. Movies always get me when like the dad passed away or something. And then you're like, man, I love my dad. I'm so close to him. But the idea of him fucking walking me down the aisle to another man, like I just, it makes my skin crawl. It makes my goddamn skin crawl. I just had a thought, speaking of like parents dying in movies,

like people always say like, oh no, like my parents dying, they're not going to be at my wedding. There is like, that's the thing you want your parent to live to see. I also just had a realization that like I truly watch, say us to the dress in the way that a lot of people watch true crime. Also the fact that like our economy, our culture, nothing makes it sensible for this kind of spending, this kind of ritualized shit. Like it's like people really are overextending themselves.

You know, like people are so exhausted by wedding. You know, it's become such an ordeal for so many people. And yet we still do it. Like the fact that the ways in which the industry will only ever balloon, like no matter how quote unquote feminist our culture gets, no matter how, you know, much capitalism is revealed to us as like, you know, predatory and, you know, and exploitative and disgusting. It's like this particular form of it is only growing more powerful.

And it's just wearing different terms and like a slightly different aesthetic. And like that part of it, the extreme persistence of it to the point that like any deviation from it is seen as unusual. It's like, you know, it's like, I, like my daughter has my last name and that's still like really rare, you know, and when deviation from an extremely narrow norm is seen as unusual, they're like, that's the greatest sign. The last name thing has seemed especially cultish to me in the last couple of years

when people are surprised. They're like, oh, well, what are you going to do with the next one? Like, are you going to do it too? You know, and I'm like, what a great bitch. I grew up with a hyphenated name. So for me, it's like normal because Latinos hyphen the name, which is random because Latinos can be very sexist. And I'm like, not with last names, I guess.

Hey, sounds like a cult pod. My name is Claire and I'm calling from Seattle, Washington. Something that I think is really culty about weddings is the bouquet toss. When I was about 14 years old, I caught one of the bouquets at a wedding and the other person who caught a bouquet was my nine year old cousin. And it made everyone super uncomfortable. This is Rebecca from Philadelphia. And the cultiest thing about the wedding industry is that it is the ultimate in love bombing.

They all start out with, oh my goodness, congratulations. You're getting married. That's so exciting. When is it? Tell me about your fiance. And then they slowly lure you in with upsell after upsell until you completely forget the value of a dollar. And then you were deep, deep, deep in the sunk cost fallacy. It is funny the way that you were saying how this industry is so persistent

and we'll always find a way to accommodate and nimbly snake its way into our culture. It just reminds me of the multi-level marketing industry. 100%. And you will always find a way to make this like a girl boss empowerment moment when really it's just patriarchy again. I think that's another thing that I find really culty about weddings is that there's an undertone of mutual escalation. Like it's like, you made me do it for you. So now you're going to do it for me. I dragged my ass to Vegas for your bachelorette party and I went to, you know, so now you are going to do what I want for mine.

And then it just perpetuates itself like an amoeba and it's like a prisoner's dilemma thing. It's like we could simply do the logical thing and all mutually deescalate this. Those of us who want to, which of which there are plenty of us. Yes. But not a lot of people do. It is literally nuclear war. The things that people are made to pay for, they're also told are more precious, right? The fact that something costs you a lot in your time, your sanity, your money in the case of weddings are all of it in the case of all of it.

The kind of manufactured hardship, the manufactured annoyance, like the completely constructed like idiocy of all of it is used as a way to make you think, well, I fucking put myself out for all of that stuff. It must be because it's so important. I would only have done it if it were so important. And so it again, it's like this mutually escalating thing where like the harder and more expensive it is made for people, the more precious they think it will be. That is the sunk cost fallacy like in action. Like don't ask someone who's already spent $60,000 if their wedding was worth it or if they're happy or if it was the best day of their life because they're going to do some mental gymnastics to tell you that it was. Right, right.

Yeah. It's that like capitalist mindset of if I pay for something, it's going to be more valuable and I do it with everything. Like I will pay for a workout the day before so that I know I'll go to the workout the next day. Yeah. Those mechanisms, I think they're like great when they're things that you unequivocally want to do like kind of first, you know, straightforwardly. But when we're talking 60K first thing, you know, it's like, that's a real, that's a real different equation. This is something that I wrote about in that essay, which is like the types of women that care the most about weddings. In my experience tend to be the women that more readily accept a secondary role in all other aspects of their lives.

Like women who not only accept but kind of like the idea that they are their role is to be like a support structure for other people. Their role is to like help other people achieve their goals, like a basically traditional role of women. They make the house nice for other people. They take the notes in the meeting. They bring the cupcakes at the office party. And as a result of this sort of sublimation of individual autonomy and independence and sort of centrality, you know, that it all gets pushed onto bachelor party and wedding day. And I was just like, don't do that. Why don't you just have a little bit of that all the time?

100% And then you might need this so much. Now we're going to play a little game. It's called mainstream wedding tradition or cult wedding tradition. We're going to read you a description of a real wedding tradition from history or somewhere in the world. And you'll have to guess whether it's a mainstream ritual or a ritual associated with a bona fide cult. So in this group, the bride has to wear an ornate silver and gold crown with charms dangling all around it. When she moves, the tinkling sound is supposed to deflect evil spirits.

Mainstream. Yes. Yeah. Where was that from? Norway. We love a crown. I don't know. Yeah, I went to an Armenian wedding once where it was like crowns where I was like, that's, that's cute.

That's way cuter than like whatever flower crown shit everyone was doing back then. Yeah, flower crowns. Yes. So next tradition at the wedding reception of newlyweds in this group, if the groom leaves the room, male guests of the bridal party are allowed to swoop in and kiss the bride. Equally, if the bride leaves the party, female guests can come to kiss the groom. Okay, my guess is this is like mainstream and like medieval Europe or something. What's the vibe? Sweden.

It's in Sweden, but like present day. Cool. I love that. An egalitarian society. I love it. Yeah, it's like take what's yours. Very heterosexual. Yeah.

The next one. In this group, it is a tradition for the bride to be kidnapped by friends and family before the wedding to get the bride back. The groom has to pay her a ransom. Mainstream. Central Asia. I love how you're guessing. You don't have to guess the location. I'm curious.

Very smart. It is mainstream, but it's Romania. Romania. Interesting. Where child brides are common. I feel like Eastern Europe, Central Asia, there is like a lot of kidnapped ritual. It's pretty fucked up. Yeah.

Yeah, not good. Sorry. I sometimes break into like a bad British accent when I feel uncomfortable. All right, next group. In this group, it was customary for an old stale marriage to get broken up and for a new spouse called a love match to be assigned by a wise elder. Cult. Yeah. Which one?

Sinanon. Are you familiar with that group? Yeah. I mean, I feel like probably a lot of the sort of like commune cults like did this, right? Yeah. Yeah. My dad actually spent his teenage years in Sinanon against his will. That's why I'm interested in cults.

My grandparents actually finally, the last straw that got them to leave Sinanon was when their marriage was going to get broken up. Damn. They were like, I'm good. And they left. Love conquers all. Yeah. But they got divorced shortly thereafter. But at least they were out of the cult.

Yeah. True. Last round, in this group, animals were sacrificed and then cut in half. Then the animal halves were arranged opposite each other on the ground, leaving a pathway between them. The bride and groom would make a blood covenant by walking through the path between the two halves of cut up animal meeting in the middle. That meeting ground between animal pieces was regarded as holy and there the two individuals would cut their right palms and join hands as they mutually promised all of their rights and possessions to reach up. Okay. I feel like this is a trick question because it obviously sounds like a cult.

So I'm going to guess mainstream. This is just like a blood covenant from the Bible. Oh, yeah. There we go. Yeah. Ancient Israel. Like what are we talking about? Yeah.

That was our game. That was a great game. That was a great game. I'm going to think about this blood covenant for a while. Yeah. Next time you go to another wedding, you'll be like, did you know? Like a very big bag full of body parts. I'm like, guys.

Yeah. You were like all this bouquet shit and garter shit. This is not from the Bible. Yeah. Catch the sheep head. Like a bloody sheep head. Thank you so much for talking shit about weddings with us, for playing our game. Yeah.

It's a real pleasure always to talk shit about weddings. If listeners want to keep up with you and your work, where can they join your cult? I am on Instagram at Gia Tortellini, like the pasta. Oh, great pasta shape. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast with us. It was so nice to meet you. So Issa, out of the three cult categories, live your life, watch your back, and get the fuck out.

What do you think about the cult of weddings? I think the cult of weddings is a watch your back. For sure. And there's many reasons that you should watch your back, but I think the one that can really get you into the whole is the financial aspect because that can affect the rest of your life. Like you can look back at a wedding and you're so enthralled by everything that was happening. You're so excited that you were like, fuck it. I'll just spend the extra 10 grand on this and then the extra 15 on this and I'll just

get a loan and then 10 years later, you're like, fuck, like you didn't put a down payment in on the house. Everybody is upselling you on everything and creating this hype that at the end of the day, you might not be doing something authentic to you. You might be conforming in a way that you ultimately don't align with. And I think per what we were talking about before, we're not critiquing wedding culture to dismiss it entirely. That's why it's not a get the fuck out.

We're just like inviting people to consider is this wedding tradition or that wedding tradition or this wedding in general really, truly authentic to me because you don't actually have to conform if you don't want to. It's literally that idea of like, watch your back when you're making a list of things that you're going to get for your wedding. For sure. Because you might just be getting caught up in the moment of it all and like, is it really worth it?

Kind of harkens back to a reference we made in an early podcast episode. I think when we were talking about the cult of MLMs, the behavioral economist, Daniel Kahneman, who wrote Thinking Fast and Slow, it's like sometimes when you get caught up in a scam or in a cult, you're just going on intuition. You're just going on instinct and that can fuck you in the end. You're thinking too fast. Sometimes you need to slow down and do more deliberative thinking so you can determine whether or not this is the right quote unquote cult for you.

Yeah, and try to maybe detach yourself from the capitalist aspect because I feel like we're so trained to think that the more money you spend on something, the more it means to you. Yeah. And so like, maybe like take the time to take like the week before your wedding off or something. So like allocate that time to like emotionally being invested, but I'm not a life coach or anything.

Well, that's our show. Thanks for listening. We'll be back with a new cult next week. But in the meantime, stay culty, but not too culty. Sounds Like a Cult is created, hosted and produced by Amanda Montell and Issa Medina. Kate Elizabeth is our editor. Our podcast studio is all things comedy and our theme music is by Casey Colb. Thank you to our intern slash production assistant, Noemi Griffin.

Subscribe to Sounds Like a Cult wherever you get your podcasts. So you never miss an episode. And if you like our show, feel free to give us a rating and review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and check us out on Patreon at patreon.com sounds like a cult.