“It’s almost curated to be so uncurated-looking,” agrees Sophia Pav, owner of PAV Weddings. “It’s definitely them in a wedding dress, but in a selfie mirror that they took themselves. It’s not the one they’re going to print and put on their wall or make a book out of, but it’s definitely the one for Instagram.”
The shift ties into Gen Z’s love for TikTok, where messy, funny, authentic-feeling content is king. The younger generation continues to define what’s cool in the TikTok age, and the wedding world has quickly taken note. You can see this most visibly in wedding photography’s wider pivot away from a fine art, editorial look toward more candid, direct flash, and film photos.
But being creative or different—social media holy grails in 2024—also demands more conscious effort from younger couples, especially in a now-saturated digital wedding landscape. Taylor said her own Gen Z clients are often more drawn to venues that have never hosted a wedding before (rather than, for example, the Plaza Hotel). “They’re having a lot more fun with different types of vendors,” she explains. “I had someone bring in a haiku poet. There’s less side-eye about individuality from other people, but it can make things more competitive, because everyone wants to be more creative than the next person.”
Millennial influencers like Alex Cooper and Tinx have recently raised the alarm bells on bad bridal etiquette—namely, asking bridesmaids to move heaven and earth or go into bankruptcy to satisfy a bride’s bachelorette or wedding day dreams. Perhaps in reaction to this, or because they entered the workforce during a cost-of-living crisis, planners note that Gen Z couples seem more anxious about limiting the costs and logistical burdens for guests. (Also, miserable wedding parties make for miserable content.) “For millennial brides, the big flex was to have this pulled-from-Pinterest aesthetic,” says Kristen Gregor, a wedding photographer based on the East Coast. “With Gen Z, their big flex is to show off the amazing time that they had, and how effortless they looked doing it.”
Alexa McClurg, a 24-year-old stylist and personal shopper, got married in 2023 at the Madonna Inn, an old-school, quirky hotel in San Luis Obispo, California. “I wanted to do something a little different. I just like the kitschy pink vibe of the Madonna Inn. I really don’t see myself getting married in all the other weddings that I see online, it just didn’t feel very me.” McClurg thrifted her dress from Depop and worked with a local seamstress to re-design parts. “I do think weddings have kind of gotten out of hand in my opinion,” she adds. “To each their own, but that just wasn’t us. I was so stressed in those three months I can’t imagine dealing with that for a year or more.”
