Singaporebrides | Weddings 101

November 2024

Why Weddings Cause Bad Behaviour and How You Can Curb It

By Audrie Soh

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Weddings are occasions of joy, but it also create the perfect environment for bad behaviours to surface.

Weddings are often seen as joyful celebrations of love, but behind the scenes, they can spark unexpected conflicts and heightened emotions. The planning process is like an emotional pressure cooker, blending high expectations, financial stress, tight deadlines, and two sets of family dynamics into a volatile mix. Add in the “once in a lifetime” mindset that fuels a compulsion for perfection, and even the most grounded individuals can find themselves acting out in ways they didn’t expect.

The combination of deeply personal dreams and differing priorities from yourselves and your family and friends, and the fear of disappointing others can create the perfect conditions for tension, disagreements and bad behaviour. However, you can avoid or at the very least minimise the extent of negative drama that happens, by first understanding why weddings bring out these behaviours, then learning how you can limit them from happening.

Why Do Weddings Bring Out The Worst in People?

In an ideal world, weddings only involve the two people who are coming together to pledge their love and commitment to share and build a life together. In the real world, however, it involves their parents, siblings, aunties and uncles, friends, and sometimes, even their parents’ friends. When you have so many groups of people trying to have a say in a wedding, chaos ensue and bad behaviours from everyone, even yourself, surface. Here, we’ll explore the top four reasons why it happens.

1. Clashing Expectations

Weddings are more than just events; they represent the culmination of dreams, traditions and familial hopes. Like you and your groom-to-be, your family members, especially the elders, have their idea of what your wedding should look and be like. More often than not, their vision of your big day differs from yours, and when you choose to go with your vision of what a perfect wedding looks like, it can lead to arguments, disappointment and hurt feelings.

As you try to manage their expectations and politely reject their ideas, it may feel like a personal attack on their values and person as they may feel like you’ve ignored what they felt was important and essential to your wedding. Last but not least, your parents may feel a sudden loss of autonomy over you after being the ones in control of most of your life, which may heighten their displeasure over any conflict, however small it may be.

These negative emotions further amplify your frustration over their display of displeasure or continued insistence on what they want to be included into your wedding, causing everyone’s emotions to escalate to a boiling point.

2. Too many opinions

Aside from the stress of dealing with clashing expectations from family and friends, you also to navigate through the many opinions coming from everyone about how your wedding should be and look like. While these opinions are often well-meaning, they can be exhausting and overwhelming, adding on to the stress and pressure you are already feeling in your wedding planning journey.

The constant barrage of input can lead to frustration, as you may feel pulled in too many directions, all the while trying to appease everyone while still holding onto to what matters to you. Over time, the stress of managing these conflicting perspectives can chip away at your patience, making you more prone to snapping at others or feeling resentful towards those who seem overly critical or demanding.

3. Financial Stakes

If you have other parties contributing to the finances of your wedding, be prepared for power struggles and resentment to happen. Money often comes with unspoken expectations, control and emotional entanglements, and your parents or in-laws may entitled to have a say in your wedding because they’ve provided you with financial assistance for the wedding. And while you are grateful for their help, you are now obliged to accommodate their wants even if you do not wish to do so. This may make you feel trapped and frustrated, causing resentment to build up, souring your relationship with your parents or in-laws before you even say “I do”.

4. Unrealistic Expectations of Perfectionism

One major contributor to bad behaviour when it comes to planning a wedding is having unrealistic expectations about planning a perfect wedding. If you start planning your wedding with such expectations, you are setting yourself up for constant disappointment, frustration and self-imposed pressure that eventually eats away at your patience and sanity.

On the surface, every wedding seems to be flawless, but in reality, who knows if it had really unfolded exactly the way the couple had planned it to. Try not to get too caught up with the idea of planning a perfect wedding – as every bride who has said “I do” will tell you, every wedding has its fair share of hiccups, regardless of how much groundwork you’ve done to prevent it. Insisting that every detail has to go according to plan will not only amplify your stress and result unreasonable and demanding behaviour, it can also make it difficult for you to enjoy the process as you become too fixated on the small, unimportant details, that in the grand scheme of things, may not matter.

3 Ways You Can Limit Bad Behaviour

Planning a wedding is naturally stressful for you and the people around you. While it is not entirely possible to prevent bad behaviours from happening, there are ways you can limit or avoid them.

1. Communicate your expectations and set boundaries

Weddings are highly emotional events that involve a number of people who are important in your and your groom-to-be’s life. Without clear communication and boundaries, misunderstandings and assumptions can easily lead to unnecessary conflict and tension, and the last thing you want is to start your married life on a bad note.

Communicate your expectations for the wedding with your family and set clear boundaries about who has decision-making authority and what areas are non-negotiable early on in your planning so no one oversteps, preventing any potential clashes or misassumptions.

If your parents or in-laws insist on partially or fully funding your wedding, and if you decide to accept their help, be clear and firm that while you are grateful for their financial help, it does not mean they have the authority to make any decisions with regards to your wedding. Let them know respectfully that their suggestions and opinions will be carefully considered, and if it aligns with your vision for your wedding, you will consider incorporating it. Otherwise, the final say lies with you and your groom-to-be.

2. Limit unsolicited opinions

While well-intentioned, receiving too many opinions from everyone around you when you did not ask for any can be overwhelming and frustrating for you, especially if they attempt to impose their advice on you. And for the people who offer advice that they believe is necessary or helpful, they may feel slighted when their suggestions aren’t adopted, leading to hurt feelings and resentment.

Avoid this situation by politely but firmly redirecting all unsolicited advice by letting family and friends know that you’re thankful for their advice and suggestions, but you and your groom-to-be have things under control or have already made your decision. Try not to engage and encourage them to elaborate, giving them the false impression that you are going to take them up on their advice or suggestions. Let them know respectfully that you and your groom-to-be will reach out to them should you need any help or advice with your wedding planning.

3. Let go of perfection and focus on the future

Striving for perfection is not necessarily a bad trait, but when you get obsessed with attaining it, it brings unnecessary stress and unreasonable behaviours. Let go of the idea of planning a perfect wedding where every detail goes exactly as planned. Of course, it’ll be great if it does, but if it doesn’t, your wedding is still perfect, because a perfect wedding is one where you marry the love of your life in the presence of your loved ones who are celebrating this milestone and joy along with you. All other details are merely supplementary.

When you shift your focus to what truly matters – the celebration of love and the beginning of a shared life, you create a more forgiving and relaxed atmosphere for your wedding planning journey, allowing you to fully immerse in the joy of the process instead of stressing over every little detail.

Letting go of perfection also helps you navigate disagreements with grace. You’re likely to be more open to compromise and less likely to react defensively to differing opinions or unforeseen hiccups when you are not fixated on achieving a specific outcome. With an open mind, potential conflicts and bad behaviours like unreasonable demands can be avoided.

Credits: Feature image from Trixie and Steve’s Ethereal Wedding at Sofitel Singapore Sentosa Resort and Spa by Andri Tei Photography

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