Bridezilla, Groomzilla

The other day, the girlfriend and her buddy Autumn were talking and I was doing some work on my laptop at the other end of the room. Autumn, who does catering, was explaining why she won’t accept jobs as a wedding planner, “Because then you have to deal with bridezilla.”

Male readers instinctively understand that this was when I joined the conversation, albeit passively. I’m glad I did, as from there, the conversation deteriorated further, rapidly sinking into the wedding-topic abyss. The ladies discussed how it seems that men never do any of the planning in weddings. Brides-to-be and married women seem mostly unanimous that they did all the work, and the groom just shows up.

I was thinking that there are several reasons why the bride-to-be-does all the work:

1. Guys simply don’t care about the details that women will obsess about. Ask a guy about a table setting, and he’ll say, “OK.” Change the table setting, ask him about it again, and he’ll say, “OK.” And if there’s no table setting, that’s OK too. We do, however, concern ourselves with the table. Ask us about the table and we’ll break out a level, maybe some WD-40, and check the table’s structural integrity. If anything is wrong with the table, we’ll fix it. A guy knows what is important is whether the table will serve its function, namely keeping things off the floor, and now how it is decorated.

2. Given that guys don’t care about table settings unless they are extremely obnoxious (e.g., pink or lavender, involve doilies, are excessively scented), and even then, we all can live with pretty much anything for an afternoon, asking a guy to make decisions about those things simply means that those decisions will later be over-ridden by someone who cares at a later point. Presumably whining and/or yelling and/or much condescension will be involved. So a wise man stays out of it.

I would also note, to those who still wonder why there are so many bridezillas and so few groomzillas… I’m sure there a few groomzillas out there. But I think most of them must be in Massachusetts. (Insert requisite Seinfeldism, “Not that there’s anything wrong with it.”) Furthermore, I would think even among gay men, and even among the subset of gay men that are effeminate, there are very few groomzillas. Am I wrong about this?

(BTW… the girlfriend has approved of this post.)