Writer Thinks Affordable Wedding Dresses Threaten ‘Sanctity of a Wedding’

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New Zealand writer Rachel Wells spent $5,000 on a "silver-sequined and custom-designed" wedding gown that made her feel "like a princess, or more accurately, a red-carpet-ready Hollywood starlet." Good for her, right?

But apparently, she is pissed at all y'all with your mass-produced, under $5,000 fast fashion wedding dresses. In an essay for the New Zealand Herald, Wells tries to makes the argument that affordable H&M and ASOS bridal collections are destroying the "sanctity of a wedding." She actually says that! These are her concerns!

Here's the quote:

I am well aware that not every bride can afford to, or would even want to, spend thousands of dollars on a bespoke wedding dress, and I'm certainly not suggesting they should, but I can't help but feeling that wedding dresses that cost less than your weekly grocery bill and are manufactured in a conveyor-belt fashion in a faraway factory for even less, somewhat trivialises the significance and sanctity of a wedding.

This essay might be a late April Fools' joke, or fodder for the internet's outrage machine, but there are so many good quotes to pull out here.

After all, where is the sense of occasion - or even, importance - when the dress you walk down the aisle in costs less than the amount your guests spent on your brand new toaster or NutriBullet?

That's a fancy toaster, definitely not a $20 Target toaster.

Fast fashion chains can churn out their cheap T-shirts and jeans and even their cocktail and evening dresses as quickly and as cheaply as they like but in my opinion a wedding dress deserves to be treated with far more respect.

The dress you will only wear during a single 24-hour day in your life needs to cost a chunk of your savings, that's what she's saying.

Wells doesn't "for one moment regret spending what I did on that dress," writing:

Yes, my wedding dress cost me an arm and a leg, but it is a precious and fitting symbol of the significance of the commitment I made to the man I love more deeply than any other. And, to be honest, I just don't think a mass-produced $95 wedding dress can do justice to such an occasion.

The article got 95 incredulous comments before the comment section was closed.

Here's my humble opinion, just speaking as a bride who tried on a lovely $5,000 gown but ultimately got married six months ago in an $800 David's Bridal dress that suited me perfectly. I think that Wells conflates "the wedding" (and all the hoopla that goes with that party) with the institution of marriage itself. Those have nothing to do with one another.

Really, the crux of the essay is in these lines: "The wedding dresses in both collections are pretty enough, but the very premise of fast fashion wedding gowns leaves me feeling a little bereft. If I'm really honest, I think it's a little tacky."

Maybe Wells is lashing out at people who made comments about the amount of money she spent on her gown. Who knows! Shaming or judging another bride on the cost of her wedding dress is always tacky, as seen in this essay.