Billionaire Budgets: Inside the Luxury Wedding Industry

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, INTERNATIONAL HOST: Well, now, a little bit of a gearshift as we turn to weddings. The milestone event often leaving couples with their hearts full, but their wallets light. The average American, get this, spends around $30,000 on their wedding, and our next guest says they are only getting more extravagant. In her recent article, “The Fake Poor Bride,” award-winning author Xochitl Gonzalez reveals the world behind this lucrative industry. And she joined Michel Martin to talk about her experience as an ex-wedding planner.

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MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Bianna. Xochitl Gonzalez, thank you so much for talking with us.

GONZALEZ: Thank you for having me.

MARTIN: Some people may know you as the author of a novel, “Olga Dies Dreaming,” but I think a lot of people know you from your work in “The Atlantic,” your kind of transient analysis of race and class and politics. OK. So, luxury wedding planner, like, how did that happen?

GONZALEZ: Well, I think my clients are wondering the same thing. They’re sort of all scratching their heads, being like, I guess still waters ran deep. No, I think it was a great position to sort of observe class in America, observe sort of different social strata of life, and I can just sort of been — I wouldn’t say stewing in my own juices, but cementing a lot of observations over the years. And then, the novel gave me a chance to kind of put that all into play. And “The Atlantic” has given me a lot more room to kind of just keep chewing on things. And we thought this would be a fun way to meld my old life with my new life.

MARTIN: One of the things I kind of realized and thinking about your piece is that nowadays, maybe people understand that job.

GONZALEZ: Yes.

MARTIN: They understand that there is a person who does that job or a team. But I think when you started out, it was kind of a hidden —

GONZALEZ: It was a hidden career. I think I say in the peace, my family who was very working class and literally had what he was called a football wedding was like, I just don’t understand what you do. And they couldn’t even understand the kind of levels of wealth of the people that I was working for. That, you know, again, their fixation was on, but they could buy a house with that money. And it was like they have several houses. But like, how do I explain that to my grandmother? But, you know, it was sort of a new profession, and we sort of rode that wave, and it was a lot of fun. And then, at a certain point, it became unfun. I wrote about that a little bit in the piece. I think as our politics — it was funny, you know, as our politics became — came more to the forefront of the country, it became harder to sort of separate who you are as a person from who you are as a professional in some sense. Yes.

MARTIN: Here you are, you so you come, as you said, you know, working class background. I’m just curious about like that first wedding that you did when you realized, oh, this is different from the way we do things in my family.

GONZALEZ: There’s a wedding strata, and the wedding strata replicates our class strata, right, like where people are charging at different price points and the weddings have different budgets. And I remember when I finally realized, OK, we’re in a different field here, is when there was a separate person involved that dealt with the money versus anybody involved in the actual planning. So, the parents were paying, the bride was making a lot of decisions. You know, the mom might have been consulted, but then you talk to a completely separate entity that actually wrote you the check and dealt with the budget. And you suddenly understood that this is not just a family, it’s sort of a small corporation. And I think for a lot of couples, just the average couple in America or anywhere, honestly, in the world really, the money is what makes the wedding planning stressful.

MARTIN: And this is where we have to have some fun, which is like what are some of the crazy requests?

GONZALEZ: Oh, my God.

MARTIN: Somewhat crazy requests?

GONZALEZ: Well, I talk in the story about wanting to have a pony make an appearance, and that it could be gifted to the bride on the floor during the groom — the father of the bride’s toast. That was one of my favorites because it involved animal wrangling.

MARTIN: He wanted to give her a pony because?

GONZALEZ: He felt like, you know what, I’m all in, but the kitchen stink. Let’s give her everything she ever wanted. And it was like she was — ever since she was a kid, she always wanted a pony. And so, we sort of bring out this pony, and it was really fantastic because, you know, no one was expecting it. I mean, we’ve like — I mean, some of the more normal requests are like having like rock stars perform at events, like — which is like a funny side hustle that a lot of people don’t realize like musicians will do. I mean, we’ve had — a lot of the time, some of the harder requests were actually trying to make like culturally appropriate things happen in spaces where they weren’t designed to. So, let’s say having a fire during a Hindu ceremony, like it was a negotiation to like be able to have open flames. Like — really, like a lot of the time the requests were not so much strange as they were not a cultural to the place where the event was maybe happening. Or maybe I got frog boiled into thinking that nothing was strange. That’s also possible.

MARTIN: One of my favorite stories you talked about was the fake poor bride.

GONZALEZ: Yes.

MARTIN: Tell me about the fake poor bride.

GONZALEZ: Oh, my gosh

MARTIN: Tell — what happened there?

GONZALEZ: I think that there was, post-recession, a certain amount — in the immediate aftermath of the recession, a certain amount of fear of seeming like a wealthy person. So, what happens is she’s getting married and she does not want people — no one knows she has money, and she has real money. You know, like her mother had thrown another sister a wedding and I think plastered the ball room of one of New York’s hottest hotels like with orchids, right? And so, we knew what the mother could do and left her own devices. And the daughter was just like, if that happens, everyone will know. And what they decided was that they were going to hire me. Now, what the bride didn’t understand is that she thought I was being hired to keep her mother under control. But because her mom was actually paying me, I was actually being taught — like hired to get whatever the mother wanted while making the bride think it didn’t cost anything and it wasn’t going to be out of hand. And it was a funny story about class, because the bride’s mother also had been raised with not a lot of money, and it kind of married into a situation where their wealth increased as their years went on. And the bride had always been raised in money. And so, it was almost as though the mother of the bride was like, why do you shun this thing that I wanted my whole life? And the bride herself, was like, why does this hold so much value to you, that people know we have it? And I was just the person caught in the middle. I was really amused, honestly, in the process because I was told to just tell her that any upgrade was already included in the contract. But I was kind of amused by the idea that like you’d say like, well, what about these little baby lamb chops instead of the pigs in a blanket? Would that cost more? And you’re like, no, it’s already included in the contract. I was sort of her own like either gullibility or lack of awareness of the actual cost of things like — or common sense about cost of things was sort of amusing to me and kind of undermined how little she actually did have to think about money in reality, even though she wanted to make sure nobody knew that she had it.

MARTIN: How did they communicate to you that budget was not an issue, that money was no object? Did they actually come right out and say it?

GONZALEZ: Oh, they just said that.

MARTIN: They — money is not —

GONZALEZ: They just said that, yes.

MARTIN: Really

GONZALEZ: Like they just said that. And oftentimes, you know, and I talk about this too, most often, if money was an issue like it was because they were given a lump sum and had to do a few things with it. So, they’d be given a seven-figure sum, a couple, let’s say, I talk about this —

MARTIN: Wait, did you just say a seven — wait. Can I just process that? A seven-figure sum?

GONZALEZ: Yes. Yes.

MARTIN: Oh, OK.

GONZALEZ: A seven-figure sum. And with this seven-figure sum, they would need to get an apartment and have a wedding. And so, the battle was not so much that there wasn’t more to potentially get, the battle was they wanted to be respectful and stick within the sum but they wanted a great house, but they also wanted a great wedding. So, the fighting was less because of a lack of resources than it was internal angst about how they were going to manage to do everything that they wanted while still seeming like respectful to this kind gesture of their parents. It was a fascinating time to just see how tortured, ironically, people could be about their own privilege, which is hilarious because, in turn, that privilege is torturing other brides that have less because they want to have all of these things.

MARTIN: So, honestly — I mean, let’s just keep it real. So, chill. It’s really easy to like not like these people. I mean, you’re like, would you make an interesting turn in your piece where you actually kind of stand up of the extremist (ph), you know. Tell me about that why you — and I was surprised that — you know, coming from you, as I said, that you are very kind of transient observer of, you know, race and class and how it functions. And, you know, all of the unfairness that can attached to that. But you actually make a turn and you actually stand up for the extremist (ph). So, make your case.

GONZALEZ: Yes. And I’ll tell you why.

MARTIN: Make you case.

GONZALEZ: You know, I think I always root for the little guy and we love to say how much we love small business in America, in particular, and yet, they are very, very few industries that actually support small business. And when Jeff Bezos, king of Amazon, finally has his wedding, he will be forced to support small businesses, because there is no Amazon of weddings. It is like one mom and pop operation, after another that all like retain — like, you know, most of these people got through COVID with PPP loans, if they could qualify, if they were even big enough for that. And so, you really see people where — it’s like people that have artistic inclinations that need part-time work. I mean, like it’s such a — that industry employs so many people that need side hustles and supplemental income because you can work on a Saturday, you could just work on the weekends and keep a day job. I used to employ so many teachers that needed extra money, that we’re trying to like save for a down payment or save or something. And so, to me, it’s like one of the few flexible industries that allows people, women, immigrants, to work around their certain circumstances and also have a creative outlet. And if you are going to have money and pump it into the economy, I can’t think of a better way to do that than — rather this than give money to a corporate conglomerate like LVMH, you know, like let me see you support 40 to 50 small businesses who are each employing 20 to 40 people, right? Like that’s — for — and I talk about it at least at this kind of events, it’s not just even a weekend, it’s like you’re employing them for like upwards of two weeks.

MARTIN: You highlight some of the crafts people, the small business people who make these extravaganzas happen. So, two things here. Like tell me a little bit more about these folks and why was it so important for you to write about their work?

GONZALEZ: Oh, I mean, it felt so exciting to actually give them space. You know, one of the things that I — I learned everything I know, and I know a lot about flowers. But getting up at 5:00 in the morning and going to a flower market in Manhattan that was completely powered by that time, this is in the (INAUDIBLE) Mexican and Salvador immigrants. And literally, people would get — if I was there at 5:00, they were there at 3:00, right, unpacking things from Holland, unpacking things from Latin America, from Rose Gardens from like TUA Farms, and knowing everything about these blooms, right, because they’ve been in this business. It’s like they came to this country, somebody else brought them into — from their country, brought them into the business, they will bring someone else into the business. And so, you’re really seeing — it’s not just sort of — it’s manual difficult labor, but it also is labor that needs some expertise and some skill, and I just loved the idea that I was able to sort of highlight that, because I think you can see a photo and not realize — a photo of a beautiful tent and not realize that like, you know, 40 young guys working their way through the summer to try to pay for their first year of college might be that’s their summer job, is like erecting tents all summer long, right, and like they’re going to be like literally toiling. And I think in a time where labor is so often rendered invisible, it was just a really beautiful thing to be able to like remind people that it’s actually human hands that make all of that stuff happen.

MARTIN: Do you see that people who are kind of less resourced being kind of influenced by what’s going on at like the top of the food chain as it were?

GONZALEZ: Yes. You know, I do think that there is a desire to sort of compete with the Jones’s. And as I said, what’s happening is every year like how do you get the Jones’s, when the Jones’s invested in Facebook early on, right? But I think one of the things that I — why I always buckle a little bit about that trend is like I don’t — there’s a tendency to feel like its vendors sort of taking people for a ride. And in reality, what it is, it’s small businesses trying to operate. And there’s just not quite as much of an incentive if you have a limited inventor, which you are on weekends, to cater to sort of the mid or the lower tiers of the market. And so, I think as there has been more affluence and more willing to spend among the affluent, more vendors are kind of catering to that market share. And so, it is — I think there’s a bit of a crunch. If a couple is looking for a “Instagram worthy wedding” to get those kinds of people working on your event at a price that fits your budget.

MARTIN: Yes. Say more about that, if you would. I mean, you were saying that — you know, that surveys found that some 30 to 45 percent of couples report taking on credit card or other debt to pay for them. And now, there’s this whole new thing called wedding loans —

GONZALEZ: Yes.

MARTIN: — which are — which can carry interest rates as high as 30 percent.

GONZALEZ: Yes.

MARTIN: Like you think it’s in partly sort of this — I hate to use this word — trickledown effect, you know, people seeing this kind of hyper luxury now feeling like that’s what they’re supposed to have?

GONZALEZ: Yes. I think it’s a twofold thing. I think it’s trickledown of seeing hyper luxury but it’s also — if you think about at the arbiter of media, like we used to have like magazines, let’s say, like — and that really were editorialized, that had some information coming — kind of coming in, it could — they would educate a bride, a potential bride about like what things cost. And now, it’s sort of like lots of sensory information. Like Kim Kardashian’s flower wall, and just being like, I want that, but no understanding that like, OK, that is like — you know, you used to see it in like fashion magazines. Well, here’s the look and here’s a look for less. Like bridal magazines used to do that for people. And now, that sort of doesn’t exist. So, I think what’s happening is there’s a lot of tempting visuals that come across in social media, you know, in reality television, and then there’s not a lot of education. So, the gap between what you decide that you want in this very emotional time where everything is a little bit driven by getting likes, I talk about how there’s a new service that’s emerged called social media management for weddings, right? And one of the things they talk about is, they’ll help you develop a strategy. And I remember being like, wait, a strategy for what? It’s just wedding photos? But their slogan — one of the company’s slogan was, you — the day that you spent 14 months planning should be seen by the world, right? So, it’s really — it’s not just about what’s happening in the party anymore, it’s about what the aftermath and what the reception of those images will be.

MARTIN: What do you think it means that there is this obsession not just with, you know, over the topness but also then broadcasting it to the world? Do you think that means something?

GONZALEZ: I think it actually is a strange holdover from when kind of time free feminine, where the wedding was kind of the woman’s last hurrah, and it emerged as part of like coming out of World War II, like the history of weddings and sort of weddings being a phenomena, they became like a way of showing that you are part — for parents to show that they were part of the middle class, but it was also sort of the last thing that a woman would do on her own before she then became like a misses to someone. And so — and then, as bridal culture kind of emerged and this idea — you know, I talk in the piece — about the not and how it turned a day into sort of a period of time, because you had these little communities forming online, and being a bride became an identity. And it was an identity that came with a lot of permissions, right? Like to have like bad moods, to have little outbursts, you know, like bridezilla. And I think that the — it all have sort of snowballed into — even though maybe those same tropes aren’t necessarily necessary, you know, even the wedding — if you think about it, the wedding gown, it was like modeled after like Queen Victoria. A way to be a queen for a day. But now, it’s sort of like your chance to be a celebrity for a day.

MARTIN: OK. So, Xochitl, I’m going to put you on the spot. You shared some personal news in the piece about how you actually went through a divorce while you are doing wedding planning. And so, that had to have been hard. But, OK. Truth. If you were to get married again, and I don’t know if you have, would you hire a wedding planner?

GONZALEZ: I think if I were to get married again, and I have not, I think we would run to the courthouse and have a nice little lunch with 10 friends afterward. Like I don’t I could do it. And it doesn’t mean I don’t want to support small business. I think I know too much to enjoy it. Yes, I know too much to enjoy it again. And I really probably would spend the whole time worrying about how hard everybody else was working and not necessarily enjoying the thing.

MARTIN: Xochitl Gonzalez, thanks so much for talking with us.

GONZALEZ: Thank you so much for having me.