It’s Wedding Season! What’s The Deal With The Singles Table?

Weddings have long neglected the dateless. Kelly Marie Coyne explores how they might be changing for a more welcoming atmosphere.

When the DJ called all couples to the dance floor at a wedding earlier this year, Denise Nuzzo, 37, brought an unusual date: her dinner roll.

A TikTok post shows Nuzzo, from New York, surrounded by couples and swaying with her carbs. The video’s text reads: “POV you’re the only single at the wedding.”

From My Best Friend’s Wedding in 1997 to 2023′s Anyone But You (which is loosely based on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing), the trope of bringing a fake date to a wedding has a long history in pop culture. It’s hard to be single at a wedding: often, it’s more appealing to feign being partnered. A micro-genre of videos on TikTok follows women dispensing advice for how to navigate weddings that are not designed with them in mind.

Some guests enjoy being single at weddings; some couples have even met at weddings they attended as singles. But others I interviewed – especially women in their 20s and 30s – described being relegated to the couch when sharing Airbnbs with their married friends; feeling trapped at dining tables where the conversation revolves around in-laws and home-hunting; and removing themselves from the dance floor when a slow song comes on. They talked about turning down out-of-town invitations because they cannot afford to travel solo.

Some of these challenges have to do with how norms around marriage have shifted. “Back in the day, when you were getting married in your early 20s, it was probably all your college or high school friends who were attending the wedding,” said Gabriella Rello Duffy, senior editorial director at Brides magazine.

Now, people are marrying older: according to a Census Bureau survey, the estimated median age of first marriage in 2022 was 28.2 for women and 30.1 for men, up from 1947′s 20.5 and 23.7 – which can mean fewer single people in attendance.

As a result, “you might just know the bride or groom or the couple”, Duffy said, “and that can be challenging”.

But does the onus have to fall on singles to make themselves at ease, or are there ways hosts can make their weddings more inclusive? Changes suggested by single people – splitting couples at dinner, limiting slow songs and saving plus-ones for guests who don’t know anyone rather than automatically giving them to couples – inspire strong reactions.

Abbey Caldwell, 36, a screenwriter in Los Angeles who wrote an essay in June about abandoning plus-ones, said: “Nobody seems to really care about the wedding experience of single people.” Married couples “already get every privilege in the world – now you can’t be at a wedding for two hours by yourself?

“Everybody’s reasons for why they shouldn’t be at a wedding without their partners are the same things I have to deal with as a single person at the wedding.”

Judith Martin, who is also known as Miss Manners, strongly disagrees. “That is rude,” she said in an interview. “Married people and people in stable relationships are invited as a social unit unless it is a specifically one-gender event. Excluding them is a terrible idea.”

Different stances on the plus-one issue are probably generational. For Maddie Guy, 34, a tech worker from Chicago, weddings can be so excruciating that, for invitations in her home city, she goes to the ceremony “to show face and show support” and skips the reception, even though she describes herself as extremely friendly.

A plus-one would change the situation for her: she described one occasion where she was allowed to bring a platonic male friend “and it was the most fun I’ve ever had. I was really appreciative of them doing that.” Plus-ones also might help defray the singles tax, or the cost when you can’t split a hotel room, Ubers, a wedding gift or any other wedding-associated expenses.

Splitting Up Couples

A middle path could be inviting couples but doing away with traditional seating arrangements. “In some weddings – and this is controversial – couples are actually at different tables,” said Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering. Splitting couples is a way to level the field between marrieds and singles: neither has a social crutch.

Caldwell said this would make the experience better. “Even if you’re at a wedding with all your friends from college, then you’re dealing with the catch-up conversation, which, for other people, revolves around their partners and their children, and their buying a house together – all of those things.”

Hosts can facilitate dinner-table conversations that aren’t just focused on couples discussing how they met each other and if they want to have kids. Parker spoke about a couple who articulated a few values that were extremely important to them – adventure and trust, for instance – and asked their guests to share a story and give a toast about what that value meant to them.

The dance floor, especially during slow songs, can also be fraught. Dayton Modderman, 25, a social media manager from Nashville, said: “It’s very easy to shut down and whatnot when everyone’s like, ‘Grab your loved ones, this one’s for y’all’.”

“At best,” said Samantha Gross, 32, a travel blogger from Philadelphia, “you get a friend who takes pity on you, and asks you to join, and you don’t really want to do that, either.” Some opt to skip the dancing. “I typically stay off the dance floor because I’m a party of one,” said Marquis Bent, 28, a project engineer from Atlanta.

Parker, who wrote The Art of Gathering, said dances such as Y.M.C.A. and the Cupid Shuffle were good alternatives to slow songs. “These are deeply intelligent social designs that are meant for the collective.”

Duffy, the editorial director at Brides, recommended playing group anthems. For her high school crew, Night Moves by Bob Seger is one – all her friends have played the so-bad-it’s-fun song at their weddings. “It’s a big moment when the group of girls all comes out together.”

While some may dismiss singles’ grievances as trivial, experts say that weddings can reveal where our values lie. “We are fighting about weddings because they are one of the last forms of modern ritual that we have,” Parker said. “Weddings are one of the most important places where the fights that we need to have and often avoid – within families, within communities – are had. Which is: Who are we now? How do we do this? Who belongs?

“There are a lot of philosophies where if you centre the edge – if you centre those who least belong – it’s better for everybody. I’m not saying there’s a wrong and a right. What I’m saying is that these are all trade-offs.”

For Nuzzo, though, one thing is clear: she doesn’t want to dance with her bread in 2024. “Stop saying, as an emcee in 2024, ‘I’d like to invite all the couples on the dance floor.’ Just say, ‘I’d like to invite everybody.’”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Kelly Marie Coyne

©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES

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