The Wedding Industry is Psychological Torture

**This post is written from the perspective of a heterosexual relationship, specifically focusing on the experience of a female-identifying bride and a male-identifying groom.**

Okay, a little extreme I know. But, hear me out.

Psychological torture is broadly defined as "the intentional infliction of suffering without resorting to direct physical violence, in what is known as 'no-touch' torture" (Hong & Pickering, 2023)

Assaults on the mind can be grouped into three categories (Leach, 2016):

1. Psychological: Includes isolation, sensory deprivation or overload, sleep deprivation, and disorientation.

2. Psychophysiological: Involves physical stress through environmental manipulation, such as extreme temperatures, starvation, and stress positions.

3. Psychosocial: Encompasses humiliation based on culture, religion, or gender, including sexual degradation and harassment, with a particularly strong psychological impact on women.

I am not suggesting that the stress and challenges associated with the wedding industry compare to the profound suffering endured by asylum seekers, prisoners of war, or others who have experienced severe trauma. Rather, this framing seeks to validate the very real emotional and psychological toll that many brides face, acknowledging the exhaustion, isolation, and pressure that can feel overwhelming during this intense time.

With this in mind, I would argue that the wedding industry can be understood as a form of psychological torture (whether consciously or not). It operates as a systemic and normalized structure of "no-touch" suffering, particularly targeting women, all under the guise of celebration, tradition, and love. This is perpetuated through elements such as sensory overload, the isolating experience of being a bride, and harmful norms like the expectation of "bridal diets."

Sensory overload 

Let’s begin with sensory overload, which I think is especially compelling in understanding this framework. In conversations with many brides (whether friends, family, or clients) a common experience emerges: decision fatigue. The wedding industry masks this form of torture as freedom. On the surface, it offers “endless choices”, from dress styles and colour schemes to invitation fonts, seating arrangements, flower designs, cake flavours, honeymoon destinations, and more. But these options aren’t truly empowering. Instead, they represent a weaponized abundance, a tactic where unlimited choices become a tool of manipulation. This cognitive overload drains emotional and psychological energy, leaving many feeling overwhelmed rather than liberated.

Instead of fostering creativity, the wedding industry induces decision fatigue, a well-documented psychological phenomenon in which the brain becomes paralyzed by too many competing stimuli. Brides and grooms report feeling burnt out, anxious, and irritable. But not because they lack desire for the marriage or wedding, but because the volume of sensory information disorients their internal compass.

Platforms like Pinterest, Instagram, and TikTok serve as 24/7 surveillance towers. Images of “perfect” weddings flood social feeds, offering hyper-curated visuals of unattainable beauty. This isn’t just comparison, it’s psychological warfare. The couple is bombarded with lighting techniques, floral trends, and themed aesthetic expectations that must be memorized, budgeted for, and imitated. It’s a deluge of visual pressure: the floral arch must match the dress; the dress must match the bridesmaids; the bridesmaids must match the venue. Everything must be "Instagrammable", meaning, not lived in, but performative. You have all eyes on you and what decisions you make.

Much like temporal disorientation used in interrogation, wedding planning distorts the sense of time. The “big day” becomes an all-consuming future event that renders the present meaningless. Sleep patterns may be disrupted, daily tasks become burdensome, and the couple can enter a chronic state of mental vigilance, scanning the environment constantly for tasks left undone. This perpetual vigilance is not unlike hyperarousal in trauma, a sign that the nervous system is under threat.

Perhaps in fostering this environment, wedding venues and the industry itself profits as you are left so exhausted and burnt out to make "sound mind" decisions, and they can advantage of this in up-charging you.

Bridal isolation

The bride is often placed at the symbolic and logistical centre of the event. She's the “main character,” the “princess,” the “visionary". Yet this elevated role can lead to emotional isolation, not empowerment. Family and friends defer to her decisions, vendors await her approvals, and culture tells her that the entire outcome rests on her shoulders.

In theory, she’s surrounded by people; in practice, she’s buried in expectation.

This form of pseudo-support mirrors the psychological tactic of solitary burdening, where one individual is made fully responsible for an overwhelming task, while others step back in the name of “respecting autonomy.” The result is a profound feeling of being alone in the crowd.

Throughout the planning process, the bride is frequently told: “It’s your day”, a phrase that sounds supportive but actually severs her from shared humanity. Disagreements with her partner, tension with her mother, emotional distance from bridesmaids, all become personal failures rather than normal interpersonal dynamics.

Every conflict is internalized: “Am I being a bridezilla?”“Why does no one get it?”“Is something wrong with me for not loving this?”

Perhaps the most tragic form of isolation is the one that happens internally: disconnection from one’s own values, needs, and authenticity. As the bride can be forced to make decisions that satisfy tradition, family, social media, and fantasy, she becomes a character in a performance, alienated from her own voice. Her sense of self becomes fragmented between who she is, who others need her to be, and who she’s pretending to be.

Bridal diets

Bridal diets, the normalized, celebrated pressure for brides to shrink themselves in preparation for their wedding. They are not acts of health or empowerment; they are acts of culturally inflicted harm that weaponize the body as a site of control and punishment.

While bridal diets are framed as “a personal choice,” I think they are in fact coerced by deeply embedded cultural expectations of femininity, desirability, and worth. The bride is told she must be a glowing, slim, toned version of herself, “the best version,” as if the body she has now is unworthy of being witnessed, photographed, or celebrated.

The message is clear: You cannot show up in your body as it is. You must be smaller, hungrier, and more pleasing.

Depriving oneself of adequate nourishment, obsessing over caloric intake, skipping meals, or enduring intense workouts while in a state of deficit leads to cognitive fog, mood swings, irritability, sleep disruption, and anxiety, some the same symptoms documented in victims of psychophysiological torture.

Psychosocial torture includes degradation rooted in gender, culture, and societal taboos. Bridal diets fall squarely into this category. They reinforce the historical and societal shame around female appetite, echoing centuries of patriarchal control over women’s bodies and pleasure.

When stripped of its romantic packaging, the modern wedding industry reveals itself as a system of psychological control, especially marketed towards women. Under the guise of tradition and celebration, it deploys a chilling arsenal of tactics that mirror those defined by psychological torture literature.

In this context, the wedding is not simply a ritual, it becomes a curated spectacle of suffering. One that is normalized, commercialized, and even glorified. And the most insidious part? The bride is expected not only to endure it, but to smile through the pain and call it “the happiest day of her life.”

Until we begin to name this machinery for what it is, and expose how it exploits women emotionally, psychologically, and financially, we remain complicit in a cycle that celebrates control as love and sacrifice as joy.

Because sometimes, psychological torture doesn’t look like a dark cell.

Sometimes, it looks like white lace and a diamond ring.

References

Hong, A. S., & Pickering, R. (2023). Psychological torture: definitions, clinical sequelae and treatment principles. British journal of hospital medicine (London, England : 2005), 84(8), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.12968/hmed.2023.0104

Leach, J. (2016). Psychological factors in exceptional, extreme and torturous environments. Extreme Physiology & Medicine, 5, 7. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13728-016-0048-y